SHAPING JAPANESE CULTURE
The English Collins Dictionary defines popular culture as the overall public culture, including books, music, ideas together with mass media, in contrast to high culture. Popular culture was perceived as the current voice of Japanese society. Popular culture is and remains a relevant aspect of the culture of the Japanese, whereby most of the comics play an important role. During the imperial time, utilization of popular culture was to support the values and the ideals of the government. Artists who did not comply with what was regarded as a message that matched with the state values were forced to comply, or they even risked being arrested. An overall change was seen, especially after the war in Japan, with the relaxation of censorship[1] Influences from America, particularly Tezuka Osamuin, Japan, who was commonly referred to as the God of Manga, developed a style that was perceived as the masterplan of the contemporary Japanese comics in storytelling along with the design of its art. This implied that the comics were acceptable for not only targeted for short comedy stories by kids but also aimed for the adults, and they grew more in popularity. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
Throughout the spring and fall of 2013 in Japan, the comic work of the Japanese turned out to be the cause of violence within the families. Barefoot Gen was the title of the comic work. It was derived from Nakazawa Keiji’s experience, who was an author that survived an atomic bomb in Hiroshima pre- and post-World War II.[2] A journalist by the name San’in Chuo Shinpo in a local press on August 16, 2013, reported that the City of Matsue Board of Education demanded all the entire junior high schools along with the municipal elementary move the comic collection to the closed shelf in the December of 2012. This was because of the uttermost portrayals of the Japanese soldier’s wartime behavior. Prominent communication media immediately reacted to the report of the local news and, with one accord, took a serious action towards the implementation of the close shelf proposal. Consequently, after about a week from the first newspaper, the Education Board announced that they had resolved to remove the request.[3]
The contingency in the later August finalized with the almost complete absolute relinquish of the regional Education board to the greater media authority. However, it started a couple of months of controversy between the journalists, scholars along with critics. The controversy revolved around three issues. The first issue was the constitutional correctness of the closed shelf management of comic was debatable from different points of view. The second issue was a discussion of the relevance of comic education on school library collection and its value as learning material. The third issue was the historical perspective of the author Nakazawa particularly the problem of war responsibility as portrayed in the volumes at the same time became a debate along with the Japanese war conduct. The controversy throughout Barefoot Gen is another incident of ancient polemics that are contemporarily recognized to be amongst the cause of disagreement among Japan, along with its East Asian neighboring countries.[4]
According to the views along with experiences expressed throughout the Japanese and the Asia Pacific war people angled to look at everything before the World War II and Meiji Restoration as leading toward them, as in the diminishing of the Tokuaga shogunate ending in war and defeat. It took several years for historians to restore the 19th century throughout the divide of 1868, along with the 20th century through that of 1945. During that time, arguing over each other concerning the things that had changed, the things that had not and the things they anticipated to have changed with regards to the different versions of the contemporary tale[5] Nevertheless, the war was somehow distinctive from the Restoration, not least in its disastrous impact. The alleged war was considered as a conviction on the conflict and entire Japan’s contemporary history, reinforcing the general demand for a new beginning.
Nakazawa Keiji was six years old during the atomic bomb occurrence in the city of Hiroshima in 1945. He after that moved to Tokyo intending to pursue his ambition of becoming a comic artist; however, after he came across the atomic bomb survivor’s discrimination, he chose to hide his background history[6] Following the death of Nakazawa’s mother in 1963, which was mainly, as a result of the radiation caused by the atomic bomb, this incident aroused in him the desire to make his story known about the war. Fortunately, he got a chance of creating monthly magazine short historical pieces that were to be part of compilations of where several comic artists were given to tell their experiences in memory of the war. Nakazawa’s editor discovered that there was so much to share with regards to the war than the short pieces of monthly magazine episode and this led to the commencement of the Hadashi no Gen. It was published on the weekly magazines mainly targeted at younger individuals in the course of the years between 1973 to 1985[7]
It was in different ways a historical work with the main character Gen as the authors’ alternate personality. The author Nakazawa Keiji mostly bases most of the circumstances not just on his own but also experiences of other people. Nevertheless, the context of the story concerns the atomic bomb terror; it also acts as an instrument to enlighten people about the condition for the ordinary Japanese before and past the Second World War. Readers can have an idea of how the conditions were on an everyday basis throughout the war for different people of different ages. In the comics, Gen’s father could be seen as an iconic character[8] Nakazawa said that his father strongly influenced his way of thinking. In the beginning, Gen seems to be a little bit ashamed by his father’s perspective on imperialism, however, as time goes following this father’s death, he begins to appreciate his way of thinking and becomes completely radical himself. Throughout the whole comic, Gen’s father is Gen’s constant source of inspiration in ideology as well as in his choice of career.
Bibliography
Bell, Annika. “The Comic Artist as a Post-war Popular Critic of Japanese Imperialism: An Analysis of Nakazawa Keiji’s Hadashi no Gen.” (2015).
Berger, Maurice. “American Culture, Riding a Mushroom Cloud.” The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. Last modified December 23, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2014/12/23/blogs/20141223-lens-tomatsui.html?searchResultPosition=2
Buruma, Ian. “The Coca-Colonization of Japan.” The New York Review of Books. Last modified October 24, 2014. https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/10/24/shomei-tomatsu-photographs/.
Cruz, Noelle Leslie. “Surviving Hiroshima: An Hermeneutical Phenomenology of Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa.” Estetyka i Krytyka 43, no. 4 (2016): 9-44.
Farkler, Martin. “U.S. Textbook Skews History, Prime Minister of Japan Says.” The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. Last modified January 30, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/world/asia/japans-premier-disputes-us-textbooks-portrayal-of-comfort-women.html
Leach, Julianna Christine. “Memory Through Manga: Japanese Comic Book Representations of Mass Death in Hiroshima and World War II.” (2018).
Mason, Michele, and Helen Lee, eds. Reading colonial Japan: text, context, and critique. Stanford University Press, 2012.
Norihito, Mizuno. “The Dispute over Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen) and Its Implications in Japan.” International Journal of Social Science and Humanity 5, no. 11 (2015): 955.
[1]. Julianna Christine Leach, “Memory Through Manga: Japanese Comic Book Representations of Mass Death in Hiroshima and World War II.” (2018).
[2] Mason, Michele, and Helen Lee, eds. Reading colonial Japan: text, context, and critique. Stanford University Press, 2012.
[3]. Mizuno Norihito, “The Dispute over Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen) and Its Implications in Japan.” International Journal of Social Science and Humanity 5, no. 11, (2015): 955.
[4] Noelle Leslie Cruz, “Surviving Hiroshima: An Hermeneutical Phenomenology of Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa.” Estetyka i Krytyka 43, no. 4 (2016): 9-44.
[5]. Ian Buruma, “The Coca-Colonization of Japan.” The New York Review of Books. Last modified October 24, 2014. https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/10/24/shomei-tomatsu-photographs/.
[6]. Martin Farkler, “U.S. Textbook Skews History, Prime Minister of Japan Says.” The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. Last modified January 30, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/world/asia/japans-premier-disputes-us-textbooks-portrayal-of-comfort-women.html
[7]. Annika Bell, “The Comic Artist as a Post-war Popular Critic of Japanese Imperialism: An Analysis of Nakazawa Keiji’s Hadashi no Gen.” (2015).
[8]. Maurice Berger, “American Culture, Riding a Mushroom Cloud.” The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. Last modified December 23, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2014/12/23/blogs/20141223-lens-tomatsui.html?searchResultPosition=2