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質の高いマンガを読もう
日本のマンガには古典的な名著がたくさんある。その中から質の高い作品を選んで読むことを勧めたい。それはあなたの人生を変えるほどの力があるからだ。
Read before you judge
I always hesitate when someone asks me what I do for a living. Sometimes I take the easy way out and just say I'm a cultural anthropologist. Images of National Geographic flash briefly through the person's mind, and the conversation turns in another direction. When I confess that I teach budding cartoonists about comics in Japan's first and only Department of Comic Art in a four-year university, reactions are more varied, running from thinly veiled contempt to puzzlement to wild enthusiasm.
I became interested in manga, as an exchange student in Kobe nineteen years ago. Today, most exchange students coming to Japan have a basic knowledge of manga and anime before they even set foot on Japanese soil. Many develop an interest in Japan through those genres, but in those days most of us knew nothing about them beyond what we remembered from watching "Speed Racer" on TV as kids. In fact, most of us, including myself, were downright contemptuous of the grown men we saw reading comics on the trains.
It was the woman who would later become my wife who told me to read before I judged, and introduced me to such classic manga as Osamu Tezuka's "Hi no Tori" and Sanpei Shirato's "Kamui Den." But it was a work by female artist Moto Hagio, "Toma no Shinzo," that got me hooked and led me to begin my study on the readers of girls' and women's manga.
Manga account for more than a third of all unit sales of commercial publications in Japan. A survey of Japanese reading practices conducted by the Mainichi Newspaper in 2000 reported that 77 percent of men aged 16 to 49, and 47 percent of women aged 16 to 49, read manga with some regularity. Nowhere else in the world are comics produced and read in such quantity, making Japan the Hollywood of sequential art. Japan has been exporting both manga and anime to its Asian neighbors for years, but since the global Pokemon boom of the late 1990s, manga and anime have finally begun to penetrate the Anglophone market in a big way, so that the words themselves have become part of the contemporary language.
Sadly, though, the majority of manga that have been translated into English target the self-described otaku ("geek") crowd, and tend to lean heavily toward space opera, fantasy, the occult, and adolescent titillation. Not that there's anything wrong with such genres, mind you, but they represent only a slice of a very large pie. (The quality of translation has also dropped as volume has increased.)
As with any popular media, ninety percent of manga are junk, and in recent years I've seen many open-minded adults with sophisticated tastes turned off by their first encounters with third-rate manga. For those who are curious about manga and don't want to waste time on "greasy kids stuff," try one of these: "Kaze no Tani no Naushika" (Hayao Miyazaki); "Love Song" (Keiko Nishi); "A-A' " (Moto Hagio); "Black Jack" (Osamu Tezuka); "Secret Comics Japan" (various); "Domu" (Katsuhiro Otomo); "Paradise Kiss" (Ai Yazawa); and "Vagabond" (Takehiko Inoue).
Read a really good manga, and it can change your life, like one manga changed my life all those years ago.
Shukan ST: June 4, 2004
(C) All rights reserved
- hesitate
- ちゅうちょする
- what I do for a living
- 何で生計を立てているか
- take the easy way out
- 安易な解決策をとる
- cultural anthropologist
- 文化人類学者
- National Geographic
- 自然、科学、歴史・地理まで、地球に関するあらゆるテーマを取り上げたアメリカの月刊誌
- flash briefly
- 瞬時に思い浮かぶ
- budding 〜
- 〜の卵
- Department
- 学科
- are more varied
- 一層多岐に渡る
- thinly veiled contempt
- 軽べつが見え隠れすること
- puzzlement
- 困惑
- wild enthusiasm
- 熱狂
- before they even set foot on Japanese soil
- 日本の土を初めて踏みしめる前に
- develop an interest
- 関心を深める
- genres
- ジャンル
- beyond 〜
- 〜以上は
- "Speed Racer"
- カーレース・アニメ『マッハGoGoGo』のこと
- downright
- 露骨に
- contemptuous of 〜
- 〜を軽べつする
- got me hooked
- 私をとりこにした
- account for 〜
- 〜の割合を占める
- a third
- 3分の1
- unit sales
- 売上数
- commercial publications
- 商業出版
- survey
- 調査
- reading practices
- 読書習慣
- with some regularity
- ある程度定期的に
- quantity
- 規模
- Hollywood of sequential art
- 映画に続く芸術の中心地
- has been exporting 〜 to 〜
- 〜を〜に輸出している
- neighbors
- 近隣諸国
- late 1990s
- 1990年代後半
- penetrate 〜
- 〜に進出する
- Anglophone
- 英語圏の
- self-described
- 自ら認める
- crowd
- 連中
- lean
- 傾斜する
- occult
- オカルト
- adolescent titillation
- 青少年の好奇心を刺激するもの
- Not that 〜, but 〜
- 〜だからではなく、〜
- mind you
- よく聞いてくださいね
- volume
- 冊数
- junk
- くず
- sophisticated tastes
- 洗練されたし好
- turned off
- 興味を失った
- greasy
- あくが強くてしつこい
- kids stuff
- 子供向けマンガ