manga eiga ron

[M Arnold]

The Ghibli issue of Manga eigaron is now out. I picked up a copy over the 
weekend. Comparing it to the 1992 Iwanami issue, it looks like the contents 
are all the same with two short additions at the end: a timeline of 
Imamura's life and a thirteen page essay by Takahata Isao, "Imamura Taihei 
kara eta mono."

After my last post, I was asked to elaborate on my "mixed feelings" 
regarding Ghibli's reprint of the book. I think the main ingredient in that 
mix is my impression that in the last several years, Ghibli has been taking 
on increasing authority as a sort of representative or guardian of (or dare 
I say, homogenizing force in) the Japanese animation community. As much as I 
like Takahata's films, I am becoming a little weary of his speeches and 
publications on anime's cultural roots, or which parts of Japanese animation 
history are significant, etc. In this case I'd rather ignore the Ghibli 
endorsement and see what kind of challenges Imamura's work can pose against 
Ghibli anime discourse.

When I grabbed Manga eigaron I stumbled across another new anime related 
book--"'Japanimeshon' wa naze yabureru ka" by Otsuka Eiji and Osawa Nobuaki, 
released earlier this month by Kadokawa. I've only started to look at it, 
but the book flatly denies any kind of unique "cultural" basis for Japanese 
animation, turning to Disney for the introduction of "kyarakuta" and manga 
culture in Japan and arguing that "Japanese anime/manga is essentially a 
sub-species [ashu] of the 'Disney style' [of animation/comics] that was 
transplanted into Japan, and the internationality of contemporary 
Japanimation represents nothing more than the repossession of this 
sub-species--which was raised in Japan over the last several decades--by the 
suzerain state . . . " "The internationality and universality of Japanese 
comics is the internationality and universality of Disney, which we received 
twice; before the war and during the Occupation. . . ."

http://www.kadokawa.co.jp/book/bk_search.php?pcd=200507000113

Michael Arnold