MJ Feature: What makes Globalization of Japanese Comics Successful?

[Floating_Sakura]

What makes Globalization of Japanese Comics Successful? by Yoshikazu Hayashida

Japanese comics, known as MANGA, have become popular in Asia, Europe, and America. At first glance, it would appear that American comics would have the advantage because they use English, the world's most common language. Why has the world chosen Japanese comics rather than American comics? I think the reasons can be summarized by two points: first, the paper quality of Japanese comics is very bad; second, the Japanese comic publishers are better than American comic publishers.

For example, Kodansha's Shonen Club, a typical sample of "boy’s culture" before World War II, had a lot of written material such as articles and novels, which were written by popular authors. Comics were crammed in alongside these other materials. In this magazine, Japanese comics such as Norakuro were serialized. This kind of publication cannot exist in the United States. Novels of popular authors cannot appear alongside heroic comics in the same magazine even if they are for children, because comics are a different genre from novels in the U.S. In Japan, though, comic writers are handled the same way as novelists by the publishers. In other words, publishers pay comic writers royalties when they publish comics.

I think many people may wonder about my theory that "bad quality paper" has contributed to the popularity of Japanese comics around the world. Of all publications in Japan, the quality of paper in the magazines titled “Shonen…” has historically been among the worst. They use the poorest recycled paper of all publications. What advantage did this situation have? American comic publishers publish colored magazines with higher paper quality than Japanese comics. You may think this would be better than Japanese comics, but there is a pitfall to this. Because they print color publications, they must limit the number of pages due to the high cost of printing. As a result, they are often limited to around 30 pages.

On the other hand, since Japanese publishers use only black ink and poor quality paper, the high number of pages doesn’t affect the price. Chiba Tetsuya would often use the following technique: he would draw many frames in a sequence to portray a character waking up and going to the bathroom to brush his teeth. This made the manga lively. In American comics, writers would be limited to only one frame at most to draw a character either waking up or brushing his teeth.

American comic magazines typically serialize only one or a few works, while Japanese magazines serialize ten or more works in their thick phone book-like volumes. This has had the following effect: Japanese magazines need to serialize only a small number of strong works to boost their sales. With the rest, they can adopt new writers and experiment with new manga. Through trial and error, a brilliant new work may be born, and it can become one of the strong works that support their sales. In this way, Japanese comics have always been aggressive, dynamic and exciting. Comic writers and publishers have been sensitive to trends and transferred them into comic pages. Thanks to the lure of big money, many talented people who might have become actors or authors chose to become comic writers, creating fascinating comics.

On the other hand, in American comics, when a new writer brings his work to a publisher, it is almost impossible to have it serialized. There is no room for experimentation in their 30-odd page magazine. The children who buy American comics are not always thinking about super heroes. They have to worry about school and family affairs, as well as thinking about their hopes and dreams. Marvel Comic's Spiderman is a character with real world dilemmas and concerns, but ultimately, it's too difficult to have a super hero who must also deal with all of life's issues. With the low number of pages, American comics cannot adopt the Japanese strategy of serializing many works of various themes, situating common people as protagonists. They have no choice but to adopt special heroic stories. It should be clear by now that the question of which comics are accepted by the world, American or Japanese, has already been answered. There are American comic fans as well, but they are enthusiasts and not that common.

There is another reason why American comics stick to super heroes, aside from the page limit. It is because it is convenient for publishers to keep copyrights to themselves. Comics dealing with super heroes aren’t drawn by one author only. Numerous comic artists and writers draw the characters. The end result of this is that publishers insist that the creators can hold no copyrights. This an obstacle to the development of American comics and prevents improvements in quality. Comics should not be a product produced at a factory. Producing comics as a product is one of the few original features of American culture.

Producing comics is a creative process. In a system like Japan's, where authors are paid manuscript copyright fees by the publishers, they can engage in creative work -- that is, they can use their imagination to its fullest extent and create new and exciting stories for us. The more they use their imagination, the more popular the story becomes. When it comes to comics, the "American dream" is possible in Japan, but not in America. Even if good comic artists were to appear, they would likely lose their zeal for creation because publishers pay only wages and manuscript fees while taking the copyright and the rest of the profits.

In the early 90's, a publisher named Image Comics appeared. It broke the traditional rules and took the stance that the original creator could hold the copyrights. Image Comics produced the hit comic, Spawn, but due to their radical new policies, they have not broken into the mainstream.

Upon completion of this article, I heard that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs founded the International Manga Award. It was announced by Minister Aso at a press conference. The award is to be given to oversea writers who draw "manga" and not "comics", and awardees will be invited to Japan.

Translated from: Oh My News
Translated by: masahiko