英語版「マンガゾンビ」梶原一騎編パート２

英語版「マンガゾンビ」梶原一騎編パート２です。
今回でひとまず小休止。英米での出版にむけて交渉中。イギリスになるか、アメリカになるか。

以下がサイトです。

http://comipress.com/special/manga-zombie/incredibly-strange-manga-part-4/kajiwara-ikki-2

英語版マンガゾンビ更新 石原豪人

今回の英語版「マンガゾンビ」は石原豪人編です。
コメント募集中。
http://comipress.com/special/manga-zombie/incredibly-strange-manga-part-3/ishihara-gojin

英語版「マンガゾンビ」更新 徳南誠一郎編

英語版「マンガゾンビ」年末に更新が間に合いました。徳南誠一郎編です。
以下ＵＲＬ

http://comipress.com/special/manga-zombie/incredibly-strange-manga-part-3/tokunan-seiichiro

続きを読む "英語版「マンガゾンビ」更新　徳南誠一郎編"

そうだ、「とり小僧」を買ったのだ。

ドイツからの荷物、つまり先ほど紹介したSamsas Traum関係を受け取ってから、中野に向かう。まんだらけで陽気幽平「とり小僧」を買うためです。限定300部、貸本Ｂ面作家の秘宝を買わない手はない。しかも1050円（税込み）は安い。表紙をデザインした山口明氏は、拙著の表紙もデザインしたグレートなデザイナーです。うーん、内容は全く申し分ない。素晴らしい仕事をしてくれました。

英語版「マンガゾンビ」更新 竹内寛行編

ついに英語版「マンガゾンビ」もパート3、アウトサイダー・スタイル編に突入です。竹内寛行です。ご覧下さい。

http://comipress.com/special/manga-zombie/incredibly-strange-manga-part-3/takeuchi-kanko

英語版マンガゾンビ更新

英語版マンガゾンビを更新しました。
以下がURLです。
まず、ふくしま政美
http://comipress.com/special/manga-zombie/incredibly-strange-manga-part-1/fukushima-masami
次に、榊まさる
http://comipress.com/special/manga-zombie/incredibly-strange-manga-part-1/sakaki-masaru

英語版マンガゾンビ

英語版マンガゾンビ、アメリカのサイトで公開

以下がサイトです。
まずは序文と英語版序文、イントロダクションから掲載。
これからが本番。がんばります。
http://comipress.com/article/2007/10/15/2796

マンガゾンビ英語版前書き改訂版

MANGA ZOMBIE
PREFACE

By Udagawa Takeo

The artists I’ve covered in my book Manga Zombie all went against the grain of manga as just a commercial product – whether they realized it or not. They’re something different. They shine. Especially set against manga made for sales purposes only. These are forgotten artists who worked in pulp genres and got pushed out of the scene when the massive-sales weekly magazines took over. They were monomaniacs, possessed muscleheads, spinning worlds of ultraviolence and eroticism…all of them now forgotten in the brave new shiny world of commercialized manga. A lot of readers will not like what they see here. Some will be truly outraged. But these works are the real thing – scabrous, scandalous, a danger to all comers. They’re what manga is all about.

These artists may even have the power to help the manga genre to smash out of the commercial cellblock it’s been locked into. That’s what I hope. That’s why I wrote Manga Zombie.

Beginnings
There are lots of different theories about when manga started – at least as a commercial art form – and we won’t go into them here in any great detail. Some have put manga Year Zero right back in the middle ages. Other people trace the art form to the woodblock artist Hokusai in the mid 1800s. Still, it’s going a bit far to say that the manga form is really so old. For a true manga scene, you need two things – printing technology good enough to accurately reproduce manga artists’ drawings, and a large-scale white-collar readership to buy the stuff.

It goes without saying that you can’t have ‘manga as an art form’ without top-rate, creative manga artists. But at the same time, you can’t have ‘manga as a product’ without a developed middle-class readership and modern printing technology. That’s the point – manga are works of art and commercial products at one and the same time. Manga’s been a schizophrenic, conflicted business from the word go.

Anyway, a quick tour of modern manga history will look something like this: first, Japan opened up to western influences in the late 1800s. Western-style newspapers and magazines started up, and they ran single-frame political cartoons, just like you can see in western papers today. A big middle-class readership developed after World War I, and the magazine market diversified to cater to these new readers. Then their kids started buying magazines of their own. Along with serialized novels and illustrated stories, these early kids’ mags carried manga. Single-volume manga books arrived on the scene in the twenties. Famous early titles included Norakuro, Bōken Dankichi and Tanku-tankurō. Basically, Japanese manga followed the same development path as western comics up to this point. The big break came with World War II.

To the sixties
The war effectively wiped out the existing manga community completely. A lot of artists were forced into open support for the war effort, along the same lines as Hergé, the creator of Tintin. But unlike Hergé, they didn’t bounce back to popularity after hostilities ceased. The post-war scene was fundamentally different in every way – the artists, the graphic styles, the size of the market and the way it was structured. (One minor note, though – it’s now becoming clear that at least some of the pre-war artists were already using the cinematographic style made famous after the war by Tezuka Osamu.)

As soon as the war ended in 1945, two types of manga boomed – akahon and kashibon. There was also the closely related theatrical style of kami shibai. Let’s take them one by one.

Akahon means ‘red books’. These were cheap manga churned out by small, fly-by-night publishers. They weren’t sold in regular bookstores, but on racks at the magazine stalls. Kashihon means ‘rental books’. As the name implies, they were displayed for rent at commercial lending libraries. The format was a bit larger than akahon. Kami shibai (‘paper drama’) was a cross between manga, theater and peddling. Wandering artists would push carts around the country, with manga-style pictures mounted on the back. When they stopped on the street and gathered a crowd of kids, they’d read out the manga story off the back of the pictures, displaying them one by one. Then they’d try to offload candy and trinkets.

The various scenes often overlapped. Many artists were involved in two of them (or all three) at some stages of their careers. Some of them went on to become superstar manga artists, but most of them were nameless nobodies and stayed that way. TV killed off kami shibai completely by the mid 1960s, but this semi-theatrical art-form had a big influence on manga. A lot of the traveling artists found work in the kashihon rental genre, which somehow survived to the late 60s (outliving the pulp ‘red book’ trade by a few years).

As the economy began to take off in earnest, during the 60s, the scene shifted to monthly manga magazines published for kids by major firms. Tezuka Osamu shot to fame in this kind of environment. But this youth-oriented mass market wasn’t the only scene developing at that time. Another genre – known as gekiga (literally ‘drama comics’) – sprang up, with Osaka rental-manga artists forming the core group. Gekiga took a much more hardboiled approach. The graphic style was heavily influenced by the realism of American comics, and the good guys didn’t always come out on top at the end of the story. The main players like Saitō Takao and Satō Masaaki developed gekiga as a Japanese version of the crime-thriller comic. Other artists like Mizuki Shigeru and Shirato Sanpei were also loosely associated with the scene.

So, the manga scene as a whole split into two camps in the sixties. There was the mainstream, headed by Tezuka Osamu and other artists influenced by him – Ishinomori Shōtarō, Fujiko Fujio (of Doraemon fame) and Akatsuka Fujio. And then there was gekiga.

The manga system
The late sixties were a period of explosive growth in manga sales. Growing baby boomers and economic growth pushed up the numbers of readers and the amounts they could afford to spend. In late 1968, sales of the manga weekly Shonen Magazine topped the million mark.

A lot of factors went into Shonen Magazine’s success. The main one was the huge popularity of the baseball epic ‘Star of the Giants’ (Kyojin no Hoshi). Even more to the point was the expert marketing of the anime version, made all the more potent by the commercial tie-in with the massively popular Tokyo Giants baseball team. But any account of Shonen Magazine’s breakthrough has to include Kajiwara Ikki, the original scriptwriter of ‘Star of the Giants’. His story perfectly tapped into the conflicted mentality of sixties Japan. This was a country launching itself headlong into the economic big time, but unnerved by the sheer pace of change, and haunted by the past. The hero of ‘Star of the Giants’ personifies the issues. He breaks through near-impossible odds to realize his dream of baseball stardom. When he gets there, he crushes his rivals with displays of incredible guts and willpower. And yet he finally ends up alone, unloved, and beaten.*

By the sixties, manga were being churned out in industrial quantities for weekly publications. So, the artists’ work practices had to evolve to keep pace. There was no way a one-person operation could cope anymore. Instead, teams of artists came together, splitting the workload between the main artist, junior graphic artists, colorists and scenario writers. Or – to put it more accurately – the sheer volume of output demanded by the weeklies drove artists who wanted to work alone to extinction, no matter how talented or popular they were.

The sad fact is that underlings like junior artists and colorists got no kudos at all in the Japanese manga system. They slaved away like serfs in some Renaissance print shop, while their Maestros got the fame and the glory. Time and time again, the more talented of these ‘assistants’ (as they’re known) have tried to go independent and set up studios as in their own right. They often find that it’s an uphill struggle, thanks to the years they spent forced to produce work that mimicked their employer’s style.

But things were different for the scenario writers. Writers like Kajiwara Ikki, Koike Kazuo and Takizawa Kai all emerged as independent artists during this period. They created far more complex plots than ever seen before in Japanese manga, stories that could appeal to an older readership. In this sense, there was a change in quality as well as quantity in the growth of the manga market to mass-production scale. A lot of these writers had backgrounds as novelists, playwrights and editors. Their effect on Japanese manga history was something along the same lines as Alexandro Jodorowsky’s on French bandes dessinées.

Alexandro Jodorowsky, of course, was the writer who teamed up with Jean Giraud to create Arzach under the name Moebius. Until then,Giraud’s output had just consisted of riproarin’ Westerns. But together, they made a lasting impact on French graphic art. In much the same way, writers like Kajiwara Ikki got together with artists from pulp rental manga and illustrator backgrounds – Kamimura Kazuo is maybe the best example – and achieved extraordinary things. Together, they helped create a much bigger readership、and not just for kids’ comics. There was also a whole range of gekiga mags for teenagers and young adults during these years.

The roots and rise of gekiga
Where did the hardboiled gekiga style originate? Printing presses were up and running again very quickly in the bombed-out cities of post-1945 Japan. A lot of them published cheap scandal sheets known as kasutori magazines. Kasutori is a kind of swill left over from sake brewing. It was nobody’s drink of choice, but in the mafia-run marketplaces nestled among the ruins, it was certainly a necessity for many. In a similar vein, kasutori mags offered a reliable mix of tits, ass and scandal. They were known as ‘manga for adults’, but in fact the main content was the articles. The late-sixties teenage gekiga scene sank its roots into this rich compost. (Caricature manga from the late 1800s formed another, deeper layer of mulch.)

The gekiga scene teamed pulp artists and up-and-coming writers as the central force driving publications like Manga Action, Manga Goraku, Manga Sunday, Young Comic and Play Comic. These mags were equivalent to the French Barbarella and L’Écho des Savanes, and to the Italian porn genre generally known as　‘fumette neri’. The graphic style was gritty and realistic, and the storylines – produced by dedicated scenario writers – meshed seamlessly with the pictures on the page. The sex scenes either subverted or just demolished all the going rules on graphic content. When you grew out of manga for small kids, what was the next stop? Gekiga. Of course.

The late sixties and early seventies were the golden age of the Japanese counterculture. It was also an age of great diversity in manga. No doubt this was a reflection of the times, whether by chance or design. Most kids born after the war had their heads buried in manga from even before they could read. Now they were growing up and going their separate ways. At the same time, every year of explosive economic growth racked up the pressure one notch more in every area of their lives. Politically, this was a great age of student radicalism, but change was at work everywhere – in the arts, in how people worked, in people’s family lives and in their sex lives.

In terms of graphic art, this wave twin-peaked with the magazines Garo and COM, Japanese counterparts to the American alternative and underground ‘zines. Garo, published by the tiny independent Seirindō, was an experimental gekiga mag. COM, founded by Tezuka Osamu, was manga-oriented but also experimental in tone. (Garo, for example, published Shirato Sanpei’s meisterwerk Kamuiden, while COM featured Tezuka’s unfinished series Phoenix (Hi no Tori). Dozens of other artists, old and new, manga-oriented and gekiga-oriented, penned innovative works for these publications. A lot of the leading lights were already involved with the gekiga mags mentioned above. And a lot of them went on to become major stars.

Shojo manga and Fleshbomb gekiga
The other area of major change in the manga scene during the seventies was shojo manga, manga for tweenie girls. From their base in the magazine Shojo Comic (published by the major company Shogakkan), artists like Hagio Moto and Takemiya Keiko tackled themes like gay love and female sexuality that had previously been considered taboo. Where they led, others like Yamagishi Ryōko and Ohshima Yumiko followed. And although she produced very little work in total, another artist who can’t be ignored in this transition is Uchida Yoshimi. She used ultra-fine lines to create extremely delicate atmospherics in her stories.

The late seventies also saw the flowering of gekiga at its most extreme, even as the genre was losing ground as a whole within the manga world. In a crazed quest to plumb the darkest depths of the human subconscious, artists like Miyaya Kazuhiko, Fukushima Masami and Sakaki Masaru created worlds of extreme claustrophobia peopled by supermuscled action heroes. Their gekiga were so extreme that I like to call them by the separate name of Fleshbomb gekiga (nikudan gekiga).

It may not be immediately obvious to the eye, but the Fleshbomb crew was involved in a parallel project to the shojo manga artists. Both groups of artists were trying to look into the deepest recesses of their heroes’ psychologies. At the same time, they Fleshbombers pioneered a new combination of traditional Japanese graphics with the sensibility of American comics. And even though Fleshbomb was gekiga at its most extreme, there was an equally extreme lyricism in the work of Miyaya Kazuhiko, for example. Again, this links up with artists like Nijūyonen Gumi in the shojo manga scene. But when the chill winds of commercialism really started blowing in the eighties, artists like these were too uncompromising to survive the cold.

About the money: manga in the eighties
The political thrills’n’spills of the sixties and seventies were now over. The original manga generation was all grown up and moving onto more serious fare. The major manga publications all suffered declining sales.

But magazines that were willing to target a slightly younger readership instead started to grow fast. Shonen Jump was the star of this trend. Eventually – by the mid nineties – it was selling four million copies a week, and the mag’s sales then rose to a mind-boggling five million. From the start, Shonen Jump’s strength lay in what was known as its ‘Great Two’ system. Pillar One was watertight contracts binding artists exclusively to the publication. Pillar Two was comprehensive reader surveys; the artists had to keep high ratings in them or face the ax.

The traditional manga system was a much more hit-and-miss affair than the ‘Great Two’ style of business. But this is where I’d like to nail my colors to the mast. Shonen Jump succeeded – in selling manga as a commercial product. And that’s all. Their system has leeched the art out of manga. The artists are interchangeable, like spare parts in a machine. But the ‘Great Two’ system offers publishers stability, and all the major companies have adopted it.

So for manga, the seventies were all about quality, and the eighties were all about quantity. Exclusively binding artists’ contracts and dictatorial reader surveys spread right through the industry. At the same time, the major houses crafted carefully-balanced multimedia strategies, tying in their products with anime spin-offs and merchandising drives. The individualistic, demented side of manga got knocked on the head in the process. The loners and eccentrics lost their forum.

The only expertise publishers now cared about was how to sell manga in greater volumes. The plotline and graphics were now a secondary issue. What mattered was the pressing the readers’ buttons with pinpoint accuracy. The marketing cybernetics took over, and manga became consumer information circulating within a cybernetic system of pleasure…

Fragmentation
By the late 1990s, the manga market was saturated, and shrinking. Best-selling manga were still being published to wide public acclaim. But the market was now so fragmented it was almost impossible to even grasp it as a whole. The real difference from the seventies is that there is no-one trying – or capable of trying – to produce work that appeals to a broad section of the public, or appeals to a broader understanding. The artists, the manga and the readers are now all locked into separate micro-markets. Publishers and artists battle for dominance in each of them, but know little or nothing about what’s happening elsewhere. It looks like ‘manga’ as such is dissolving into thin air on its gentle slide into extinction. You hear lots of reasons for the decline of manga – the fragmentation of the market, the rise of computer games and other non-manga media. But you don’t hear any clear-cut solution.

But wait – what about the rise of otaku culture? What about the spread of manga and anime in France and across Asia? What about the way Japanese manga and anime are influencing the arts and media of so many cultures worldwide? On this showing, it looks like Japanese manga/anime is enjoying its greatest success ever, and doing so on the strength of its graphic and narrative content.

But I wonder am I the only person who thinks that manga is going down a creative cul-de-sac abroad, just like it has in Japan?　

Postscript: Ladies’ Comics and Rorikon
Even as the manga market shrank through the eighties, there were some major new developments afoot beneath the surface. I’d like to cover them quickly here.

One was the emergence of ‘Ladies Comics’ for adult women. A decade earlier, shojo manga had broken a lot of ground on taboos against recognizing and depicting female sexuality on the page. Basically, ladies’ comics took over where shojo manga left off. The readers lapped it up and clamored for more graphic content.

At the other extreme, the otaku subculture started surfacing in the early eighties. The otaku libido found its forum in Rorikon (Lolita Complex) manga. Sex between equal partners is, of course, the very last thing on the Rorikon mind. The genre is heavily into master-slave fantasies, drawn with a pedophiliac slant. What’s more, the movement didn’t start in the major publishing houses, but right down at the grass roots level. From the late seventies, Rorikon was being produced and sold in the dōjinshi (amateur fanzine) scene. 1979 saw the arrival of fanzines like Shibēru(Cybele) and Ningyō Hime (Doll Princess). They featured a lot of body modification and necrophiliac fantasies that tied them in with Goth culture when it later emerged.

You have to give these amateur fanzines something for their cultural foresight. But they did carry scenes featuring minors being raped – and they invited their readers to get off on this as a thrill. Kubo Shoten produced the first professionally-printed Rorikon magazine, Lemon People, which stuck to the same lines. From there, Rorikon sensibility spread out through the whole industry in diluted form. Voices of protest calling for some form of control over this content started being raised in 1989, when a manga-crazed student called Miyazaki Tsutomu went on a necrophiliac/cannibalistic killing spree of little girls in suburban Tokyo. Protests erupted again every time some similar atrocity happened.

Otaku culture is overwhelmingly male, and its take on sexuality contrasts strongly with the more liberated, human approach of ‘Ladies’ Comics’. The difference is another indicator of how fragmented and compartmentalized the manga world has become. These issues of sexuality and sexual expression are sure to trigger more culture wars in Japan about ‘socially harmful manga’ in the future.

* Hailed as ‘the Don of gekiga’, Kjiwara Ikki kept his finger on the pulse through the seventies with a string of similar hits like the ‘Star of the Giants’ series (drawn by Kawasaki Noboru), ‘Tomorrow’s Joe’ (Ashita no Joe, drawn by Chiba Tetsuya), ‘Ai and Makoto’ (Ai to Makoto, drawn by Nagayasu Takumi). But the times changed sharply in the eighties, and he stopped selling. His last years were shrouded in sickness and scandal. He died in 1987 at the age of 49. His work only started being revalued in the late nineties.

最近入手した本

最近買った本。
まだ飛ばし読み状態。いつ読み終わるか…辞書を引く箇所が多くて困る。
Thierry Groensteen 5冊
まず　un objet culturel non identifié
まあ、ＢＤの理論書。中にle péril mangaという一節があった。要するにマンガがＢＤを変容させているという現象なのだが、言葉的には悪い意味が入っているらしい。まだ深く読んでいないのでこれ以上は分かりません。分かる人教えてください。
で、この著者、以下の本もあるのでまとめて買った。
Système de la bande dessinée
これはＢＤの理論書で、すでに発行から10年近く過ぎた。いろいろな研究者のネタ本。それの英訳が以下の本。
The System of Comics
このほうが読みやすい。英語だから辞書を引く回数が少なくてすむ。
後2冊だが、まず最初にＢＤの概説パンフレットみたいな本。これは取っ付き易い。
la bande dessinée une littérature graphique
で、最後のこれがMartin de Vaughn-Jamesというマンガ家の研究書。
la construction de la cage
この著者、アングレームのＢＤ博物館の館長で、過去には小野耕世先生と交流もあったらしい。（これは小野先生の談）。
で、これ以外にも本を出している。今後なんとか全部揃えるつもり。
以下知っている限りで題名だけ書いておくので、お持ちの方、見せてください。
Tardi, monographie, Magic Strip, 1980
L'Univers des mangas, une introduction à la bande dessinée japonaise, Casterman, 1991;nouv.ed. 1996
Töpffer, l'invention de la bande dessinée( en collaboration avec Benoît Peeters), Hermann, coll. Savoir sur i'art,1994
Astérix, Barbarella et Cie, Somogy-CNBDI, 2000
これ以外にもたぶんまだあるが、この人の本が今のＢＤに関する言説の大枠を規定しているらしいとにらんでいる。

竹内寛行のサンカ劇画

禁断の書物を倉庫から出しました。
竹内寛行・沼希一・刈谷敬らによる兎月書房の山窩（サンカ）劇画シリーズ『山刃』（ウメガイ）となぜかその2巻なのにタイトルが変わった『疾風』です。表紙の絵はわれらがグランド・スカム・劇画マスター・竹内寛行先生。いやあ、この見世物小屋テイスト溢れるタッチがたまりませんね。竹内先生、貸本劇画では竹内八郎とか竹内寛などとペンネームをいくつも駆使しています。晩年は凡天太郎先生のアシスタントをして、『混血児リカ』などで活躍しています。
で、このサンカ劇画、日本の山奥で漂泊しているトライバルな謎の集団を描いたものですが、有名な原作者で小説化の三角寛先生の一連のサンカ小説をベースにしていると言いながら、逸脱しまくっています。本文の絵柄も見世物小屋テイストあふれる緻密なタッチと、何かクスリでもきれたかのような脱力感漂う絵柄が、ＢＰＭを合わせることなしにカットインしまくっています。この脈絡のないツナギ方と心を凍らせて躍らせない手法、私のつたないＤＪ技法（そんなものはありませんが）の手本です。紙芝居出身者の劇画家って、要するにストリートパフォーマーで、この劇画に描かれる主人公たちと同じノマドな境遇なんですよね。うん、そう思いたい。
全ページスキャンしてスライドショーにして、音楽など載せながら、セリフはライブでかぶせる。ようするに電脳紙芝居にしたら面白いですね。でも間が持たないが。だとすれば脈絡なくステージ前にダンサーを入れるとか。ああ、私は何を言っているのだろう。

神が不在の日8・6 原爆展 植木金矢 浅草公会堂

8月17日から19日まで浅草公会堂で行われている植木金矢先生と「あけぼの美術会」の展覧会、「神が不在の日8・6　原爆展」に行ってきました。会場には、みなもと太郎先生やコミック乱Twins編集部から花が贈られていて、華やかな印象でした。植木金矢先生は、映画の看板絵師から劇画家、日本画家として現在も活躍中の大ベテランです。会場には植木先生肉筆の油絵や、過去に描いた映画のポスター（昭和30年代）のほかに、これが今回の展覧会のメインなのですが、20点以上にも及ぶ原爆をテーマにした連作「神が不在の日8・6」が展示されていました。展覧会のテーマとなった「神が不在の日」という言葉について先生にお尋ねしたところ、まず、絵のモチーフは3年前から被爆者の声を聞き、それに基づいて創作に取り掛かったとのことでした。大きな号数の絵は10年前に描かれたものですが、20点ほどの鉛筆画（部分的に彩色したものもあり）は5月ころから制作したそうです。つい最近も劇画雑誌に作品を発表していたのに…先生の旺盛な創作意欲が垣間見えました。そうそう「神が不在の日」です。それは先生の言葉を借りれば「アメリカはキリスト教の国なのに、なぜ神を信じている人々が原爆を投下するという残酷なことをしたのだろうか。硫黄島の戦いでの犠牲者を見て、本土決戦の場合の犠牲を減らそうとしたためなのか、それとも政治的な駆け引きなのか、どちらにしても許せないことだ。8月6日と9日は神様が不在だったのだろうか。」そんな怒りとも疑問ともつかない気持ちから絵筆をとりはじめたとのことです。先生の場合、登場人物に皆気品があり、美男美女ばかりですので、原爆の被害者の絵を描いても、どこかに美しさが見えてしまいます。そこで「僕には原爆の絵は描けないんじゃないか、と思って、この絵は4回も描きなおしたんだ」とも話されました。でも私には、先生の絵の中に漂う美しさや気品が、残酷な場面の中に救いを与えているように思えました。そのように先生にも話しましたが、素人の感想が上手く伝わったかどうか…これだけの作品を描きながら、先生はまだ満足しきれていないようでした。絵をどこまでも追求するプロとしての心意気を見たような気がします。
先生の今後のますますの活躍を祈って、会場を後にしました。
展覧会は8月17日から19日まで開催中です。皆さんもぜひご覧になってください。会場には先生もいらっしゃいます。
会場　浅草公会堂（地下鉄浅草下車徒歩3分）　台東区浅草1-38-6　03-3844-7491
午前10時から午後5時（最終日は午後4時まで）　入場無料

スーパーバイキング―宮谷一彦自選集

宮谷一彦の本当に久し振りの単行本。かって他社から出た作品に、80年代にヤングジャンプに掲載された「スーパーバイキング」を加筆・修正して単行本化。でもなぜ「スーパーバイキング」なのだろうか。「虎の娘」のほうが良いと思いますが。たぶん私劇画的な要素の入った作品はあえて避けたのかな。でも宮谷先生自身が、戦後の闇の部分に深く関わった過去、いや現在なのかな、を持っているのだから、次回はあえてそういう種類の作品を集めて出して欲しいですね。え、「ダビデの眠る日」は私劇画ではないのかって。まあ、確かに、あの大統領は暗殺されるということを予言していたと言う作品でもあるのですが、先生の自意識の部分が出てこないから、そこが物足りない。それから加筆・訂正はやめたほうが良いと思う。締め切りを延ばすだけになってしまうから。先生の場合、作品の「完成」なんて求めないほうが良い。発表された時点で様々に語られるのも作品の宿命。読者という残酷な神は、先生の作品のみならず、先生の言葉や、生活そのものも様々に解釈しようとするものだから。宮谷先生はそういう宿命の唯一無二の劇画家だと思います。

Necron 第2巻

本日、Necron第2巻が届きました。全7巻の予定だとか。1巻よりもさらにエゲツナイ内容になっております。1巻の最後で疫病に侵された客船から脱出したFrieda博士と人造人間Necronは、無人島にたどり着きます。ところがレズビアンでナチの残党の女がロボット軍団とともに島を支配していました。ナチ女に見初められたFriedaは囚われの身になり、さまざまなセクハラを受けます。さてNecronはロボット軍団（このロボットがロボット三等兵みたいなのです）と戦い、女主人を救出します。ロボット軍団を破壊され、Friedaにもふられたナチ女は自殺して、島はFriedaたちのものになります。そこに不時着した飛行機。脱出した二人の女。たちまちNecronに犯されてしまいます。さらに二人の女を追い求めて、謎の秘密結社がやってきます。Friedaは二人の女の身体に毒蜘蛛の卵を移殖します。すると二人の女は巨大な蜘蛛人間に変身し、秘密結社を全滅させます。それらの全てを見届けたFriedaは火炎放射器で蜘蛛人間を焼いてしまいます。敵から奪い取った飛行機で島を脱出するFriedaとNecron。空の上で二人の愛の営みがどこまでも続くのでした…
本当にショウもない話でしょう。でもそれがいいのです。

Necron by Roberto Raviola (dit Magnus)

MagnusことRoberto Raviolaは1939年にイタリアのボローニャで生まれ、1958年にマンガの世界にデビューしました。デビュー以来イタリアにおけるポルノ・コミックの最前線で活躍し、１ページに２コマしかない独特のコマ割りによって一般のマンガ評論家がこね回すコマ割り神話をぶち壊し、圧倒的な筋肉描写と情け容赦ない暴力描写は見るものに理性の枠組みを超えた背徳的な快楽すら与えます。スキンヘッドの人造人間Necronが、その創造者である女医でネクロフィリアのFrieda Boherと繰り広げるサディズムとマゾヒズムとネクロフィリアが渾然一体となった暴力絵巻は、ふくしま政美と滝沢解の傑作『女犯坊』と通底するものがあります。原著はイタリアで発行され、フランス版も80年代に出ていたのですが、オリジナルの持つ単純なコマ割をむやみに変更してBDサイズに編集しなおしたために、すばらしさが半減してしまったそうです。このたびフランスの良心的な小出版社Corneliusから新しくフランス語版として翻訳しなおして、原著のコマ割りに忠実な形で再刊されました。現在2巻までが出ていますが、これはその1巻です。作者は1996年に死んでしまったのですが、死後もその人気は一部で衰えず、世界各地に崇拝者を生み出しています。

De wraak van het vrachtschip

Frankaの第4巻。全巻で幽霊船の謎に挑んだFranka。仲間とともに沈没船をサルベージする作業に取り掛かるが、謎の黒幕の放った殺し屋が出現。水上飛行機を殺し屋にハイジャックされてしまった。Frankaの仲間のKidの活躍で殺し屋は撃退されるが、Kidも一緒に空中に投げ出されてしまった。かろうじてパラシュートが開いて一命を取り留めるが、自動操縦中の飛行機の中にはFrankaが取り残されてしまった。燃料切れ寸前でFrankaは意識を取り戻し、愛犬とともに決死の脱出を試みる。無人島に無事漂着したFrankaだが、なぜかそこには謎の先住者がいて、Frankaの作ったSOSのサインを消してしまった。鳥たちを意のままに操る野生の女Loloa。彼女にいざなわれるままにFrankaは秘密の隠れ家に向かう。そこには失踪して死んだと思われていた大富豪Midas Marcopolisがいた。彼の語る真実とは幽霊船の秘密に関わるものだった。全ての謎が解明されるとき、黒幕との対決が迫る。

De Terugkeer van de Noorderzon

Frankaの第3巻。4巻と合わせてhet geheim van het spookschip（幽霊船の秘密）の前編と後編です。Frankaは友人のJarkoたちとOceanaquaを訪問しています。そこで知り合ったのは気のいいパイロットのKidです。南国でのマリーン・スポーツを楽しむFranka。Kidの運転する水上飛行機に乗ったりします。ところがそこに突然の嵐。水上飛行機は嵐の中で、海に緊急着水します。救命ボートで脱出して漂流するFrankaとKidの目の前に大きな船の影が見えます。信号弾を発射しますが、何の反応もありません。それどころか、先ほどの船は影も形もありません。不思議な思いに駆られるまもなく、二人は漁船に救助されますが、なんとその漁船のすぐ近くに、先ほどの巨大な船が突然現れたのです。そしてその船からは、悪魔のような人影が現れては、すぐに消えてしまいました。そして、その跡には、その船すらもあとかたもなく消えてしまったのです。Oceanaquaに幽霊船が出たといううわさが広まるのに時間はかかりませんでした。さて、救助された喜びもつかのま、Frankaは、幽霊船の正体を突き止めようとします。2巻でFuroraから学んだ精神集中法で意識の奥底から記憶を呼び覚ますと、幽霊船の船名は、Noorderzonであることがわかります。1929年に建造され、最後には大富豪Midas Marcopolisの所有するところになっていましたが、何年か前に航海に出たまま行方不明になっていた貨物船でした。奇妙なことに、Midas Marcopolis自身もこの船が消息をたった頃に行方不明になり、死亡が確実視されていたのでした。しかし、ここまでのFrankaの行動は、謎のエージェントによって監視されていたのでした。捜査を開始したFrankaを殺し屋が襲います。一命をとりとめたFrankaは、Kidの協力を受けて、幽霊船の謎を解明します。しかしここで彼女の前に全ての事件の黒幕が出現したのです。というところで次の巻に続きます。

Het Meesterwerk

Frankaの第二巻。この巻からFrankaが主人公になります。Frankaのアパートの上の階に住んでいる貧乏画家Rafael Reghenbooghが行方不明になります。ある夜、Frankaは誰もいないはずのRafaelの部屋に誰かがいるのに気づきます。それは泥棒でした。犯人はFrankaの頭を棒で殴ります。朦朧とした意識のまま、Frankaは自転車で犯人を追いかけますが、逃げられてしまいます。それどころか車にはねられて運河に落ちてしまいます。彼女を救ったのは運河の上のボートハウスで占い師をしているFuroraでした。Furoraの催眠術でFrankaは何か大事なことを思い出します。それはRafaelの部屋にあったはずの手紙でした。手紙の宛名の住所はLuttel。Frankaはその住所に行ってみることにしました。そこには没落しかかった伯爵家の末裔である老婦人が大きな屋敷に住んでいました。伯爵夫人には過去に悲恋がありました。後に高名な画家となるPavel Paletskiと相思相愛の仲だったにも関わらず、両親の反対にあって結婚できなかったのです。屋敷内には数多くのPavel Paletskiの作品がありましたが、それは心ならずも分かれた恋人に画家が送ったものでした。だが、ここでいくつかの作品が贋作と入れ替わっていることがわかります。（このあたりの説明は複雑なので省略。というよりオランダ語がよくわかりません）やがて失踪した画家Rafaelは監禁されてPaletskiの贋作を描かされているらしいことがわかります。FrankaはFuroraの協力を受けて、最後には真犯人を捕らえ、伯爵夫人の経済的危機を救うのですが、これが意外な物なのです。ヒントは「手紙を出すときに使うもの」です。

Het Misdaadmuseum

Frankaシリーズの第1巻。しかし、ここでは脇役（かなり重要な役ですが）で、犯罪博物館の秘書として登場します。私立探偵Jarko Jensenの助手として、怪しげな骨董屋に潜入して、変装の名人Argos Atackと渡り合います。この潜入シーンがなかなか面白いですね。Argosは二人の目を盗んで、オランダにある印刷工場に潜入して、そこで印刷されている中南米の架空の小国Oceanaquaの中央銀行券を大量に奪取し、武器の密売業者から水上飛行機と爆弾を入手します。間一髪でArgosを逮捕したものの、護送中に脱出されてしまい、逆にJarkoとFrankaは捕らわれてしまいます。しかしここでArgosの意外な正体と目的が語られます。彼は独裁者に苦しむOceanaquaの人々を救うための工作資金と武器を手に入れようとしていたのでした。当初はにわかに信じられなかった二人も、Oceanaquaの人々の真の姿を知ることで、革命に協力するようになります。以上のようなストーリーが、最近のシリーズとは違って丸いタッチのコミカルな絵柄で、ギャグを交えて進展していきます。作者Henk Kuijpersのデビュー作品で、1974年から雑誌に連載され、1978年にオランダ語版が発売され、シリーズは全19巻（現在のところ）ドイツ語、デンマーク語、フランス語、スペイン語などに翻訳されて各国で発売されています。英語版はありません。なお、作者のプロフィールはWikipediaで見ることができます。

フリンジ・コミック 俺の中で眠らないモノ ふくしま政美『樹海マン』

突然、「漫画ゴラク」5月11・18合併号（4月27日発売）にふくしま政美先生の『樹海マン』が前後編の前編として掲載されていました。当然、購入です。原作は西塔紅一、「ありんす国女帝夢幻」などでコンビを組んでいるベテラン原作者です。主人公は祈太郎というレンジャー部隊の教官で、これが富士の樹海で敵と戦うのですが、その敵というのが彼の教え子で女性兵士高村火夜、彼女はどうも祈の上官でクーデター計画を実行に移そうとしている土御門陸将の命を受けて、祈を抹殺しに来たらしいのです。絵は力が入っていますが、物語はまだ始まったばかりで、このキャラクターが「漫画ゴラク」の読者の心をつかめるのかどうかもわかりません。でもとにかく新作が掲載されたのは良かったと思っています。次号は5月11日発売です。

フリンジ・カルチャー 『妖怪人間ベム大全』と日韓アニメ史の闇

妖怪人間ベム大全 販売元：双葉社 Amazon.co.jpで詳細を確認する

日韓基本条約締結直後、ある政治家（名前は秘密だそうです）の肝いりにより、日韓合作アニメが第一企画によって制作された、その第一弾が『黄金バット』、第二弾がこの作品『妖怪人間ベム』である。制作にはかって満映のスタッフだった森川信英が大きく関与し、満映時代に中国人スタッフにアニメ技術を指導した経験（どのような作品かは伏せられているが解明が待たれる）を生かして、韓国人スタッフを急遽養成しながらの制作となった。人間にも妖怪にもなれなかった主人公たちを描いたこの作品は常時20パーセント台の視聴率を確保したものの、これまた謎の日韓関係により当初の予定（1年52回）を残して、半年26回で終了。その後第一企画により1982年に続編の企画があり、パイロットフィルムが２話分制作されたが、お蔵入り。そして1993年にはコミックガンガン誌上にて漫画版が連載、2006年には主人公の人間形態をマイルドにして（指が5本になった）リメイク版が制作、放映された。無国籍的内容、衝撃の設定、日韓の政治的なしがらみの中で生まれ、そして消えていったパート1は、「人間にも妖怪にもなれなかった妖怪人間」たちの運命同様、複雑な歴史的背景を垣間見せる。歴史的に貴重なアーカイブたる本書を作り上げた不知火プロのスタッフと、貴重な証言を発表した関係者に、リメイク版を制作した勇気あるスタッフに、最大限のリスペクトを送りたい。今後は、ぜひとも『黄金バット大全』の発行を希望する。そして、満映→第一企画と続く日本アニメ史の隠された部分を歴史の闇とからめて解明して欲しい。

フリンジ・コミック⑮ 俺の中で眠らないモノ Henk KuijpersのFrankaについて

オランダのコミックで、一部では「女インディー・ジョーンズ」と言われているFrankaの最新刊がHet Zwaard Van Iskadnerです。博物館から盗まれたアレクサンダー大王の剣に隠された秘密を巡って、主人公フランカはトルコに旅立ちます。そこんで明かされる彼女の過去の謎、そして最愛の恋人の死。オランダ語が良く分からないので概略なのですが、ミステリー仕立てで話は面白そうです。タンタンの作者エルジェの弟子らしく、いわゆるクリア・ラインというカートゥーン調の絵で親しみやすく、色彩もカラフルです。日本で言うと、わたせせいぞう的な画風と言えるでしょう。現地オランダでは日系企業のコマーシャルのキャラクターなども手がけている作者Henk Kuijpersは、日本でももっと知られていいのではないかと思います。

フリンジ・コミック 俺の中で眠らないモノ⑭ 英語版MangaZombie Murotani Tsunezo

Murotani Tsunezō: Trauma manga brought to you by the king of educational manga

“I don’t talk about this very often, but I actually died once…Astral projection, is it? Well, I was floating in space, and all behind me it was pitch dark. It was just like being in hell.” (Interview in QJ magazine, Issue 14)

After his (temporary) death, Murotani Tsunezō went on to draw a series of hellish works based on his hands-on research, the two most outstanding being Jigoku Kun (Hell Boy) and Ningyo Jigoku (Doll Hell). The backgrounds in ‘Hell Boy’ are especially striking, and they couldn’t get much blacker. They really do seem to bear witness to time spent in the underworld.

Murotani Tsunezō was born in Osaka in 1934. His background was relatively comfortable, his family running a clothes store. He was manga-obsessed from childhood, and especially loved Imoto Suimei’s Nagakutsu Sanjūshi (Longboots Three Musketeers). These three musketeers consisted of two humans and one monkey, with their boots worn on their heads in a clear departure from original Alexander Dumas version. Anyway, their adventures were one of the things that sparked the young Murotani’s imagination.

He kept drawing incessantly right through the difficult years of World War II, when he was evacuated to a rural district in the southern island of Kyushu. His schoolmates there were hard-as-nails country kids. Near the school stood ‘Fight Hill’; the custom was to go there after school and slug out any little disagreements they had during class time, with an older boy refereeing. As a city slicker cast into a den of feral rednecks, Murotani was an obvious prime target for hazing. He managed to save his hide, however, by drawing caricatures for his classmates. The permanent moral of the story for him was “If you can make people laugh, you’ll survive”. His Kyushu years impacted his later work in other ways, too. The hero of ‘Hell Boy’ is based on his Kyushu school janitor’s son.

Murotani the Gag Manga writer
After the war ended, Murotani stayed involved with amateur manga circles, but his main interest had shifted to oil painting. After he graduated high school he applied to study art in Kyushu University, but his manga experience must have taken its toll. He was turned down, and now became a ‘wandering samurai’ – a high school graduate studying for a second shot at the college entrance exams. But he kept drawing manga, and his first break came during this period from an unexpected source – the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, which took him on as a cartoonist.

Working with the Mainichi opened up a new path for Murotani – a path with no exact equivalent for artists in the west. Regular appearances in the Mainichi stable of children’s papers (Mainichi Shōgakusei Shimbun and Mainichi Chūgakusei Shimbun) led on to a flourishing career in ‘educational manga’. True to their name, educational manga tackle the subject matter of school textbooks – which are very often masterpieces of crushing boredom – and try to get the goods across in a more graphic and interesting manner.

So, when Murotani finally headed for Tokyo and art school, he already had a good degree of success under his belt. His student years were spent absorbing influences from Picasso and Matisse, and painting in oils in the surrealist style. All the while he financed himself by drawing educational manga, but his horizons soon broadened. When a friend got published in a manga magazine he decided to try his luck outside the educational field. The result was Wanpaku Tābō (Naughty Turbo Kid), published in 1958 in the magazine Mangaō. From this point through to the mid-sixties, Murotani put out a string of gag-filled manga series aimed at young kids. With one major exception: Surirā Kozō Kyōfū no Hae Otoko (Thriller Kid: The Terrifying Fly-Man). The Fly-Man is heavily influenced by fifties pulp sci-fi. The offspring of a wartime biological weapons experiment, he wreaks his revenge in a school setting. Both the setting and the horror-story element pointed towards Murotani’s future; for the time being, however, he stuck with the gag manga for kids.

The road to ‘Hell’
Apart from the fact that he’d died already, there were a couple of factors that spurred Murotani towards drawing horror manga – his experience of surrealist painting, his voracious reading of fifties sci-fi novels, and the imagery of fifties sci-fi movies all had an influence. A major shift in his work came in 1967 with the publication of SF Gekijō Dai-ni no Chikyū (Sci-fi Theater: Alternative Earth) in the Mainichi Chūgakusei Shimbun, which catered to high school kids. This kicked off a series of works heavily indebted to fifties sci-fi; the most successful of them was Supēsuman (Spaceman), which the Chūgakusei Shimbun ran over three years. The story – the interplanetary quest of a multiracial group of teen space crusaders – was a big success with its high school audience, thanks to its perfectly-calculated mix of horror, sci-fi and eroticism. In fact, ‘Spaceman’ is a plausible forerunner to Ginga Tetsudō 999 (Galactic Railroad 999). The period of ‘Spaceman’ was a highly productive one for Murotani; he also put out the series Mikuroman (Microman: no connection to the toy by the same name produced by Takara) and Taimu Patrōru (Time Patrol) among others. All were published in the Mainichi Chūgakusei Shimbun, and all bore the same imprint of fifties science fiction.

In the heavily regimented world of manga production, Murotani was unusual in being a loner; he employed no assistants. He was also a technical perfectionist who eschewed the use of screentone in his backgrounds. But when the pace got just too frantic, he had to compromise. His nephews, wife and sister-in-law pitched in as a kind of artisinal family, setting up the studio, pasting and screentoning (literally) in the background. By the late sixties, Murotani was getting a lot of name recognition, and the big time finally started to beckon. Pikkari Bii (Flash-Bang) and Faito Da! Pyūta (Go For It, Pyūta!) both hit the big screen as anime, and he began publishing in the massive-circulation weekly tabloid magazines known as shūkanshi.

However, fame brought its own problems. Murotani’s distaste for screentone still hadn’t deserted him (he was coming from a fine arts background, after all). But drawing in background shading by hand took a tremendous amount of time given the volume of production now demanded of him, he became more and more overworked. And the major tabloids were big business. Their main content was celebrity scandal, their main concern was the bottom line, and they showed precious little consideration towards the manga artists they carried as a minor sideline. Editors kept an eagle eye on the manga artists, and they didn’t hesitate to cut whole sections without consent let alone consultation.

Murotani created his masterpiece in this harsh and pressurized environment. This was the Jigoku – ‘Hell’ – series.

Hell Boy the Cool
Jigoku Kun (Hell Boy) forms the first half of the ‘Hell’ series. It was serialized in a magazine aimed at younger readers, so Muortani laid on the gore with a fairly light touch. The hero’s mission is pretty grim: “The villain gets sent to hell every single time”. But even so, ‘Hell Boy’ is a fun piece of work with a character all its own. The hero has a strong appeal, along with surreal characters like the Undead Dad (Mannnen Totsan), the bone-marrow munching Dokurobotan, and a constantly varying cast of hellish ghouls. You get the feeling that Murotani himself had a lot of fun himself making this work, from a lot of different elements that appear: the elaborate page compositions, the ultra-realistic depictions of hell, the offbeat hero, the ultrasexy heroine, and the mixed cast of supporting characters, sometimes beautiful and sometimes cruel.

The highlight of the series is the third episode, Akumabi (Devil Fire). Here, Murotani gives free rein to one aspect of Hell Boy’s character: he’s devilishly cool. The villain of the piece is a student who dabbles in arson in his free time. Hell Boy uses his magic powers to stick the criminal’s arm onto his (the criminal’s, that is) forehead. This episode also introduces the character Akutsu; he’s quite the square, a good husband and father and the manager of a construction company. Yet at the same time, he’s a fiend towards the evil (in this story he traps the student/arsonist/villain). In fact, ‘Hell Boy’ is an extremely righteous piece of work; you can feel Murotani’s anger towards the villains, and his strong sense of justice – to the point where Murotani’s own anger comes across as a mangaized enactment of divine wrath. And this is one of the things I really like about ‘Hell Boy’. At the same time, however much Murotani’s vision was based on his near-death experience, there isn’t a hint of religious feeling or teaching in the series. ‘Hell Boy’ remains quite cool throughout.

Jigoku Kun was put out in book form by Ota Shuppann in a single-volume set along with Surirā Kozō Kyōfū no Hae Otoko (Thriller Kid: The Terrifying Fly-Man). It remains a great read.

The second half of the ‘Hell’ series was aimed at an older readership, and it shows. Murotani cranked up the horror level and gave stronger voice to his outrage in episodes like Ningyō Jigoku (Doll Hell), Mushi Jigoku (Insect Hell), Kaiki Jirō (Jirō the Ghost-Devil) and Pabirion Jigoku (Pavilion Hell). Among them, the strongest episodes are ‘Doll Hell’ and ‘Pavilion Hell’. They’re also quite political.

Murotani the Modernist
‘Doll Hell’ is a revenge drama starring Misuzu Reika, a traditional doll-maker and atomic bomb survivor. Gifted with magic powers, she decides to take an appropriate form of revenge on the American pilots who dropped the bomb – by turning them into dolls. The pilots (one of them a woman) will remain alive, trapped inside the dolls’ bodies. There is an underlying eroticism in the scenes where Reika works her magic, and in the appearance of the blond blue-eyed American character Jane, now transformed into a living doll.

In ‘Pavilion Hell’, a kid visiting the Osaka International Exposition of 1970 gets lost among the crowds, and somehow finds that he’s wandered into hell. There are two kinds of demons, he finds – black demons and white demons – and the black ones are the masters, lording over and discriminating against the whites. Soon a war of liberation starts, with the young hero caught up in it. The plot is thickened with a trans-dimensional romance between him and a female knight of the liberation army. This aspect of ‘Pavilion Hell’ points forward to Takahashi Rumiko’s Urusei Yatsura (Lamu, the Invader Girl).

This kind of socially aware horror manga wasn’t particularly rare in this period, and it’s hard to deny that Murotani was aiming for large sales when he drew the ‘Hell’ series. What really makes the ‘Hell’ series stand out from the rest is the way hell itself is depicted. Unlike other artists working on similar material, Murotani doesn’t rely on local Japanese traditional art or folklore at all. If anything, his underworld and the demons who live there are drawn in a quasi-surrealist style. Here we see Murotani the modernist in action.

Murotani in Paris
In the mid seventies, Murotani dropped out of the youth-oriented shōnen magazine scene and shifted his focus back to educational manga. The pace of work required in the weeklies is absolutely crushing, and this was partly the reason for the move. But the major factor in the move was that he left Japan for a sabbatical year in Paris towards the end of the seventies.

Murotani’s Parisian year was spent cruising the major galleries, starting with the National Library, the Musée Carnavalet and the Museum of Fashion. A year is a really long time in manga, and normally it’d be unthinkable for an established artist to go a whole year without publishing anything at all. But by shifting to educational manga again, Murotani had fixed himself up with a reliable and steady source of income. Hence Paris.

Towards a complete ‘Hell Boy’
Since his return from Paris to the present day, Murotani has continued to keep his main focus on educational manga. And he had remained tremendously successful in this line of work. His biographical manga like Himiko, Katsu Kaishū and Date Masamune went through anything between twenty and forty-two reprints. (Himiko was the shamanistic prophet-ruler of the Yamatai, a third-century forerunner of the Japanese state; Katsu Kaishū was the shogunate’s last naval commander; and Date Masamune was a famous one-eyed feudal lord from northern Japan). He’s also opened up new areas in educational manga, such as the history-of-science dramas he put out in popular Japanese science magazines like Newton and Einstein.

However, he ran into serious trouble with his Mahometto to Isuram-kyo (Mohammed and Islam), which was withdrawn among protests by Muslims offended at the portrayal of the Prophet in pictures. He also had a run-in with the French government over the inclusion of his anti-nuclear poster Moon Over Mururoa in an exhibition that coincided with a state visit by the President of France to Japan. The sponsors of the exhibition, a department store called Yokohama Sogō, pulled Murotani’s work from the show; this time the furious protests came from the artist himself. In both cases, Murotani stuck to an uncompromising freedom-of-speech position, and he declared that he ‘absolutely refused to recognize any taboos against freedom of expression’. He still had his old unyielding sense of anger and passion for justice. I think that’s why he was able to stick to his guns in the face of considerable pressure.

Murotani Tsunezō has continued to publish educational manga to this day, while also keeping active in the anti-nuclear movement. He also teaches at the Lifelong Learning Center, and plays tennis in his free time. (There are unconfirmed reports that he’s practiced his volleys against a number of world-famous structures including the Parthenon and Arc de Triomphe). He still has a lot of ideas in his head, and plans further installments of ‘Pavilion Hell’ and other projects like Murotani’s Grotesque Greek Mythology. He’s also planning a complete, finalized version of ‘Hell Boy’ – in the unlikely event that the series could ever be wrestled to a halt. In any case, Murotani Tsunezō is still an artist worth keeping an eye on.

フリンジ・コミック 俺の中で眠らないモノ⑬ 石原豪人『柳生十兵衛』

さて、すでに拙著でも紹介している石原豪人（林月光）先生の『柳生十兵衛』です。このホリデー・コミックスは実業之日本社から出ていました。雑誌連載は週刊サンケイで、この単行本は1巻のみです。未収録部分があります。テレビのシリーズをコミカライズしたものなのですが、豪人先生が描くと、なぜか裸の女の緊縛シーン、張りぼてに詰め込まれた美女の死体、男装の麗人の入浴シーン、若衆の色っぽい太もも、若衆の入浴シーン、さらには人工奇形児製造工場と、エログロあんでもあり（かなりセーブしてますが）・見世物小屋テイスト全開で暴走していきます。ハンディキャップ・ヒーロー・十兵衛とどこから見ても田中邦衛の相棒・三九郎の活躍から目が離せません。復刻を強く希望します。

フリンジ・コミック 俺の中で眠らないモノ⑫ 榊まさる『マタ・ハリ』

　
榊まさるの幻の作品『マタ・ハリ』は1976年にコミックギャングに掲載された意欲作です。第一次大戦で活躍した女スパイ、マタ・ハリの生涯を描こうとしたこの作品は、榊まさるが官能劇画家から、官能をも描ける劇画家として自立しようとした時期に発表されました。この時期、肉弾劇画の世界では、榊まさるが最先端を行っていたと思います。アメコミを消化したグラマラスな女性キャラクターの造形、歴史的な考証、深みのあるストーリー、エロスに満ち満ちた舞踏シーン、どれをとっても隙のない画面構成…榊まさるの一つの到達点を示しています。しかし、人間の手作業の限界を超えた濃密な画面は、榊まさるにこれ以上の作業を許しませんでした。途中からキャラクターの等身が妙に寸詰まりになり、目つきすら中空を彷徨いだします。まるで作者の苦悩をうつすかのように。そしてて空中分解したように連載休止となります。榊まさるは、その後漫画家のキャリアを休止し、焼き鳥屋のマスターとしてすごします。彼の作品が再評価されだした90年代末期に、ほそぼそと作品を発表しますが、すでに過去のような勢いのある線は描けなくなっていました。現在は病気のため、劇画家としての活動を再び休止している榊まさるですが、健康を取り戻し、完全に復活することを、一読者として熱望します。

フリンジ・コミック 俺の中で眠らないモノ⑪ 淀川晴生

一部の人々に注目されているキャットファイト劇画の巨匠・淀川晴生の代表作が『捕縄尼僧鉄火帖』です。漫画ゴラク誌上に昭和44年（1969年）から月1回のペースで連載され、1976年ころまで続きました。作者は金子晴生名義で貸本劇画でデビューし、昭和40年代から漫画コミックや週刊漫画ＴＩＭＥＳなどに活動の場を移しました。貸本劇画から初期青年劇画へ上手く転身した作家の部類に入ると思います。特色はヒロインのグラマラスな造形とキャットファイト・シーンの描き方の上手さでしょう。日本人というより欧米人のような肉体です。淀川先生はエクスプロイテーション・ムービーなどずいぶんごらんになったのではないでしょうか。その特性を生かして淀川先生70年代中期からはＳＭ雑誌でも活躍し、次第に責め絵の方面での活躍が多くなります。古書価値が上昇するなど、再評価が進んでいますが、いまだにその全貌は謎に包まれた作家です。80年代以降は活発な活動はしていないようですが、どうしたのでしょうか？淀川晴生先生の現在の消息をご存知の方ありましたら、ご一報願います。

フリンジ・コミック 俺の中で眠らないモノ⑩ DEN

　リチャード・コーベンについては拙著『フリンジ・カルチャー』で紹介していますので、ご存知の方も多いと思いますが、今回改めて見てみると、そのサイケな色使いのすばらしさを再度確認しました。日本ではマンガ家の山本貴嗣が自らのウェブでコーベンからの影響を語っていますが、70年代にはじめてコーベンを見た人は皆一様に衝撃を受けたと思います。さて、DENのコミックスですが、残念なことに現在は絶版です。コーベン先生自身の会社で出版していたのですが、極めて小部数で、古書店（アメリカですよ）でも入手困難な状況です。ドイツやスペインでも人気があるので、ドイツ版だったらアマゾンで入手可能かもしれません。さて、ストーリーですが、だいたい以下のようになっています。7年前に失踪した叔父ダンの手紙を読んだデビッド・エリス・ノーマン（この頭文字をとるとDENになります）が、叔父の手紙にあった設計図をもとに機械を製作し、スイッチを入れたとたん、彼は異世界にトリップします。そこで彼は無毛の筋肉マン・DENに変身します。それと同時に彼の記憶は半ば失われます。DENは、異世界で怪物と戦いながら、自らのアイデンティティを求めて旅に出ます。そこで彼が怪物から救出した女性がKATHです。彼女は1882年に偶然開いた次元の扉から異世界にやってきたのでした。彼女も過去の記憶を半ば失い、さまよっていたのでした。そしてその異世界は、「赤い女王」と名乗る魔女によって危機に瀕していたのです。DENは異世界を守るため、そして叔父を探すため、さらには愛するKATHを守るために、強靭な筋肉の力を武器に戦います。彼の敵はリザードマンや恐竜を連れた女、何でも食い尽くす亜人類・ドラマイト、そして最大の敵は「赤い女王」です。また、戦いの中で無二の親友ZANDORが現れます。物語のクライマックスで「赤い女王」とKATHが一人の人物の二つの側面が分離したものであるということが判明し、壮絶な戦いのあと、古代の遺跡が爆発し、DENはZANDORによって救出されますが、「赤い女王」とKATHの行方は不明なままです。ここまでが第1部ともいえる部分で、単行本で第5巻までのパートです。その後、DENSAGAというシリーズがあり、DENの叔父の物語とKATHと「赤い女王」の関係についても触れられます。物語はいまだ未完で、単行本未収録作品も多く、今後完全な形での再刊が待たれるところです。以下にコーベンのホームページとファンの作った詳細なサイトのアドレスを載せておきます。
コーベンのホームページ　http://www.corbenstudios.com/
Muuta.netのアドレス　http://www.muuta.net/Corben/Begin.html

フリンジ・コミック 俺の中で眠らないモノ⑨ Zora and the Hibernauts

ゾラと冬眠者たちの英語版を入手しました。1984年にアメリカで発行されたもので、カリフォルニアのバークレーの古本屋から通販で３５ドルで購入しました。トライバルな意匠が随所にちりばめられていて、すばらしいコミックとしか言いようがないですね。さて、作者のフェルナンド・フェルナンデスは、アルゼンチン生まれで、父親はタクシーの運転手という労働者階級の家で育ちました。13歳で製薬会社に勤め、その後アパレル会社に勤めながら夜間高校に通い、独学で絵を学びました。デビューは1958年で、アルゼンチンの雑誌Totemでスペースヒーロー物を描きます。卓越したデッサン力と魅力的なキャラクター、イマジネーション豊かな宇宙の描写などで人気を博し、ＳＦ物、ウェスタン物、メロドラマ物など、あらゆる年齢層の読者を対象とした作品をアルゼンチンで発表します。1970年代からは活動の場所をヨーロッパに移します。イギリス、スペイン、ノルウェー、ドイツ、デンマークなどで、コミックやイラストレーションの分野で大活躍します。1980年にスペインの雑誌1984にこの作品を発表し、全世界的な人気を獲得します。1982年から1983年にかけてアメリカの雑誌HeavyMetal（当時の編集長は女性で、Julie Simmons-lynchと言いました。英語版の巻頭に推薦文を寄せています）に英語版が連載され、1984年には英語版（この本です）が発行されました。発表以来20年以上が過ぎていますが、この作品に見られる豊かなイマジネーションや奇抜なトライバルな意匠、魅力的な女性キャラクター、カラフルでサイケデリックな色彩、文明批評に満ちたストーリーなどは、全く古さを感じさせません。日本語版の発売が待たれるところです。

フリンジ・コミック 俺の中で眠らないモノ⑧ 英語版MangaZombie Sakaki Masaru

Sakaki Masaru: A full-on fleshbomb atmosphere, overflowing with claustrophobia

All about love…and hate
From the publication of his debut work, Sakaki Masaru’s lifelong obsessions as an artist were very clear: “The love, the hate and the passion that lurk beneath the surface of everyday life.” Roko no Haka (Roko’s Grave) is a melodramatic tale abounding in all three.

The setting is a farming village in the present day. A child’s father has been murdered and his sister abducted. Now a teenager, he sets out on a journey to track down the culprit. On the chase, he ends up in a car crash and loses his memory. Fortunately, a young farm girl comes across the scene in time to save him and nurse him back to health. Before you know it, they’re in love and thinking of tying the knot. However, the girl’s father has other ideas. He’s the killer. His ‘daughter’ is actually the young man’s abducted sister. Everything will be revealed if the traveler regains his memory. Time for another murder – but this time the plan fails, the kid survives and the shock brings his childhood memories flooding back. The stage is set for the final catastrophe.

Remote farming villages, murderous Oedipal urges and incest – the plot is like something out of a Greek tragedy. Tsuko no Haka’s really outstanding quality, though, is a sense of claustrophobia so deep it’s almost impossible to describe. The seething passions and drives of Tsuyuko no Haka were to be a feature of later, better-known works by Sakaki. But, with its gripping claustrophobia, it’s no overstatement to say that Tsuyuka no Haka expresses Sakaki in all his aspects.

The sixties and seventies
Sakaki Masaru (real name Miyata Yukinari) was born in 1950 in Fukuoka Prefecture in the southern island of Kyushu. Ryoko no Haka was published in 1968 by Tokyo Manga Shuppan; he followed it up with the single-volume works Rāmen Tenshi (The Ramen Angel) and Akanbō (The Baby).

The late sixties in Japan were a turbulent and conflicted period. Like Paris and Chicago, Tokyo saw its fair share of riots, sit-ins and student protests. However, at least some of the forces creating the drama were specifically Japanese. The economy was surging ahead at a breakneck pace, as the major Japanese corporations conquered one foreign market after another. As they graduated from school or college, more and more kids were sucked into these corporations or their sub-contractors. They were welcomed with strict regimentation, brutally long working hours and rigid discipline. While the world learned to call them ‘corporate samurai’; but in most cases they were stressed-out, frustrated corporate serfs, suffering acute mental claustrophobia at the very bottom of an ironclad hierarchical pyramid. Young company employees in effect formed a new social sub-class.

One of the best-known gekiga artists who documented their emotional landscape was Miyaya Kazuhiko (also covered in this collection). He became a major influence on Sakaki Masaru. Sakaki was working in much the same mold, but his work lacked the literary style and ideological edge displayed by Miyaya. In fact, it was pretty naïve, crude stuff by comparison – which is part of its appeal. Sakaki was certainly the better artist when it came to getting raw emotion across to the reader. He belonged more to the street. Miyaya’s influence was on his drawing style, especially on the way he drew the human form in muscleman mode. This had always been an area where Sakaki had his own particular strength, buthe polished his skills through observing what Miyaya was doing.

Shortly after Sakaki came to Tokyo in the late sixties, he shifted his focus to seinenshi – mass-circulation mags aimed at the male teenage market. Manga Erotopia ran his series Ai to Yume (Love and Dreams), with an erotic storyline of a sexy heroine suffering the attentions of a musclebound laborer. All stereotypical enough, but at the same time Sakaki was honing his craft as an artist to the point where he could produce a gripping, high-impact erotic graphic story. He was also starting to get inspiration from more exotic sources.

This became apparent with the appearance of a string of works in the late seventies in mags like Zōkan Young Comic, Comic King, Manga Erotopia and Manga Hunter. The human anatomy and coloration schemes are influenced by American graphic artists like Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo. At the same time, his graphics are becoming denser; in a sense, he’s overtaking his old role model Miyaya. That said, he was a typical fleshbomb gekiga artist – constantly missing deadlines and having series pulled by magazine editors.

Hero
The series Hero is an outstanding part of Sakaki’s portfolio, and a work which allowed him to display his full range of talents in the fleshbomb gekiga genre. Drawn to a script by Takezawa Kai, it delves deep behind the scenes of the Japanese professional wrestling world. (This is OTT costumed wrestling on American lines, about as far removed from sumo as you can possibly imagine.) The hero is a gentle giant with the requisite exaggerated physique. Once scouted, he starts training to wrestle in the bad-guy role. He gets the required moves and gimmicks beaten into him, and even gets cosmetic surgery to make him look more evil. All set, he enters the ring for his first crack at the championship. In fact it’s a sure thing – which is the dilemma. The match is rigged from the start. All the hero has to do to become the champ is have sex – with the champ.

Being King of the professional wrestling circuit comes at a price, however. His girlfriend finds out about his homosexual affair and kills herself in a fit of despair. As a result, the hero decides to go straight and win under his own steam in future, but things quickly spin out of control. He finally gets thrown out of the wrestling scene, and was given very strange sanction to. He ends up spending his days washing dishes in the backroom of a drinking den, being called Good-for-nothing. His nights are spent as a slave, under the lash of an S&M dominatrix.

And there endeth the tale. The storyline has a lot in common with Miyaya Kazuhiko’s works Proresu Jigokuhen (Wrestling Hell, scripted by Kajiwara Ikki) and Nikudan Jinsei (Fleshbomb Life). But Sakaki’s grasp of anatomy in Hero owes a lot more to American graphic conventions and artists like Frazetta. Partly thanks to these influences, the density of the page gives the work a really powerful impact.

The Influence of American Comics
Sakaki’s debt to American underground comics and graphic novels can be seen in his unfinished series Requiem. The title is a playful pun on the English word ‘requiem’ (the Chinese characters mean – roughly – ‘A Dream Picture of Soul-Sucking Spirits’). The story, such as it is, concerns the doings of Andine, a water-spirit-cum-witch, and her faithful sidekick. The action is about present-day witches, witch-hunters, and the people who hate them and want their revenge. The plot really goes nowhere, though. The whole production is a bustier-popping fantasy epic, with strong influences from Vampirella (popular at the time and available in Japanese), and Frank Frazetta. The emphasis throughout is on graphic style, while the plot degenerates into a tangled mess.

It’s easy to imagine the frustrated editor reaching out to grasp the plug, and giving it a good hard pull. (The editor in this case worked for Zōkan Young Comic.) Such is the tragedy of the whole Fleshbomb gekiga genre: the artists poured their hearts and souls into perfecting the graphics, public and plotlines be damned. At any rate, Rekuiemu deserves kudos for transplanting the styles and techniques of the American seventies underground into the Japanese scene.

All about love…
Up to this point, Sakaki’s stories featured lots of sexpotheroines and muscle-clad heroes. But for all the goings-on between them, it’s very difficult to get any real sense of passion, love, hate or general male-female madness off the page. His productions had a weird emotional blankness about them. But in the series Ren-ai-ron (All About Love), he tried his hand at depicting a whole range of different boy-girl scenarios, and finally made a breakthrough into deeper territory. The development was mirrored in his drawing technique. His lines lost the clumsy quality they’d had in favor of a clearer, sharper style. In part, this had something to do with the quality of the script writer, Okazaki Eisei , who achieved notoriety with Kamimura Kazuo’s gekiga Dōsei-Jidai (The Age of Cohabitation). Re-nai-ron is the novel’s fleshbomb version.

Ren-ai-ron was published as a series of self