Takeo Saito's Golgo13, Kimonos and Bad Sons

I have a great memory for many things. I can remember dialogue from TV shows I saw 20 years ago, I can remember all the lines of Annie Hall, every song from the Rocky Horror Picture Show (even though I now wish I couldn't), lots of poems, lots of Wodehouse, some of Shakespeare, some of Burns, and if I had a conversation with you in 1982, I may well bring it up next time we meet - particularly if you said something that has been getting on my wick for 26 years. But I still forgot to send my old man a Father's Day card, so I've sent him a belated one. Sorry it's late, Happy Father's Day, Bill - from your ungrateful and stupid son.

It also doesn't work well in this respect:

(the following two items are related but they are separated by 3 years so you have to make the leap with me)

in the Art and Architecture edition of The New Yorker, Oct. 17, 2005 I read an article about a Kimono painter and it made an impression on me. It was called Letter from Japan, The Kimono Painter.

(now you should be able to tell by that very accurate date that I have gone and hunted down that edition of The New Yorker from my little library so that I can be completely accurate)

So now I can be very precise, it's called Letter From Japan, The Kimono Painter, A modern master of venerable art, and it's by Judith Thurman. The article is about the master yuzen Kimono maker Kunihiko Moriguchi, and it is accompanied by a gorgeous illustration by Ruben Toledo. If it's online at the New Yorker archive, I recommend you read it, it's marvelous.

Ah, ha, I found an extract in the New Yorker archives; click here.

(so now we launch forward to Father's Day 2008 to discover why this particular article came to mind)

Well, I been watching some Japanese TV shows featuring Mangaka of all ages, and it struck me that the description of the Kimono painter's apprenticeship, as described in Judith Thurman's story about Kunihiko Moriguchi, the Kimono painter, is much like the apprenticeship of a cartoonist studying under a Mangaka. Even the description of the artist's studio, with its library of books, tools and its computer station, sounds similar to the studio of the Mangaka. And what Moriguchi says about the job itself, that "...no one becomes a yuzen painter just, or primarily, for the livelihood. It is a way of life.", struck a chord as it would with any illustrator; in fact with anyone involved in any way with a comic strip, comic book, graphic novels, or daily cartooning. The more I watched the Mangaka in their studios, the more I was convinced of this, and the more I came to understand why the job of a cartoonist, especially a manga cartoonist or Mangaka in particular, is so revered in Japan.

Clearly, the fact that the creations of the Mangaka are creator-controlled in a way they often are not in the West, is at least partly responsible for the way the studio set-up of the Mangaka has evolved. The entire project is imagined and put together by the team in the studio, headed by the Mangaka, who sits in a position at the head of affairs, his desk approachable from all sides so that the work can easily be handed to him to check quality control. The work rate of some of these masters is truly awe-inspiring and as you will see from the movie clips (for as long as they are allowed to stay here) the projects they work on benefit from this team approach - which helps us greatly in understanding how one man or woman can create several series with 100 or more volumes. It should also go some way to dispelling the myth that the 'creator' credit suggests little or no involvement by the great man (you know who you are - you might want to go back to your review and change that suggestion).

Whilst we do have creative teams working on projects in the West, even on creator-controlled projects they tend to be geographically spread around, rather than all working together in the one studio. And although the advent of faxes and computer networking and Skype and the like has sped up the process beyond the old snail-mail methods, this Western system is still markedly slower than the Japanese equivalent.

In some studios the Mangaka will only pencil the work, with others in the studio handling the inking. In others studios the Mangaka will ink only the main characters and the apprentices will rule lines, ink backgrounds, handle toning and burnishing, scanning and all the other parts of the process.

The show, in particular, that I was watching as I thought about this is a sort of 'This is your life' or at least a 'This is your Character's Life' of Golgo13 creator Takao Saito. Born in 1936, Takao Saito, is older than the two other Mangaka I've been watching recently, which is nice because I was beginning to fear that everyone creating the manga I enjoy was younger than me - which would just fill me with despair about my pathetically low artistic output. Having said that, I don't think even another 100 years would allow me enough time to produce a body of work as consistently stunning as Takao Saitou has produced.

From his debut in 1955, with Kuuki Danshaku (Air Baron) the man has barely paused to take a breath. In 1959, he helped to establish the comic studio "Gekiga Koubou" which in 1960 became Saito-Productions. In 1964, Saito began the 007 Series, based, of course, on Ian Fleming's famous character. In 1967, Muyonosuke started serialization, and 1968 this series was followed by his magnum-opus, Golgo 13 which is still running today. Never one to rest on his laurels, the Seventies marked the debuts of the serials Barom One, Kagegari , and Survival and since then Kumotori Jinpei, Onihei Hanka-Chou and Shikakenin Fujieda Baian have all been given birth by Saito-Productions. One of the most respected cartoonists in Japan, Takeo Saito won the 21st Shogakukan Manga Award, the Grand Prize of the 31st Japan Cartoonist Awards, the Jury’s Special Award at the 50th Shogakukan Manga Awards and in 2003 he received a Purple Ribbon Medal. He is a director of the Japan Cartoonists Association .

It's also nice because it makes this first film of a Mangaka's studio, providing it is the first time you have seen inside such a studio, seems more in touch with the rituals and traditions of the venerable occupation, whereas the studio of one of the younger creators could look, out of context, like a much more modern set-up; rather than what it is - a modern variation of a traditional Mangaka workplace.

So, hopefully TokyoTV will allow us to keep these parts of the show as essential research and for the purposes of studying and reviewing a rich part of Japanese cultural heritage. I hope they won't mind me doing so, but I've chopped the show into smallish sections, and left out the interview and audience parts so that we, over here, can concentrate on the action in the studio. I've also left in the section about Japanese manga readers increasingly reading their manga on their (much cooler than our) phones.

You can pick up a few volumes of Golgo13 from Viz Media.

Hokusai, Mangaka

1. Katsushika Hokusai's, Ejira in Suruga Province

From time to time we've looked at how difficult it can be to choose the precise moment to illustrate a situation. To be more precise we've seen many instances where illustrators sometimes seem to pick the exact moment before, or the exact moment after, but not the precise moment that sometimes looks like the artist has captured a moment in time.

Now I know what you're thinking: It's so ephemeral that capturing the perfect moment may be more down to chance than planning. Well no, I'd argue that can't be true, because some people manage to do it time after time, Turner for instance, and Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849).

We're not going to concentrate on Hokusai's ubiquitous Great Wave Off Kanagawa, we're going to look instead, at another work from Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji, Ejira in Suruga Province. And we're going to look at that woodblock print from 1831 because we can contrast it with a modern work by Canadian photographer, Jeff Wall, from 1993 called A Sudden Gust of Wind(after Hokusai).

You're likely to have noticed that 'A Sudden Gust of Wind' has 'foregrounded' the wind, and ignored the spiritual centre of Hokusai's work, Mount Fuji. Mount Fuji is the highest mountain in Japan and it is located in Honshu, Japan's largest island. Known locally as Fujisan (note:this shouldn't be confused with the male honorific 'San'), Mount Fuji is a sacred mountain, steeped in history and ringed by lakes and forests, and has, for centuries, been the traditional goal of pilgrimage. In his book, Hokusai said, "It struck me that it would be good to take one thing in life and regard it from many viewpoints, as a focus for my being, and perhaps as a penance for alternatives missed".

So let's look at Hokusai's work again in light of what we now know. Mount Fuji, the sacred object, is the focus of the work, and yet it is hardly catching our eye. It is barely a line, so slight it could be an afterthought. The foreground on the other hand, the blades of grass, the scribes clinging to their hats, and their modesty, are much more detailed. Fujisan, in the distance, seems like a benign influence on the composition, almost an afterthought.

It is a strange composition in many ways. It almost seems, at first glance, too subtle. Not for a moment, do we look at the paper that the wind has ripped from the hands of the people and scattered over the sky and think, 'ah ha, the artist is using the flying paper to balance the canvas'. Perhaps we feel that if Hokusai had wanted a more balanced drawing he would simply have shifted his perspective so that the twin-trees moved further to the right, balancing the drawing. That he has chosen not to manipulate the scene suggests even more that what we are seeing is a snapshot in time. A moment of real contemplation captured in a moment as time itself stood still.

Now take a look at this perfect photo of Fujisan itself, by Japan-based photographer, and perhaps one of the greatest living chroniclers of modern-day Japan, Everett Kennedy Brown:

Everett Kennedy Brown/EPA

It is striking is it not? And I think we can now see, with the benefit of Everett Kennedy Brown's photograph, that Hokusai's rendition of the mountain with that one iconic line is simply perfect. In Myths and Legends of Japan, F. Hadland Davis says:

"Fuji dominates life by it's silent beauty: sorrow is hushed, longing quieted, peace seems to flow down from that changeless home of peace, the peak of the white lotus."

All of which brings us back to Hokusai's most iconic work, Great Wave Off Kanagawa. Look at the print below (click the picture below for a very large copy - 2.5megs). Many people who own the print on calenders or mats or tea-towels are unaware that mighty Fujisan is even part of the picture. And yet, when you do know it is there, you become aware of its power. Fujisan stands there, behind the waves, anchored, impervious to the dangers all around. It is a solid immovable, dependable, sight. Whilst the humans in their little boats are small and frightened, and at the capricious whim of nature and the gods, the great Fujisan looks serenely on.

Not that Fujisan doesn't have a darker side. Its foothills provided a secluded location for the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, who carried out the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground in the 1990s, and at the base of Fujisan lies the ancient forest Aokigahara, Japan's most infamous suicide spot.

2. Jeff Wall's, A Sudden Gust of Wind(after Hokusai).

A closer look at A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) by Jeff Wall, informs us that this vacuous photo, lacking any depth or spiritual connotations, is a tribute to the Art World who have invested value in it. It can be found in London's Tate Gallery, if you have half a mind to look.