In this world too: How modern manga hasn't lost touch with the past

"If I were the rain, that binds together the earth and the sky, whom in all eternity will never mingle, would I be able to bind two hearts together?"
 Orihime Inoue, Bleach

Routinely dismissed in the UK as a fad, Japanese manga shows no sign of disappearing from our bookshops. A US$4.5 billion market in Japan, its suite of genres covers all conceivable demographics, the latest titles fill scores of shelves in Waterstones, and for untold numbers of young people growing up today, it constitutes the major part of their reading.

We are not exactly ecstatic about it. Modern manga continues to be regarded as something of an upstart art form and has even been blamed for declining literacy rates in Japan (though it is equally argued that reading manga merely fosters a different kind of literacy, no less complex). In the West, its popularity is often referred to as an 'invasion' — an invasion, that is, of the puerile and the frivolous. In our minds, it embodies an entirely separate cultural stereotype than the one characterised by warlords, topknots and seppuku — and seems to speak to a nation that leads the world in marketing 'cool' as cultural capital.

That identification with the ascendant generation is not without basis. Historians of Japanese culture identify the birth of modern manga with the post-World War II US occupation of Japan, and the resulting influx of Western ideals and imagery into a country that has always readily assimilated aspects of other cultures into its own. As a result, militarism and nationalism were out; individualism and humanism were in. Artists became proponents for, and catalysts of, social change and the accompanying diminution of national identity in the face of new, more appealing values. Typically, one of the most highly regarded manga serials of the last fifty years, Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira, pits miscreant schoolboys against a corrupt, old-fashioned military and government whose questing for power unleashes psycho-kinetic apocalypse on Neo-Tokyo. Watered down, this same pro-youth agenda accounts for why the most popular of current titles seem so heavily reliant on seemingly trite positive messages — the triumph of love and self-belief over any obstacle, the beauty and value of life, and so on.

In fact, while its appeal does partly lie in its being so deftly in touch with the need for immediate validation, or (more generously) the modern sensibilities of young men and women, one of the curiosities of manga is the seam of staunch traditionalism that runs beneath the surface, suggesting there is more to even the most candyfloss-sweet title than a fixation with fantasy escapism, and that manga, far from contributing to a decay of Japanese national identity, reaffirms elements that are threatened by aggressive modernisation.

Take, for example, Bleach. Bleach, written by Tite Kubo, is perhaps the quintessential sh?nen (boys’) manga currently running. As I write, it clocks in at 390 chapters (each around 20 pages), while the anime adaptation is beginning its 14th season. Three spin-off feature films have been made, as well as over 20 computer games, spanning multiple genres and platforms, while collected editions of the story have sold over 50 million copies in Japan alone. Its huge roster of characters mean that the internet is figuratively groaning under the weight of Bleach fanfiction, fan art and hentai, and every new chapter released is immediately pirated, translated into English and independently posted for the public on at least five different sites. Web forums teem with fans whose ages range from early teens to mid twenties, who will analyse every scene in detail, speculate on each and every possible future development and carry such extreme and varying opinions on the direction the series should be taken that no matter what he writes, Kubo seemingly forces one person to swear off Bleach forever while another weeps with gratitude. Go on Ebay and you can purchase professionally printed Bleach d?jinshi — amateur comics that explicitly and lavishly document nearly every romantic pairing or implied off-panel activity you can think of, each lovingly worked on for, one imagines, days or weeks at a time. While you’re in a spending mood, you might also buy a plushie of your favourite character, or an entire adult costume for roleplay, or a ticket to the latest convention.

None of this is atypical for a popular modern manga series; their power to expand into money-spinning multimedia franchises and inspire fervent followings is seemingly inexplicable, especially when, even by the standard of children's literature, their plots and dialogue are suspiciously creaky. Bleach surprises no one in this respect either, and anyone dissuaded by the usual manga cues — impossible haircuts, excessive violence, billowing bosoms, squeam-inducing sentimentality — will find it difficult to take seriously.

But Bleach also typifies the collusion between old and new, traditional and contemporary, that manga embodies, and which undoubtedly forms a major part of its appeal, as it essentially steals the charms and enticements of both. In the tradition of Akira, the lead character, Ichigo, is a young punk and a rebel. His key distinguishing feature is a shock of orange hair that he refuses to dye black. He has a propensity to get into fights and bizarrely, given his tall, thin frame, almost always comes out on top. What begins as a vaguely implausible character trait (Ichigo the dangerous outsider, who can handle anything life throws at him) is quickly developed into a defining theme of this and other sh?nen manga — the underdog uncovering as-yet untapped reserves of strength and talent to defeat progressively bulkier and more experienced opponents.

Ichigo’s role as reformer, and as icon of modern Japanese individualism, is reinforced in the second major arc to the series, where he and his allies journey to a world of the dead (the Soul Society) to rescue their friend, Rukia. Here, Ichigo is literally an outsider in an ordered fantasy world, pegged as a ryoka (invader), viewed with superstition and hostility by the people of the poor Rukon district, then hunted down with impunity after gaining entry to the elite Seireiti area of the city. He and his followers are united in noble purpose, motivated by personal bonds, and thus prevail against both the military and the judiciary, who are weakened by deep-seated corruption, pride and a slew of rivalries. Their arch-enemy throughout this campaign is Rukia’s brother, Byakuya, who at all times appears completely unmoved by his sister’s impending execution because of his greater allegiance to both the law and his family’s honour (which he considers tainted by Rukia’s actions).

Predictably, the success of Ichigo’s band against impossible odds is shown to lie in the power of love and friendship, the perseverence of the human spirit and understanding of/coming to terms with the self (portrayed through diversions into Ichigo’s inner world whenever he is on the brink of defeat). Byakuya is eventually forced, in one-on-one battle, to understand the error of his philosophy, and finally moves to protect Rukia when it becomes clear that her execution was arranged by a corrupt individual. The reformer, Ichigo, 17 years old, prevails against a system of justice and social cohesion that is literally, in the world of the manga, thousands of years old.

Yet beneath this apparently blatant appeal to a young, modern audience’s sense of entitlement, there is considerable discord. Early on in the series, the audience is tipped off that Ichigo, while not off fighting demons and nobles, is actually a good student. Proud of his outsider image, he claims to study because he has “nothing better to do at home” — but why draw attention to such a mundane detail? Similarly, he is portrayed as being extremely, aggressively devoted to his family, and a “mummy’s boy” when growing up, which doesn’t exactly tally with the usual stereotype of adolescent defiance. Then there’s the training; taking its beats from the prototypical boys’ manga, Akira Toriyama’s Journey to the West-inspired Dragon Ball, significant advances in strength and skill only come through highly disciplined, structured and intensive tutoring sessions, during which Ichigo is often told, “If you fail, you’ll die” by characters who are ostensibly his allies. A disciplinarian vein runs through every scene where a combatant is tested; they have to attain insight and self-control or else their destruction is all but earnt — natural selection applied to the pursuit of eudaimonia.

Characters ridicule each other (“Fool!” “You idiot!”) for failing to immediately grasp what seem to be fairly complicated, abstract philosophical principles and inwardly berate themselves for utterly human errors. The same sense of a harsh and unsympathetic code of conduct that is synonymous with feudal Japan in the popular imagination is here resurrected as a tool of social and spiritual transformation.

Meanwhile, on the matter of relationships, the revolution has also stalled. For all his brashness, Ichigo is shown to be profoundly uncomfortable with female sexuality and perenially, stupefyingly oblivious to the affections of the series’ resident bra-buster, Orihime. His invulnerability to the opposite sex, whilst falling shy of the level attained by Tintin, is positively pre-adolescent. In fact, apart from Orihime’s awkward doting, and the occasional comic skit involving tertiary characters crushing on unavailable women and men, Bleach studiously avoids anything beyond the mildest implication of a romantic relationship. Characters and story alike seem to shudder at the idea of being more open and liberal.

On the one hand, all of this could be said to fall under the umbrella of story-telling devices. One of the cheapest tricks of the manga artist is to stretch out a conflict for multiple chapters, or a ‘will they, won’t they’ for the entire length of a series’ run (step forward Ken Akamatsu’s Love Hina), so that a series can survive on relatively few new ideas for a considerable period of time. But it can’t be denied that the veneer of liberated, pseudo-anarchistic self-fulfilment is one that gives way to something more complicated under scrutiny. The world of Bleach is one where where ultimately, even outsiders like Ichigo and his exiled mentor, the contraband trader Urahara, are eventually able to settle their differences with the old order and join forces to fight villains that represent those other post-war bogeymen: ultimate power and chaos. This is a world, too, which owes its visual style to a fascination with the past; combatants use swords to fight, not guns, and wear kimonos, tabi and geta, despite Bleach being set in the present day. The inking is ever-reminiscent of shod?, Japanese calligraphy, and the inspiration for the various spells and weapons is, according to Kubo, classical Japanese literature. The various otherworldly creatures that turn up, right down to the central shinigami (death god) figures, clearly owe a debt to folklore, in particular the preternatural yokai (demons) that were prominent in art of the Edo period. The writing too embraces, in its uniquely affected manner, many of the characteristics of Japanese verse. Chapter titles include 'Back to Back — Tearing Sky', 'July Rain, Interrupted', 'A Star and a Stray Dog' and 'Flower on the Precipice'.

The visual layout is a still more successful parallel to poetry. Just as shintaishi (‘New-Style’ verse) maintains its distinctive emphasis on economy and words left unsaid, Kubo will frequently produce whole pages with only a smattering of words and large fields of white. A panel may be empty but for a flash of blood or a lone figure in the distance. A close up on the eyes may be all that tells us of a reaction to news. While the text will sometimes, to detrimental effect, be weighed down with leaden explanations of complex fantasy paraphernalia and arcana, the art will miss out the whole body of an action, instead relying on the implications of its consequence — for instance, one combatant still upright, the other collapsing forward wearing a shocked expression.  We could wave this away as a borrowing of cinematic technique, but these 'jump-cuts', as well as the use of montage, if derivative, derive principally from Kurosawa, who put them to use in contrasting the old social order with the new. If Bleach is less conscientious in its employment of technique, the debt is clear, leading us to one conclusion: this delinquent art form respects and admires both its parents and their values.

I use Bleach as an example because much the same could be said of any number of popular manga in production today. Though the exact elements may differ, the forces of self-empowerment and liberalism discernibly compete with undercurrents of conservative uptightness and rigidity. In Love Hina, the protagonist, a student named Keitaro, is implausibly set up as landlord of an inn jam-packed with beautiful young women who regularly turn up semi (or completely) naked, yet spends the entire 14 volumes of the series being awkward and unflirtatious. InVampire Knight, a sh?jo (girls') manga, the underlying themes of sexual/marital purity mirror those of the US's Twilight franchise, but with the complications of dynasty and lineage mixed in. Even Kenichi Sonada’s Gunsmith Cats, a heavily Westernised manga with an emphasis on guns, cars and babes, features a 19 year-old lead character with hang-ups about sex. And when manga artists unleash their inner pervert, as in Toshio Maeda's infamous Demon Beast Invasion or in Monkey Punch's lascivious Lupin III, they pay their respects to the past in other ways. After all, even tentacle rape carries on a tradition begun by Hokusai.