Asian Comics

John A. Lent

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781626742949
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Comics & Graphic Novels Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Grand in its scope, Asian Comics dispels the myth that, outside of Japan, the continent is nearly devoid of comic strips and comic books. Relying on his fifty years of Asian mass communication and comic art research, during which he traveled to Asia at least seventy-eight times and visited many studios and workplaces, John A. Lent shows that nearly every country had a golden age of cartooning and has experienced a recent rejuvenation of the art form. As only Japanese comics output has received close and by now voluminous scrutiny, Asian Comics tells the story of the major comics creators outside of Japan. Lent covers the nations and regions of Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Organized by regions of East, Southeast, and South Asia, Asian Comics provides 178 black-and-white illustrations and detailed information on comics of sixteen countries and regions—their histories, key creators, characters, contemporary status, problems, trends, and issues. One chapter harkens back to predecessors of comics in Asia, describing scrolls, paintings, books, and puppetry with humorous tinges, primarily in China, India, Indonesia, and Japan. The first overview of Asian comic books and magazines (both mainstream and alternative), graphic novels, newspaper comic strips and gag panels, plus cartoon/humor magazines, Asian Comics brims with facts, fascinating anecdotes, and interview quotes from many pioneering masters, as well as younger artists.

Chapter 1

A Lead-Up to
Asian Comics

Early Asian Visual Humor and Narrative

Artists with a Keen Sense of Humor

It is not too difficult to find almost anywhere paintings and prints that, through the benefit of history, have become identified as fine or folk art and that include elements common to comics and cartoons, among them caricature, satire, parody, humor, wit, playfulness, narrative, and sequence.

It is also rather easy, worldwide, to find examples of artists who were just as comfortable drawing a cartoon as they were composing a painting; many even made their living as cartoonists. In the West, there have been many prominent artists who worked as or aspired to be cartoonists (Charles Dana Gibson, Marcel Duchamp,¹ George Luks, John Sloan); who especially appreciated the funnies (Pablo Picasso, for example); or who knew and used satire and caricature extremely well (Leonardo da Vinci [see Fisher 1995], George Cruikshank, James Gillray, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec). Paul Barolsky (1978, 1) added others: “In the parodies of Greek pottery, the ingenious drolleries of medieval manuscript illuminations, the playful wit of Renaissance grotesques, the delightfully humorous sculpture of the baroque, the satirical paintings of Bruegel [the Elder], Steen, and Hogarth, the mocking drawings of Thomas Rowlandson, the bizarre prints of Goya, the caricatures of Daumier, and the playful parodies of Picasso, we encounter a wide range of humorous or satirical commentaries on the human condition.” Numerous other European painters used wit, playfulness, parody, and humor in their work.²

Not only in Europe but on nearly every surface of the globe, humans have felt a need to draw, sometimes using elements of humor. On the walls of Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple, constructed thirty-five hundred years ago, the queen is depicted humorously, with huge, drooping breasts and rings of fat circling her body as she sits atop a mule suffering from her immense weight (Platt 1994, 26). Egyptian erotic art, although mostly created for religious purposes, had comic book characteristics. For example, the Turin papyrus has been described as consisting of a dozen pictures, each depicting a “different sexual activity, and a little text accompanies the pictures—just like an erotic comic book” (El-Qhamid and Toledano 2004, 19). In fact, Egypt, more than five thousand years ago, may have been the birthplace of comics, with its “satirical deformation and comic apologies in sculpture, dance and paintings” (El-Tarabichi 1975, 25).³ Even further back, twenty-five thousand years ago, rock art thought to be tinged with humor was created in Namibia (Levinson 1992, 335–41). In Latin America, Mexican comics editor Rémy Bastien (in Couch 1983, 20) credited pre-Columbian codices (screen-folded books) drawn by tlacuilos (Indian artists) as the first comics (see also Brotherston 1995). Only four of the thousands of bark-paper books survive, the rest destroyed by conquering Spanish friars. The highly literate Mayans used about eight hundred ideograms to record their language aesthetically and to tell fascinating stories of outward conflicts and internal self-sacrifice (Coe 2012). Two Danish scholars, after methodically examining the techniques, contents, and functions of sequential text-image pairing of Mayan polychrome vessels and plates, conjectured that late classic Mayan culture (AD 600–900) was the birthplace of America’s comics. They showed that the Mayans were capable of depicting direction, perspective, gestures, frames, motion, sound, and smell in their pictures (Nielsen and Wichmann 2000).

A couple of problems arise when attempting to trace comic elements in ancient art: the lack of a “precise, universally accepted” definition of humor and wit (Barolsky 1978, 4) and the difficulty of discerning whether artists of old intended to be funny, satirical, or witty. Concerning the second dilemma, Barolsky suggested that:

We must be guided by our intuition and general knowledge of the period in our attempt to gain a sense of humor in Renaissance art. There are clues to determining the intention of the artist who created this humor. Playfulness and caricature are usually recognizable because they often employ overt devices such as gestures and facial expression. Parodies of style may be identified, at least tentatively, if we can determine the predominant stylistic conventions of the period. Similarly, satire can be discerned by referring to satirical traditions in literature. Analogies of attitude, tone, or subject seem to exist between art and literature, and the study of humorous or witty tendencies in literature sometimes helps to shed light on humorous aspects of art. (1978, 8)

The Asian Experience

Similarly, in Asia, elements of comic art can be traced back centuries; in a loose sense, the artists of such work might be considered among the first cartoonists. One must hesitate in drawing too many conclusions about the presence of deliberate humor in early Asian art, because much of it was religious and serious. But, as Shigeru Oikawa (1996, 25) wrote of Japan, “[o]f course, these works [Kamakura period scrolls] were not drawn as humorous pictures, and while this is apparent in their means of expression, it does not mean the painters were loath to invest the works with humorous scenes.” Aruna Rao (1995, 161), talking about India, said that “the religious cannot be separated from secular art, but this does not mean that the sacred does not include the profane or that religion in Indian art does not incorporate the humorous, the erotic, the playful, and the fantastic.” In some instances, clues exist as to whether a work of art was meant to be humorous. For example, in ancient Indian aesthetics, the purpose of art was to evoke an aesthetic experience, which resulted from finding a permanent rasa or flavor. Among the nine rasa listed was the comic (hāsya rasa) (Siegel 1989, 7). Similarly, ukiyo-e (woodblock print) artists of Japan let their readers know if they intended to be funny by signing with a suffix of either giga (comic picture) or kyōga (crazy, foolish picture).

As verified by many scholars, ancient murals, sculptures, painted scrolls, woodcuts and other drawings, and picture books did indeed contain one or more of the elements of cartooning, such as caricature, satire/parody, humor/playfulness, and narrative/sequence.

Caricature

Caricature (exaggeration of facial and other bodily characteristics) permeated the early art of Asia, and, as elsewhere, grotesqueness figured strongly in the tradition of caricature. In China, grotesque figures similar to some contemporary caricature adorned burial paraphernalia as early as the Yangshao Dynasty (5000–3000 BC). One burial jar found in Shaanxi Province dating to that period features a cartoonlike image of a human face (Li 1985, 20; quoted in Liu-Lengyel 1993), and many stone statues and reliefs from about 1100 BC represented humans in humorous or satirical ways (Lent 1999, 6, 8; see also Lent 1994).

A few writers, A. L. Bader chief among them, contested whether a tradition of caricature existed in China before the twentieth century. Bader (1941, 229) wrote: “The Chinese racial genius has always been for the indirect, for suggestion, for compromising rather than for outspoken from which caricature stems. Second, caricature demands freedom of expression. . . . Finally, caricature presupposes social and political consciousness in its audience.” Fang Cheng (quoted in Hua 1989, 9) said more generally that cartoonists were virtually nonexistent in traditional China because “if the emperor was not in the mood to laugh, the slaves were forbidden to laugh.” However, other evidence reveals that Bader was off the mark. Writing in 1877, James Parton told of a printer attached to an American mission in China who brought back a “caricature” dating to the 1840s that showed an English foraging party. Parton’s belief was that the Chinese had been caricaturing for decades. He said: “Caricature, as we might suppose, is a universal practice among them; but, owing to their crude and primitive taste in such things, their efforts are seldom interesting to any but themselves. In Chinese collections, we see numberless grotesque exaggerations of the human form and face, some of which are not devoid of humor and artistic merit” (Parton 1877, 196).

Caricature seemingly was present in Indian temple sculpture, some examples dating as early as AD 200. However, one must be careful not to follow the thinking of early Western travelers and missionaries that Indian art was full of monstrosities, mistaking sacred images for caricature (Mitter 1977). Indian sculptures of rakshasas (demons) with sketches of grimacing faces drawn on their stomachs as well as sketches of very explicit sexual activity are clear examples of caricature in Indian art of the medieval period; it was seldom vicious, instead aiming to be psychologically revealing and funny (Welch 1976). Akbar (1542–1605), the third Mughal emperor, thought painting to be important and retained a stable of one hundred court artists, who, until 1590, worked in assembly-line-production fashion, drawing much psychological portraiture. Akbar’s son, Emperor Jahangir, continued his father’s fondness for and patronage of portraiture, some of which was caricature. In fact, he used caricatures drawn by court painters to determine whether the courtiers portrayed could be trusted (Seghal 1990). Soon after Jahangir’s reign, caricature came to be identified with other parts of India. The Kotah School of Rajasthan, which followed on the heels of Mughal painting, turned out a number of caricatures, including of a dancing girl in a European hat; inebriated Rajput soldiers drinking, vomiting, and passing out; and a slightly drunk woman clasping a bottle of liquor.

FIG. 1.1. A Floozy. Kotah, Rajasthan, mid-nineteenth century. From Stuart Cary Welch, Indian Drawings and Painted Sketches (New York: Asia Society).

Part of the latter picture has been cut out, perhaps by the woman’s companion, whose hand can be seen on her shoulder but who otherwise may have wanted anonymity (Welch 1976). Many other examples abound, such as A Fat Begum (1625), depicting an obese noblewoman of the Deccan (Welch 1993, 296), and Drunken Musicians (Punjab Hills, Chamba, ca. 1730), an “outrageous” painting in which the artist “twisted and pulled the human body like taffy” (Welch 1976, 129) and identified the revelers by name.

Japan has a long history of caricature, especially prevalent in the ukiyo-e of the Edo period (1600–1867); these prints usually featured Kabuki characters and courtesans of what was called the Floating World. But caricature predated ukiyo-e, the earliest found on the backs of wooden planks at Horyuji Temple, built in Nara during the seventh century. About one hundred sketches, some erotic, had been drawn by anonymous carpenter-artists. Other early caricature has been found, among other places, along the edge of an eighth-century scroll, on netsuke and other everyday objects, and in the Chōjūgiga (animal) scroll (humorous pictures of animals and birds) credited to Late Heian era (894–1185) priest and painter Bishop Toba Sōjō (1053–1140).

The netsuke, a small toggle used to attach pouches and other personal articles to the sash of a kimono, incorporated lively caricature for the amusement of peasants. Carvers of netsuke, beginning in the seventeenth century, depicted lighthearted good humor, “no subject, except of course the Imperial Family, [being] immune from the good-natured irreverence with which netsuke carvers approached their craft” (Rogers 1984, 18). Nathan Rogers quoted one authority as describing the netsuke as “forerunners of contemporary cartoons or caricature.”

In the Chōjūgiga, Toba caricatured the folly and corruption of his era, satirizing the religious hierarchy of the time through the humorous actions of monkeys, rabbits, foxes, and frogs. Two other twelfth-century scrolls, declared national treasures along with the Chōjūgiga and all exhibiting caricature as well as satire, humor, and narrative, are the Shigisan engi emaki (Legend of Mount Shigi) and Ban Dainagon ekotoba (Scroll of the illustrated narrative of the Grand Counselor Ban Dainagon) (see descriptions of these and other emaki in Koyama-Richard 2007, 14–36; also, Takahata 1999). During the Kamakura era (1192–1333), the picture scroll in cartoon format gained more popularity, notable examples being Jigoku Zōshi (Hell scrolls), Gaki Zōshi (Hungry ghosts), Tengu Zōshi...