What Was Alternative Manga?

Back to the Avant-Garde: Sasaki Maki’s Nonsense
Sasaki Maki was the first Garo artist I tried to write about seriously, with the interests of the art world and art history in mind. Continue reading

Blood Plants: Mizuki Shigeru, Kitaro, and the Japanese Blood Industry
Blood banks and comics? The topic’s not as arbitrary as you might think. It’s quite a natural pairing, actually, both in Japan and in the United States, though for utterly different reasons. Continue reading

Dharavi Comics Epidemic: An Interview with Chaitanya Modak
The Society for Nutrition, Education, and Health Action, based primarily in Dharavi, Mumbai, has recently initiated interesting community art and comics projects. Continue reading

The Fukui Ei’ichi Incident and the Prehistory of Komaga-Gekiga
Though generous to his fans, and generally warm with his peers, Tezuka Osamu (1928-89) was not above letting professional jealousy get the best of him. The first time this trait reared its head in public was in 1953, when, in … Continue reading

Proto-Gekiga: Matsumoto Masahiko’s Komaga
One could say that Matsumoto Masahiko was the true innovator of gekiga and today’s manga. Sakurai Shōichi (cartoonist, publisher, brother of Tatsumi Yoshihiro), 1971-72 As an aside, let me point out that, around the time that the term ‘gekiga’ was … Continue reading

Manga vs. Art History: Hayashi Seiichi at SISJAC
Modern art, comics, and some words with Seiichi Hayashi. Continue reading

Enka Gekiga: Hayashi Seiichi’s Pop Music Manga
If his autobiographical reminisces are true, then Hayashi Seiichi’s literary life began with falling tears. As he recalled the early 50s in “Azami Light” (“Keikō,” 1972): “‘Look at you sniveling like a little girl,’ said my mother. She turned her … Continue reading

The Mysterious Clover: Matsumoto Katsuji, Douglas Fairbanks, and the Reformed Modern Girl
Last time, I argued that one of the first commodity icons of Japanese kawaii was probably based on a mix of Grace Drayton’s New Kids dolls and American jazz age cartooning. This time I want to focus on a sixteen-page comic published as a premium insert furoku for “a girl’s best friend,” the magazine Shōjo no tomo, in April 1934. Continue reading