Today, over 200 years after the first volume of Hokusai Manga was published, the rich visual expressions created by Katsushika Hokusai and other artists of the era continue to captivate us. 

Fans worldwide tend to even regard this pictorial compendium by ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai as the origin of today’s manga. But the outward appearance of the two types of manga does not immediately suggest a continuous tradition. Do present-day graphic narratives and the master’s “diverse drawings” share anything other than a name?

The Japan Foundation Center for Cultural Exchange has produced two exhibitions – the pioneering “Manga: Short Comics from Modern Japan” (Europe, 1999-2003), and “Manga Realities: Exploring the Art of Japanese Comics Today” (Asia, 2010-11). Both were concerned with manga’s narrative nature and how to meet it in the gallery space, which necessarily privileges watching over reading. In both cases, individual manga works took center stage, representing their artists’ storytelling in the first exhibition and world-making in the second. 

With regard to Hokusai and his Manga, on the other hand, the exhibition does not take an art-historical perspective; that is to say, it does not highlight the master himself, the actual production of his Manga, and the cultural meaning that the motifs in the works represent. 

And also unlike past exhibitions of Hokusai’s work, “Manga Hokusai Manga” approaches the Hokusai Manga from the perspective of contemporary Japanese comics, focusing on genre, pictorial storytelling and participatory culture rather than the integration of word and image or the role of popular characters. 

And instead of aiming at a historiographic verification of influences, the upcoming exhibition invites viewers to ponder their own notions about manga by comparing works from different periods while exploring the diversity therein.

Though manga have often been seen as mere entertainment in recent years, as with literature and art, the medium has attracted interest as a subject of research and criticism. It is our hope that through this exhibition viewers will be able to experience the special pleasures of manga in different way.

The exhibition is free.

PV