HOKUSAIMANGA

Japanese Pop Culture since 1680

Edited bySabine Schulze

Nora von AchenbachSimon Klingler

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Preface Sabine Schulze

Fiction and Reality Nora von Achenbach

Looking for Thrill – y!kai

Star Cult and Spectacle

Portraits

iki – Fashion Models

Emotions: Longing and Melancholy

Lifestyle

Love and Lust – shunga

Old Heroes for New Times

The Fuji Cult

Edo – Pictures of the Capital

Travel Routes

The Birth of the Comic Book

The Boom in Painting Manuals and the Wish to Participate

From Draft to Print

Manga-Modernism – A Foray trough Japan's Contemporary Visual Worlds Simon Klingler

Drawn History – Japan's Zero Hour

Jir! Taniguchi – Urban Contemplation

The Avant-Garde of the Girl's Manga

A Bird's-Eye View

Anime – Animated Film Made in Japan

Ukiyo-e Heroes

Manga in Transition: Subtly Receding from ‘Popular Culture’ Jaqueline Berndt

Bibliography

Photo Credits, Lenders

Imprint

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CONTENTS

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PREFACE!

SABINE SCHULZE

With the exhibition Hokusai " Manga – Japanese Pop Culture since 1680, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg traces the multifarious connections between historical and contemporary popular culture in Japan. The MKG boasts an internationally unique collection of coloured woodcuts and woodblock printed books by the most significant ukiyo-e artists, including Utagawa Kuniyoshi and Katsushika Hokusai, the works of whom are now being presented for the first time in a compre-hensive special exhibition in the museum’s own space. Although the collection contains some of the most important and informative incu-nabula of Japanese printmaking, an exhibition in the year 2016 cannot limit itself to merely uncovering these treasures and celebrating them together with the public. The decisive aspect of the exhibition concept is thus the contextualization of the Japanese woodcut as a commer-cially oriented mass media and serial consumer product of the pre-modern age and its corresponding history as the point of depar-ture for the pop-cultural distribution and reception of traditional genres and subject matter, which continues into the present day. The exhibi-tion thus draws a connection between historical objects from the sev-enteenth through the nineteenth centuries and the visual mass media of modern Japan: manga comics and preliminary drawings, anime films and cosplay costumes, computer games, fan articles, and contempo-rary woodcuts.

The starting point is an analysis of the visual strategies and techniques, which were developed in the pre-modern period as a re-sponse to the people’s increasing desire for consumption and enter-tainment in cities throughout Japan. Catchphrases such as actuality, easy readability, typification, star cult and eroticism become bridges leading into contemporary popular culture. Hokusai " Manga investi-gates these connecting points and lines of development that transcend time, while simultaneously elaborating the autonomous elements of the respective styles. Contemporary pop culture is thus characterized by a marked pluralization of themes, motifs, and genres, whereby it also continues to follow traditional Japanese narrative strands, such as that of the samurai or the supernatural world of ghosts and monsters (y!kai ), which are consistently revived and reinterpreted. A prime ex-ample of the tradition-conscious updating of established motifs using, on the one hand, time-honoured craft techniques and, on the other

hand, the cross-cultural adaptation of contemporary contexts is the woodcut series Ukiyo-e Heroes by Jed Henry and David Bull. The work The Hero Rests (2012), which was acquired by the MKG in 2015, appears at first glance to be a classical depiction of a Japanese warrior; on sec-ond glance, however, a multilayered cross-media and cross-cultural punchline becomes obvious. Through attributes such as the coat of arms, the figure is clearly recognizable to insiders as an adaptation of the hero Link from the blockbuster video game The Legend of Zelda. The game, which was developed in Japan in 1986, has embarked on a global triumphal march; among certain generations, Link enjoys a popularity and recognition factor similar to that of Hokusai’s famous coloured woodcut High Sea at Kanagawa, Wave Trough. The exhibition investi-gates how and why these two highly popular phenomena have such an enormous effect on mass culture. In addition to such common content- and motif-related features, there are also further parallels, for example in terms of their visual repertoires, their stylistic appearances, the in-terlinking of text and image and the forms of serialization. The meth-ods of production, with their workflow processes and distribution structures, are also comparable and reflected in various technical inno-vations. This deliberate confrontation of historical and contemporary objects in front of the backdrop of an epoch-spanning sociocultural theme – namely popular culture – leads to a future-oriented question for the MKG: How can we expand our historical collection in the years to come?

The comprehensive collection goes back to the founding years of the museum around 1880, which were marked by a strong enthusi-asm for Japan. It was compiled by Justus Brinckmann, who purchased works in Paris from Hayashi Tadamasa and Siegfried Bing, who was originally from Hamburg. Over the next 100 years, these opulent hold-ings with excellent provenances, as well as numerous works on paper from the collection of Edmond de Goncourt, were sporadically comple-mented and, in 2007, substantially expanded by a comprehensive do-nation by Gerhard Schack, who was especially interested in surimono, as well as in sketches and preliminary drawings. In 2016 a delegation from the MKG met with artists and publishers in Japan and established new contacts with the goal of acquiring special works for display. Among these are not only rare manga comics and exquisite preliminary drawings, but also a broad range of pop-culturally themed utilitarian objects – from a Doraemon cup to a Hello Kitty toaster. With the exhibi-tion Hokusai " Manga – Japanese Pop Culture since 1680, we are thus actively and daringly expanding upon the history of the collection!

<The Hero RestsJed Henry (b. 1983; design) / David Bull (b. 1951; woodcut)USA/Japan, 2012 Colour woodcut, 23 x 17.5 cm

page 4blueBur"Kiriko Nananan (b. 1972)p. 226, Verlag Schreiber & Leser 2006, first published in 1996

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An indispensible basis for our creative work is the exhibition fund of the Department of Culture of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. Without the financial support of this fund, this exhibition would not have been possible. My special thanks thus go the jury under the chairman-ship of Volker Rodekamp, who has accompanied our project with great interest and trust. Martin Hoernes and the Ernst von Siemens Art Foun-dation deserve our gratitude for the financing of the bilingual exhibition catalogue. In addition to the catalogue, we are also presenting the proj-ect on the Internet. More than 1,000 objects from the collection will be presented online, thus making the remarkable actuality of the historic images available to a broad international public. The Justus Brinckmann Society is a reliable partner for our collection-related education activities and work with the new media. The patrons of the museum cannot be thanked enough for their extraordinary commitment!

Although the thematic and cultural interconnections between contemporary and historical objects literally call for a direct juxtaposi-tion, the different tonalities of the works on view, which are at times greatly pronounced, as well as their various media – from woodcuts to video game consoles that can be used by visitors – present a special challenge for the exhibition architecture. I am thus very happy to have found dialogue partners in Michiko Bach and Daniel Dolder from Bach Dolder Architekten in Darmstadt, who, in close cooperation with our curatorial team, have succeeded in developing an intelligent, sensitive, and absolutely convincing exhibition design. I am also grateful to them for their prudent moderation within a complex framework of require-ments. No less challenging was the design of the exhibition catalogue and advertising campaign. Bringing the old and new worlds of images together to create one coherent overall impression was accomplished in an outstanding way by the agency Heine/Lenz/Zizka from Frankfurt am Main under the aegis of Michael Lenz.

Our cooperation partners made important contributions to the content of the exhibition: These include, above all, Carlsen Verlag with its competent manga editorial team; and Hamburg MaGnology, the trade fair for games, comics, and manga, will present the most recent developments within the scene in the MKG from 1 to 3 July. The Me-tropolis cinema is accompanying the exhibition with an attractive se-ries of films; Ralf Hebecker and his students in the field of Games De-sign at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences have developed a digital exhibit for the show.

A decisive prerequisite for the success of a differentiated, inter-disciplinary and epoch-spanning analysis of popular culture in Japan

was the bringing together of an efficient research team within the MKG. As Head of the East Asian Collection and initiator of the exhibi-tion, Nora von Achenbach curated the historical section of the show, recontextualizing various masterpieces from the MKG. Thanks to her great passion for the collection and her proven expertise, unforeseen treasures could be brought to light and made available to the public for the first time. Lena Bultmann and Ma#gorzata My$ supported the in-depth work with the museum’s own holdings. My special thanks go to Simon Klingler, who curated the modern section, always keeping the decisive interconnections and interdependencies between history and the present day in mind. Thanks to his know-how and unwavering en-thusiasm, the exhibition offers visitors an especially broad range of modern themes and objects. Expert support in the preparation of the contemporary chapter was provided by the Japanologist Julika Singer, who made significant contributions with her broad knowledge of the cultural history of Japan. With great personal commitment, Meike Loh-kamp saw to the aspect of cosplay. Jaqueline Berndt, Professor for Comic Theory of the Graduate School of Manga Studies of the Ky!to Seika University, took a look at the phenomenon of manga in the twen-ty-first century from a Japanese perspective, thus greatly enriching the exhibition catalogue.

I hope for us, as well as for the exhibition, that the revelation of lines of tradition and the building of bridges to contemporary popular mass media will not only enthuse lovers of Japanese woodblock print-ing, but also the younger and youngest visitor groups, whose cultural understanding has been influenced by manga comics, anime series, and other forms of popular Japanese entertainment culture. With this exhibition, contemporary Japanese popular culture has now unequivo-cally found its place in the museum; an increase can be registered not only in the collection depots, but the number of manga comics on staff desks – for research purposes, of course – has also increased signifi-cantly. Let yourself be inspired!

The Walking ManAruku hitoJir! Taniguchi (b. 1947)p. 29, Carlsen Verlag 2012first published in 1992

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