matt-thorn
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(Date Posted:04/10/2006 6:45 PM)
Hi. As far as I know, no one has written extenisvely in English about what you call "visual metaphors" in manga. I have studied the subject, and I've discussed it in classes and public lectures (in English as well as Japanese), but I have yet to put all my ideas down on paper. It's possible, though, that Jaqueline Berndt has written about the subject in either English or German, since her field is aesthetics and she writes about manga.
I can tell you my most basic idea about the subject, though: I believe that these metaphors "evolved" as the manga industry transformed to a mass-production system in the 1960s. As manga magazines changed from a monthly to a weekly format, and the number of magazines increased, manga had to be created quickly and read quickly. The "metaphors" you talk about--I call them "shorthand"--helped that process. As you know, they are extremely efficient ways of conveying information.
You should note, though, that this shorthand evolves constantly. Visual metaphors that were used very seriously 30 years ago are now seen as "camp" and are used only ironically. (For examples, a character's eyes turning white when the character is shocked by something.) So if you examine manga from the 1970s (such as Hagio's _They Were Eleven!_), you should realize that many of the visual metaphors are "out of date," and have been replaced by other forms of expression.
I hope this is helpful!
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Matt Thorn
Department of Comics Production
Kyoto Seika University
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bernhardwien
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(Date Posted:04/10/2006 7:27 PM)
Dear Prof. Thorn,
Thank you very much for your kind reply. I think your idea about conveying information more quickly with those visual shorthands will be the central idea of my little presentation. In business they use metaphors, too. Maybe I could mention that if I find examples from companies...
The Jaqueline Berndt tip is very useful too. I just checked her website and might be able to find something there.
For any other literature tips (even in Japanese : ) I would be very grateful.
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matt-thorn
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(Date Posted:04/10/2006 7:44 PM)
You're welcome. Just be sure to give me credit for the "shorthand" idea, please. (^_^)
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Matt Thorn
Department of Comics Production
Kyoto Seika University
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Reima
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(Date Posted:04/13/2006 8:43 PM)
As a part of my studies I have also tried to somehow define manga experssion. I have studied narratives of manga from the visual viewpoint.
Being an olg comics enthusiastic and amateur artist is quite helpful here. Semiotic studies concerning comics and secquential ar are quite easy to find at least here in Europe.
Bernhardwien, if you are interested on visual metaphors and symbolism this book might be helpfull:
Frutiger, Adrian. 1998. Signs and Symbols: their design and meaning. USA. Watson-Guptil Publications.
Symbol (and metaphor) are words of many and complicate explanatons. The research semiotics have done hepls thou.
Matt Thorn's texts have been a great help for me and that's how I found my way here. Eg. reading Comics Journal #269. Thanks for a pair of superb articles!
On explaining differences between manga and western comics, mangas high reading pace is a good tool. It explains a lot. Mr Thorn, you claim that these metaphors or shorthand symbols were born at the sixties? Is it really so?
I've been trying to trace down the origins of "sweat drop" and "anger veins" but due the difficulties of getting my hands on manga published on 60's it is quite impossible. Thou most of the mangas unique and basic effects really seem have born on 50s and 60s! My quess is that the situation that boosted manga evolution continued to the 70's? At that time manga (as a media) was facing competition against television, and this might have been one catalyst that led to new inventions?
However I must disagree about using term "shorthand" without connecting it to a larger context. The hierachy of methods Secquential art uses, as I see it, goes like this:
At the highest level you find Pictures, Text and Markings. Two of them are obvious but the term Markings means generally the same to the comics what it means to the text. With markings you are able to enhance the expression.
Markings as a term covers the onomatopoesia and those symbols comics expression uses. Onomatopoesia is what we normally call sound effects (or kakimoji in Japanese). As you know, in Japan it is more than sound you can hear but still... The rest are symbols like balloons, speed lines and other symbols. All markings (ant the text) you find from the meta -level of comics and they are supposed to bring the whole thing alive. Markings are needed to compensate shorcomings that printed expression has (eg. sound, odours, etc.). You might like to call part of these markings as shortwriting, but I call them just symbols.
Markings being the more scientific term, I also talk about effects (compared to the term of movies FX). I have found talking about effects the best way of describing some fenomen manga artists use. One of these is the Paper doll -effect. I just had to invent this "Paper doll -effect" term, since I do not know how the japanese themselves call this sort of pin-up pictures (Mr Thorn talks with Hagio on CJ p. 172)?
disclaimer: Basically I write Finnish. So, Gomen, if I stumble with my words and sentences. ^_^
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matt-thorn
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(Date Posted:04/14/2006 5:32 AM)
Reima,
Your idea of "markings" is certainly a useful distinction. My term "shorthand" is a very general one that includes what you call markings, but also includes many other kinds of "shortcuts," including techniques for page layout, stylized ways of drawing certain kinds of images, and even standardized narrative tropes. I did not mean to imply that there was no such shorthand until the 1960s, and that it was suddenly "invented." There have always been such tropes throughout the long history of sequential art, but when manga production and demand began to soar dramatically in the 1960s, there was suddenly a need for a much larger, standardized repertoire. I believe the sweat drop has been used since before World War II, although in recent years it appears alone in speech balloons, far away from any character's forehead. The same is true of the "anger vein," though I believe its introduction was more recent (perhaps the 1970s?). In the 1970s there were different popular ways of expressing anger comically, such as teeth turning into fangs, eyes turning white, and the classic steam coming out of the ears. Such shorthand is easy to use in comical situations, because in those situations it is all right to be silly. In serious scenes, such as when the artist is trying to make the reader cry, they have to be used with great care and sublety or they will ruin the scene. The shorthand used in such scenes is, in my opinion, more interesting, because it is almost invisible, and the reader is rarely aware of it. Parallel techniques can be found in most entertainment media, including movies, novels and pop music. "Independent" or "artsy" creators generally try to avoid or subvert such shorthand, whereas "mainstream" creators rely on them heavily. This is because most readers (viewers, listeners) have unconsciously absorbed this shorthand over many years, and such shorthand makes it much easier to understand and follow a story/work. This is one reason I call Japan the Holloywood off comics: They have developed a repertoire of techniques that a huge body of mainstream readers recognizes and feels comfortable, just as Hollywood has done over the past century. But, as in Hollywood, this shorthand also restricts expression and leads to homogeneity. But maintaining "accessibility" while avoiding "cliche" has always been a challenge for popular entertainment.
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Matt Thorn
Department of Comics Production
Kyoto Seika University
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Reima
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(Date Posted:04/14/2006 9:16 PM)
Reply to : matt-thorn Thank you for your kind answer. Since I've an urge to discuss about these things, I'd suggest you to start a new thread on _Terminology of manga and the research of comics_. Or put it in the section of "Sequential Art and Academia" and change the definition of the area a little bit? On the other hand discussing about these things is quite valid under the label shoujo too. They seem to have invented almost all the major manga effects amongst girls comics. :-) I just found some comics related terms in the web: http://www.student.kuleuven.ac.be/~m8107966/terminology.html But still this terminology seems to be quite limited source if the main goal is to study sequential art and discuss critically about its visual conventions. Summa summarum, I think that most of the terms have been invented by comics artists. At first they were the people who had the need to explain things to each other. Their need was to solve some practical problems. On my opinnion this has lead to situation where some of terms lack and some of them are missleading or thought-limiting. We have for example a term "gutter", which does't help a bit when one is trying to understand comics. :-)
Reima,Your idea of "markings" is certainly a useful distinction. My term "shorthand" is a very general one that includes what you call markings, but also includes many other kinds of "shortcuts," including techniques for page layout, stylized ways of drawing certain kinds of images, and even standardized narrative tropes.
I understand. But then - what in manga or comics is not "shorthand"? When I was (in my previous posting) talking about larger context, I actually meant a system which could help setting all the things "happening" in the comics expression, in to a perspective. Perhaps that typology could help people to understand laws of comics. (or something like that) I am under impression that separating Pictures and Text from the "Shorthand expressions" (or Markings) relies basically on the assumption that the smallest unit of comics expression is one frame. In manga this "frame" may be semiotically quite different from it's western counterparts, but still... Nevertheless, when analysing the narrative it is possible to set frames in juxtaposition and compare things like transitions between them. Also when looking at the pictures (and their texts) we get the discourse and may observe different denotations and connotations of expression. Closer to the grass root level, we can see for example how comics or manga imitates narrative methods of movies. And in the frames we can see these markings as a separate part. Of course they are not totally separate but now we can observe them as icons, indexes or symbols. ...Or use some other kind of classification trying to reveal their meanings. Talking about manga/comics effects and separating them from the markings may not be theoretically easy, but to me it feels natural. Markings which exist inside the frames are connected to the comics characters or the things they are doing (eg. the things the creator tries to express through the single picture frames.) That was not a definition but it hopefully describes what I mean. Effecs (or their inflences) are usually "bigger" than Markings. Like you said they exist:
In serious scenes, such as when the artist is trying to make the reader cry, they have to be used with great care and sublety or they will ruin the scene.
The shorthand used in such scenes is, in my opinion, more interesting, because it is almost invisible, and the reader is rarely aware of it.
Parallel techniques can be found in most entertainment media, including movies, novels and pop music.
Or are you referring to symbolism of/in the pictures? Also talking about markings is related to the idea that comics (or manga) is a language. Sequential art expression fills some definitions of the language, you know. (Single pictures do usually not) Still I do not claim manga is a visual language in a way eg. written Chinese is. So in this case (manga seen as a language) we may use theories developed amongst Philosopher in the fields of Semiotics, Narration and Languages researching. On purpose I concentrated to describe you the usage of this term "Marking" and its meanings. There are many other interesting aspects on your writing which I hope to be able to talk about later. The term Marking has been used at least in Sweden (where Mangnus Knuttson introduced it in 1986) and in Finland. Pekka A.Manninen's Doctoral dissertation on comics (Faculty of Behavioral Sciences, 1995, University of Tampere, Finland) uses the term in a way I've discribed. As far as I've understood Knuttsons and Manninens philosophy is based on semiotic research of Umberto Eco and other European semioticians. Are you familiar with Eco's papers on semiotics of Peanuts and Johnny Hazard? If you could provide me a original Japanese label or name for these colouring book style pictures (or tecnique) invented in shoujo during 1950s, I would be really gratefull.
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