TRANSLATING JAPANESE-STYLE REPRESENTATIONS IN MANGA AND ANIME TO THE LANGUAGE OF THE WESTERN CULTURE
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Abstract
The text presents several examples of the influence of the Japanese animation on Western movies. It will discuss the differences between the Japanese and Western style representation. The analyses of the concept of “kawaii” and bishounen/moe style images will point to the semantic difficulties in their cultural translation.
The analysis in this paper started from the question why in the so called “western cultures” (European countries and the USA) there seems to be a marked preference to live-actor movies over animation. On the Internet one can find anime fans, saying: “I wanted to get my girlfriend to watch a great anime drama and she just said: “Oh, I only watch shows with real people, not cartoon.” (Real Otaku Gamer: 2011 n.p.). This is a rather common response to the medium of animation. Animated stories in Europe and USA are often referred to as a medium for children and/or its target audience is predominantly male. On the contrary, in Japan, the anime is very popular among all age groups, it attracts the female audience as successfully as the male audience, and there are many genres and subgenres of animation and anime movies building on serious and even philosophical conversations.
Japanese cyberpunk animation presents a good example of how imaginative and vanguard stories can produce a remarkable effect after being transformed from animation into live-actor western-style movie. The Wachowskis, for example, have acknowledged Japanese animation influence to the ideas of their feature film “The Matrix” (1999) (The Guardian: 19 Oct. 2009, n. p.). Significant influence came from the anime “Ghost in the Shell” (1995). The story in the “Ghost in the Shell” is driven by the Cartesian question are mind and body separate entities and how memory and thoughts exist in relation to the body. The phrase “ghost hacking” is used there to describe the substitution of memory with a simulated experience, something we see in the concept of “The Matrix” later. In “The Matrix”, artificial intelligence is presented to evolve and become independent of humans, and able to develop its own identity. This led to the creation of a fantasy-world, inhabited by people’s minds. The discovery what is real and what is a simulated experience suddenly changes the view point of the audience and raises the question how we can ever be sure about what is real and what is a fantasy.
The major concept in the above mentioned movies is that the world exists as neuro-interactive simulation where our brains are unable to distinguish between reality and illusion. Another common concept is that AI could become a sentient being with its own identity. The visual similarities between “The Matrix” and the “Ghost in the Shell” are well-known to the fans and broadly discussed on the Internet (A Matrix and Ghost in the Shell…: 2006 n. p.).
These great science fiction stories testify for the interaction between “western” and “eastern” ideas. The Japanese manga writer Masamune Shirow has said that he read a lot of European literature and the very name of his manga “Ghost in the Shell” (1989) is a replica of the “Ghost in the Machine” book (1967) of Arthur Koetler, discussing the Cartesian mind-body dualism. In such a way, European philosophy, the dualism body-soul theme, have given important contribution to the creation of the Japanese manga series, and the “Ghost in the Shell” manga-based Japanese animation has in turn given the inspiration and ideas for the creation of one of the most popular western movies around the turn of the century.
Nevertheless both the “Ghost in the Shell” and “The Matrix” present excellent stories, only the latter is well recognized as a groundbreaking movie; it became a blockbuster, and is among the most admired western movies in the world. The Japanese masterpiece anime remains popular mainly within the borders of the anime subculture. Two questions arise from here:
1. Why manga and anime proliferated so successfully in Japan? They were used to present adult-oriented and serious content, even philosophical and scientific ideas, in time when the western animation was mainly telling fairytales and all great science fiction ideas were represented by live-actor movies?
2. Why animated movies can’t reach the same status, variety and recognition among western audience? The mainstream movies watched and produced in Europe and USA are live-actor movies.
The hypothesis I want to suggest here is that the audience preferences in Europe and the USA to the live-actor movie form and the audience preferences to the animated stories in Japan reflect differences in the visual culture that may be traced back to the traditions of visual arts, respectively in Europe and in Japan. The existence of two different paradigms of visual art, historically influential there, could be followed far back in history. The first paradigm is “the paradigm of art as resemblance”. It describes the development of the visual art of the tri-dimensional illusion that prevails in Europe and the USA. The second paradigm, “the paradigm of art as expression”, describes the creation of the expressive art of the flat picture and is characteristic of the visual art tradition of Japan. In the course of presenting these two paradigms, arguments are suggested that the Japanese content industries (anime, manga) are predominantly carriers of the expressive paradigm of visual art, which for centuries and increasingly now in Europe and around the world seems to be dominated by the resemblance paradigm.
The paradigm of art as resemblance: art is mimesis
The paradigm of art as resemblance became popular after the 4th century BC through the philosophy of Plato (Rep., Book X), who taught that art is an imitation of life. The very representations of Plato by Silanion (370 BC) or Raphael (“The School of Athens”, 1509–1510) are done according to this paradigm which gives priority to the principle of realistic representation of the human body. One of the most influential and admired authorities of this tradition was Leonardo da Vinci. He was famous for his perfectionism and the profound ambition of this perfectionism was the achievement of the illusion of life in his paintings. Leonardo believed that the artist is a scientist who has to learn various sciences in order to draw the objects as if alive (Leonardo: 1914). That’s why he described the art of painting as a science and the painter as a scientist, who should also be fluent in geometry, mathematics, anatomy, chemistry. In details Leonardo (Leonardo: 1914) described the rules of applying the aerial perspective, the influence of the source of light on the representation of objects, the rules for the proper representation of trees, clouds, distance, reflected light and etc. Knowledge of geometry was necessary for the artist to apply well geometrical perspective. Mathematics was necessary for the correct calculation of proportions; anatomy – for the truthful representation of the human body; and the importance of chemistry was for the proper usage of the chemical qualities of the ingredients and materials. Sfumato was the famous technique used by Leonardo to draw the face of Mona Lisa, where no lines are used – alike the real human face. It seems that Leonardo believed that the work of the artist, who recreates the world on a canvas, is similar to the work of God. He wrote: “The works of God are appreciated best by other creators.” (Richter, 387). The art of God only stays higher, because his creation not only looks like, but is actually alive. All the rules of Leonardo about art and science of painting in his “Trattato de la Pittura” are devoted to the art of creation of the best illusion of life on the canvas.
The mimetic theory of art was the main and the most influential theory of art in Europe until the end of 18th century. Thus, after Plato and during the Renaissance resemblance was considered the main quality by which to judge a picture.
In the middle of the 19th century a kind of revolution happened in French art. This revolution came as a result of a wide range of factors – from French revolution to the invention of photography. Among the most important factors, influencing art history was the import of Japanese artifacts in Europe starting from 17th century. In the middle of 19th century was the apogee of the ukiyo-e fashion in Paris. A single Japanese art-dealer there, Hayashi Tadamasa, had imported in France more then 156 000 ukyo-e prints (Krahn 1991) and among his main clients were artists like Degas and Monet. At that time (1886-1888) Van Gogh also lived in Paris. This period marked the active adoption of Japanese style painting in Europe. The artists and the public had the opportunity to enjoy visual art, which demonstrated a different approach towards the purpose of art and followed different conventions of representation. The invigorating influence of Japanese art on the European visual arts changed the very way artists thought about the possibilities of art. As photography was gaining popularity, European artists had to re-think and re-justify the purpose of their portrait works, landscape drawings and etc., not in terms of mimesis, but in terms of “expression”, “impression”, and eventually into the modern concepts of art as an “abstract form”, “convention” or “symbolic language”.
The first wave of what became to be known as Japonisme was very liberating for the arts while the technological inventions and art experiments suppressed the leading role of the mimetic theory. One can imagine the tradition and authorities the impressionists were ignoring: as a result, they were mocked, they did not have access to galleries to present their pictures and the art-critics were relentless.
Meanwhile, the ambition of the real-life illusion started a new life through the medium of cinema.
The paradigm of art as expression
In order to understand the second paradigm of art, the one which it is assumed here to prevail in the visual arts in Japan, Japanese sumi-e and ukyo-e painting styles can be taken as an example.
Japanese ink-wash painting, sumi-e, was a style of painting popular in Japan around 14th and 15th century. It developed under the influence of Chinese paintings and the philosophy of Zen Buddhism which are believed to have profoundly influenced Japanese aesthetics since then. In contrast to European artists, who were considered craftsmen or scientists, initially the artists of sumi-e were monks. Within the Zen-tradition this visual art fulfilled meditative and mental purposes. The final goal of the artistic practices was the spiritual self-improvement of the artist himself. The artist was taught to consider his task as a way, and the work of art – as a spiritual goal. The way was the process of self-perfection, guided to insight, and its ultimate target was the artist himself. Ideally, the Ink-wash painting was performed in the state of “no-mind” (reaching an understanding of the “emptiness”) and the teaching of Zen harmonized with the belief that when you pull the string, the target of the arrow lies not in front of you, but it is actually you (Herrigel 1953).
Within this paradigm of the Japanese visual art, defined here as “expression”, the artist’s aim is not to imitate or reproduce the real object as it is, but to catch its essence or spirit. The main quality to judge a picture by, therefore, was not resemblance, but to catch the essence of the object with as little strokes as possible. The most important lines were accentuated and the unnecessary details were abandoned. As a result, the art of the sumi-e paintings looks simplistic, with a lot of negative space and it is in sharp contrast to the prevalence of positive space in European painting art created in accordance to the principle of resemblance to life.
The philosophy behind sumi-e ink-wash paintings is very different from the craftsmanship behind the European mimetic tradition of art. The status of the artist (monk vs. craftsman/scientist) and the purposes of the art-works to catch the invisible (mood and feeling) vs. the visible world (illusion) on the canvas are different. The materials are also contrasting: delicate, almost intangible silk and ink vs. heavy, tangible materials – wood, canvas and oil-based paints. Sumi-e combines the spiritual aim (self-improvement, insight) with an emphasis on search for mood and feeling. The contribution of Zen-Buddhist philosophy to the education of taste in this sensitivity to the expressive lines and mood is substantial. And the influence of Zen went far beyond the drawing art of sumi-e paintings towards many other traditional Japanese arts, Japanese culture and society as a whole (Suzuki 1988).
The painting style of ukyu-e woodblock prints gives another point of view to the relation between tradition and the popular art in Japan today. Ukyu-e represents scenes of the everyday life, quite similar to the manga stories today. The objects are usually caught in movement and a certain level of resemblance to real, existing objects should also be admitted as, for example, in the series “The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido” (1833–1834 , Utagawa Hiroshige), representing the fifty-three post-stations along the East Sea Road connecting Edo (Tokyo) and Kyoto in the Edo period; or in the ukyo-e which presents a portrait of the actor Otani Oniji II and is named after it “Otani Oniji II” (around 1794, Toshusai Sharaku). In the ukyu-e the specific convention of art results in a very decorative style of painting (see for ex. “Beauty looking back”, by Hishikawa Moronobu, 17th century, or “Poppies”, by Katsushika Hokusai, c. 1833–34). The images in the ukyo-e are stylized, the accent is on the most important features and many details are omitted; there is a lot of negative space. What brings closer contemporary manga and traditional ukyo-e prints are several features, all of them present in the both types of art: the usage of clear lines, the application of areas of clean and strong colors, accent on face expression and focus on the depiction of movement and emotion. The visual style of ukyu-e woodblock prints favors expression and feeling much more than the illusion of the real form. Although the famous sketches of Hokusai (see for ex.: Takaoka 2011) don’t have text and story-line, the path from ukyo-e painting style to manga is palpable there.
Manga and anime as successors of the tradition of the flat-picture expressive style drawing
Why manga and anime proliferated so successfully in Japan?
Sumi-e and ukyo-e paintings tell about a non-illusionary tradition in the Japanese visual arts. Manga drawings develop the graphic language of this rich, flat-picture convention and build up the code of the motion, emotion and speed lines. In view of the Japanese visual arts tradition, it is evident that manga and consequently manga-style animated images do not appear after the Second World War only from the scratch of demolition, the post-war pain, or American comic books and Disney animation, as sometimes it is accentuated. Long before Osamu Tezuka, the famous “father of manga”, to start writing manga, the Japanese culture have had the flat-picture tradition in visual arts cultivated, including the sophisticated aesthetic taste of the audience to the few, but telling details, and the trained artists who were able to produce them. All the necessary conditions were present anime and manga to proliferate successfully after the war: the audience, the tradition, and the creators. It can’t be denied that the active contacts with the American pop-culture after the end of the Second World War significantly contributed to the development of manga and animation, but the reason they to become a hallmark of the Japanese popular culture could be that these arts inherited and grew out of the own, Japanese cultural tradition, which was well-known to the audience and the supply of well trained and familiar with the medium artists was easy. It just needed time and creativity this popular art to mature, and the art of the popular Japanese culture to gain recognition around the world. The uniqueness of the Japanese manga and anime as a medium came from their connection with the history of the visual arts in Japan, which favored the expressive features over the purposes of resemblance. Furthermore, as a form of painting art, it was based on philosophy and culture very different from the western world.
The differences between the purposes of illusion and expression could explain why images in manga/anime are not relevant to what they represent and the western viewer is often being upset by the images of twelve-year old girls (moe), who should be “actually” represented by the image of a young women. A possible key to the understanding of this representation is the fact that the art of “moe”-style images of girls does not aim to produce a visual illusion of woman. Although the word “moe” is often associated with a girl, it describes a feeling or mood of youth and cuteness and visually “moe” could be a cat or a robot as well. Moe images in the west however are often perceived in their surface value. The leading of perception by the paradigm of resemblance tends to change the (may be) non-illusionary expression of mood and feeling into underage sex representation. Nevertheless, the objection against “moe-Lolita” images now seems to be justified as far as on the market the resemblance paradigm is stronger and the audience ability of perception is mainly cultivated within it. The export of the Japanese pop-art content to other countries destroys the Japanese usually vague context of perception and allows interpretations, which are direct and literary.
Therefore, the right translation of the Japanese animation to the western audience could be thought as a delicate process of reducing the importance of “visibility” and raising the importance of “feeling”. This “rule” applies to a wide range of Japanese cultural phenomena like moe, and includes the may be the most famous among them – the kawaii concept.
Similar to the concept of “moe”, kawaii has numerous visual appearances and cannot be considered an object. Cute and small things like Hello Kitty are defined as kawaii. “Kawai” could be also clothing, accessories, fantastic creatures like Doraemon, pink color, stupid smile, and unexpected combination between stupid and unserious. The power of kawaii is the power of expression. The essence of kawaii is the positive experience which makes one feel relaxed. The kawai images are very powerful in reducing anxiety. Children feel comfortable with them – many kawaii images look safe and make children feel cozy. Adults feel comfortable with kawaii too, because the kawaii childish and sometimes stupid appearance gives a feeling of temporary release from the social norms. The kawaii fashion is a good example of the favorable environment in Japan for the sophistication of the art of expression through images which bear no or only a vague resemblance of reality. The numerous cases when this fashion turns into kitsch could be explained with the failure to catch the feeling of kawaii and by the reliance on the visual idea of kawaii appearance.
Illusion vs. expression
Why animated movies can’t lead the mainstream culture of the motion pictures?
In terms of the two art paradigms, it seems that the illusion paradigm has much broader demographic base today. Since the 19th century, cinema took the lead in the illusionary functions of art and developed the preference to the perfect resemblance. The inner connection of the live-actor movie today with the illusion paradigm cultivates the taste to the perfect illusion. The passion for 3D and 4D experience is lead by the search for the illusion of the perfect resemblance and the super-realistic visual effects measure the mastership of the commercial movie creators. At present, animation in the west is also produced in 3D. In Japan a technology is developed for 2D anime to be presented in 3D (Gizmodo: 2012 n.p.). These technological innovations describe the process of how the visual illusion paradigm is getting prevalence over expression paradigm internationally. This international and technological shift to the visual paradigm seems to be crucial for the future of the flat-picture representation. Providing that the mainstream culture is defined by the illusion paradigm, everything that is different from the mainstream could be expected to survive as art - or may be a subculture.
Japanese animation is said to be Americanized in the last decades. It appropriates western elements from fashion and architecture; it complies with the western standards and sensitivity to themes of religion, violence, sex and identity. The observance of the western tastes and culture leads to really spectacular movies with elaborate animation like Hayao Miyazaki’s productions, which have greatly emphasized the visual qualities of the films.
The popularity of the illusion paradigm today could be explained by the higher complexity of expressive and illusionary qualities, but also by the lower level of conventionalism in it. Practically, everybody who can see can enter the visual illusion. The expression paradigm in the Japanese flat-picture expressive style drawing in manga and anime offers less of the illusion and more of the convention; like in the sumi-e, the successful perception requires the ability to “catch the spirit” and more emotional/spiritual engagement is needed to decode and enjoy the medium.
The translation
The transfer of cultural content from one culture to another is a difficult task. It means that the content will be interpreted not by the code of the visual language of the exporting culture, but by the code of the visual language of the importing culture. The cultural content will be actually taken from its original context and interpreted into the host-culture according to its values and principles. If we think about the two paradigms of art, the process of translation of the Japanese pop-culture to the language of the western audience should mean to understand that a medium, which is very expressive, is interpreted as a medium, which is mainly illusionary.
The specifics of the introduction of the Japanese popular culture – manga and anime - to the western audience, historically, were in the several steps “translation”.
1. The first step was the manipulation of the original content. It includes the routine editing of Japanese anime (or video games) in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Culturally sensitive or inappropriate messages had to be erased.
2. The second type of translation concerns the appropriation of ideas and creation of cultural hybrids: like the “Matrix”, or American movies representing Japan, or Americanized Japanese animation, all of which are accepted with varying levels of approvement by the international and Japanese audience.
3. The third type of translation describes the movement and change between the paradigms, and interpretation is a question of choice of a semiotic system. It reflects the flexibility and adjustment of perception to the conventions of art and the creation of the international subculture of anime and manga fans. Here Japanese pop-culture content reveals authentic and meaningful universe behind the non-resemblance art and opens valuable space for communication of ideas, for enjoyment and semiotic studies.
The existence of the anime subculture in the west today is a sign for a search of experience outside the mainstream culture. The very success of the Japanese kawaii fashion in the west testifies for the search of emotional expression, beyond the visual. Anime makes a difference in the western culture, which is seen in the fact that it is clearly distinguished from animation. It is a remarkable fact also, that the international subculture of anime creates a distinctive demand for Japanese speaking anime with English subtitles, which acknowledge the inimitable expressive qualities of the original video. This suggests that “Americanization” or “westernization” of anime is a process which should not pass certain limit, because somewhere beyond this limit Japanese anime could face the loss of its distinctive and valuable specifics – the expressive spirit and the unique artistic form of the Japanese flat picture drawing.
References
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