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Historical
Manga,
A usually dealing with samurai,
are among the most popular types
of Japanese manga in the West.
These are also referred to using
the term "chanbara"
an onomatopoeia for the sound
of swords clashing together. Typically
set anywhere from late medieval
Japan of the 16th Century to the
end of the Edo period (1603-1868)
some remain close to historical
fact and others are highly fictionalized.
In prewar Japan, historical dramas
popular among the older generation.
Historical dramas in manga form,
however, have followed a slightly
different course.
There is
nothing corresponding to historical
drama in the prewar predecessors
on contemporary manga. More typical
of the Taisho period (1912-1926)
were humorous children's manga
like Miyao Shigeo's Dango Kushisuke
Manyuki ("The adventures
of Dango Kushisuke"), the
protagonist of which is named
after round mochi balls on a skewer.
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For
seven years after Japan's defeat
in WWII no manga emerged which
dealt with historical themes.
These same years also saw the
disappearance of the battlefield
dramas which had been so popular
during the war. This was a result
of restrictions on freedom os
speech imposed by the Allied (mostly
American) Occupation forbidding
the production and distribution
of novels, dramas, films, and
manga dealing with samurai, martial
arts or the Japanese military.
The ostensible purpose behind
these restrictions was to prevent
the resurgence of militaristic
sentiments. The implementation
of the San Francisco Peace Accord
in 1952 brought an end to these
restrictions and Japanese were
once more free to enjoy historical
and wartime dramas.
This
was also the time of the first
boom in contemporary manga, when
works like the 1952 Igaguri-kun
(Master Crew Cut) and the 1954
Akado Suzunosuke, about a great
swordsman who wore a red suit
of armor, were overwhelmingly
popular among children. Both of
these were written by Fukui Eiichi,
but the latter was taken over
by Takeuchi Tsunayoshi when Fukui
dropped out soon after the beginning
of the serialization. Both works
spawned an enormous number of
derivatives and sequels.
In
terms of both narrative and description
these manga were explicitly intended
for children and typically served
up a moral together with a good
deal of humor. This is attributable
to the fact that they were produced
before the transformation of manga
that took place in the late 1960s.
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