Hanga and Manga
The aesthetic revolution in the postwar Japanese popular culture
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Published online: 30 April 2023
https://doi.org/10.54754/incontext.v3i1.62
https://doi.org/10.54754/incontext.v3i1.62
Abstract
In this paper, I will discuss the Popular Woodcut Movement that emerged in Japan following its defeat in 1945 and continued during and after the Occupation period by General Headquarters. Popular woodblock printing was developed during the Chinese Revolution in 1949 and raised issues such as the relationship between the Enlightenment and socialists’ fine arts movement (puroretaria bijutsu undo, literally “proletarian fine arts movement”) or the Communist Party and popular club activities movements around then. The second part will turn to Nakazawa Keiji’s Hadashi no Gen, also known as Barefoot Gen: Life After a Bomb, A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima published in 1972. Nakawaza Keiji and Hadashi no Gen have some connections to the Popular Woodblock Printing Movement. He is a successor of the proletarian cultural/fine arts movement before and during wartime, accepting the legacy of the generation of his father, who also was a painter and artist. Barefoot Gen united the bodily practice of atomic bomb victims who suffered horrible disfigurations, with the personal/public struggles, and the idea of personal vengeance and socio-ethical justice. In addition, its visual-narrative structure subverts the Kant-Heideggerian epistemological hierarchy that presupposes a developmental progress from a lower to a higher level. This epistemological hierarchy is a power structure that has been problematized by feminist discourse because of re-producing an unequal distribution of knowledge. Thus, Barefoot Gen is an epistemological and aesthetic achievement essential for subaltern hegemony. The postwar popular woodcut movement had a common aim with Barefoot Gen to resolve the unequal distribution of knowledge, sharing a legacy of modern visual movements as an incomplete visual-aesthetic revolution. This paper claims that the postwar woodcut movement and Nakazawa Keiji’s manga were successors of the socialist/communist cultural movement during the prewar time and they wrestle with the debates within the fine arts circles of the times.
論文抄録
本稿は、1945年の日本敗戦後に形成された民衆版画運動と、1970年 代から80年代にかけて少年向け漫画として連載された中沢啓治の『はだしのゲ ン』の二つを対象に、そこで交わされた社会主義／共産主義の立場からの民衆 芸術をめぐる論争を扱う。1949年の中国革命の影響のもとで始まった戦後日 本の版画運動は、日本共産党の指導する文化運動にとどまらず、大衆的なサー クル運動や労働組合を巻き込んで日本全国で展開された。その版画作家たちは 1945年以前にプロレタリア文化運動や美術運動の経験を有していた。プロレタ リア美術運動の活動家であった父を持つ中沢啓治は、広島での原爆と被曝体験 を漫画作品にすることで、日本とアメリカの戦争責任を問いかけ、商業的な成 功を獲得した。版画と漫画というメディアの違いはあるが、無力なサバルタン である労働者、農民、そして被爆者の表現を追求した版画運動と、父の思想を 受け継いだ中沢の漫画は、両者ともに戦前のプロレタリア文化・美術運動の遺 産相続人であったといえよう。本稿は、それらの表現メディアが、文化的エリ ートの芸術論に対抗した「下からの」表現運動を担い、美学的革命への貢献を 果たしたことを示す。これによって、戦後日本の表現運動の一側面を明らかに するものである。
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