Eike Exner. Manga: A New History of Japanese Comics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2025. 256 pp. US $37.50. ISBN: 978-0-3002-8094-4. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300280944/manga/
In just his first two books so far [Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History and this one], the young--and independent--researcher, Eike Exner, has made monumental contributions to manga studies, revising historical points; taking exception to, and challenging, long-held “facts” and notions with newly-discovered evidence that he has uncovered; filling in gaps in manga’s timeline, and carefully and methodically analyzing nearly every aspect of manga.
A couple of his revisions pertained to the origin of the term “manga” and the connection between early audio-visual technology and comics. Exner reasoned, the claim that Hokusai Katsushika’s Hokusai Manga was connected to Japanese comics was unfounded; though some of the 19th-Century woodblock printer’s manga were meant to be funny, none was of a narrative stripe and many were simply images of buildings and plants. To make his point, Exner made the analogy that to connect the sketches to comics is,
akin to suggesting that the history of Super Mario Bros. should be traced back to shōgi (Japanese chess) because they are both games. Games did not change from one thing into another; people decided to apply the word game to a new category of objects. Likewise, manga did not change or evolve from Hokusai’s manga into comics; people began using the word for a new category of objects, based on an assumed shared characteristic rather than a direct connection between the two (11).
To Exner’s thinking, the connection between early audio-visual technology and comics is more than “sheer coincidence” as commonly assumed. Rather, it is because of a “casual connection” that comics creation followed the “spread of pantomime cartoons, motion lines, pain stars, and depictions of sound, and coincided with the spread of film and sound recording” (22).
Among many misconceptions that Exner rectifies are the almost-sacrosanct image of the so-called “god of comics,” Tezuka Osamu, pointing out his tendency to exaggerate and, occasionally, lift whole scenes from others’ works, and that akahon (cheap comics that plagiarize popular characters with new stories) were published solely by small, short-lived firms, when actually, a huge percentage of them were the product of a large enterprise into other forms of entertainment.
Exner makes a herculean attempt to fill out the entire timeline of manga history, providing a six-page chronology from 1890 to 2017 as an appendix, and supplementing periods shortchanged in previous research, such as the 1920s, which, he showed, yielded the establishment of today’s top three comics publishers and the first Japanese magazine that topped a million circulation, namely, King.
At times, Manga: A New History of Japanese Comics goes into diversion mode, dishing out what can be classified as mini-instructional “lectures,” for example, on how styles change; the technical use of color, hatching, and stripping; the importance of viewing topics in a contextual manner, etc. When doubt clouds conclusions, Exner utilizes common sense logic--e.g., the “simplest explanation is most likely the correct one” (22) or the most plausible reason among a batch of notions should be chosen.
As is his nature, Exner spent many hours in national and university libraries across the United States and in Tokyo, scouring the original newspapers and magazines and referring to any relevant correspondence available. He also gathered data from collectors of manga and other researchers’ interviews. The book is thoroughly documented, with notes that carefully explain, add to, take exception to, and even supplement, what Exner wrote in his first book. It appears that interviews were not conducted.
One of the few shortcomings of the book is the sparse treatment of manga during the war years, 1940-1945, although Exner devotes some space to the 1930s’ wartime comics. But, for those five years of the early 1940s, it would be useful to know how many manga were published, by government and private publishers, under what restrictions, by whom, with what type of content, and with what effect? What were the contents of any decrees issued referring to censorship generally, and how did they apply to manga? Where there any instances of publishers or artists who dared to ignore censorship rules; any examples of underground publishing or artistry activity?
The other criticism of Manga… is directed at the publisher, Yale University Press. It would seem that a press of Ivy League prestige and out of respect for the work of a dedicated scholar, would have treated the work more professionally A large section of the book is barely readable, using a smaller and faint typeface--pages 214-248, that include a chronology, notes, bibliography, and index. A number of the images stood to be upgraded by enlargement and better placement while being photographed.
Readers of Manga: A New History of Japanese Comics, or any work by Exner for that matter, can expect the excellence associated with his name--research that is very comprehensive and wide-ranging, an abundance of information that is rigorously scrutinized and carefully analyzed, and writing that is clear and concise--even casual and seemingly effortless at times--, meant to instruct, educate, and entertain. A full package, to my thinking.
[Full Disclosure: The reviewer was one of five individuals who wrote testimonials for this book.]
A version of this review will appear in IJOCA 27-1.
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