Educators, Activists Target Stereotyped Comics
by Brian Covert — Special to the Black Issues
OSAKA, JAPAN — Osamu Tezuka, the late Japanese “God of Comics,” is revered as the artist who launched a postwar revolution in the comic book industry here with his sensitivity and unique style.
U.S. audiences best know Tezuka from his cartoons Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy) and Jungle Taitei (Kimba the White Lion), two of his numerous works regarded as comic classics. Those and many other Tezuka masterpieces, however, have come under fire by U.S. educators and Japanese grassroots activists alleging blatant racism in his comics — charges being taken seriously within the African American community.
“These comics are not comical at all,” said Shirley Richmond, director of the 850-member Jonah community organization in Jackson, Tennessee. “They display a terrible racial insensitivity which I hope is not typical of Japanese people.”
A nationwide letter-writing campaign expressing such sentiments to Japanese publishers was recently started by two faculty members at Northern Kentucky University: Yasue Kuwahara, a communications professor from Tokyo, and Dr. Michael Washington, director of Afro-American Studies. Kuwahara says the purpose of the campaign is to pressure Japanese companies to stop selling manga (cartoons) that contain demeaning, outdated images of Blacks.
“My greatest concern is that seeing these images will make (Japanese) people believe they are true on a subconscious level,” Dr. Harriette W. Richard, visiting psychology professor at Northern Kentucky University and board member of the U.S. Association of Black Psychologists, wrote in another such letter.
The U.S. campaign has its origin in a similar protest by an Osaka-based group, the Association to Stop Racism Against Blacks (ASRAB). Kuwahara said that after consulting with the Osaka group this summer, she and Washington decided to open a U.S. branch of ASRAB and start the manga campaign to further expose the issue of Japanese-style discrimination toward Blacks.
U.S. and Japanese critics alike claim that Tezuka, like other well-known Japanese manga artists before and after him, have consistently drawn Blacks with grossly distorted physical features and in degrading roles as cannibals, sexual barbarians, subordinates to white people and generally more animal-like than human. These images, critics say, stem directly from traditional western stereotypes.
The manga protests are endorsed by many African Americans in business, leading educational, religious and political circles. Among them, John B. Ferron, director of Baltimore’s municipal Community Relations Commission, has publicly called the images “an absolute insult” to Blacks.
Toshiji Arita, vice-chairperson of Osaka ASRAB, estimates that about half of the 300 Tezuka comic serials printed by the influential Kodansha publishing company alone contain elements of racism. Among the classics being protested are Shin Takarajima (New Treasure Island, 1947), Hi no Tori (Phoenix, 1954), Chikyu o Nomu (Swallowing the Earth, 1968) and Kami no Toride (Paper Fort, 1974).
Another Tezuka comic under fire is a 1971 cartoon titled Chojin no Taikei (System of the Bird People), which contains scenes of a racial battle between Blacks and whites in southern Africa. The comic strip ends with a Black youth raping a white woman inside a barn, during which the couple is put to death by a pack of morally righteous “superbirds.”
Renowned Japanese manga artists like Shotaro Ishinomori, a Tezuka protégé, defend such characterizations of Blacks as natural exaggeration in cartoons.
“Comics are the art of deformation…although cartoonists have no intention to discriminate,” Ishinomori was quoted as saying in an October 1990 Shukan Bunshun magazine article. “Tezuka produced humanistic works and hated discrimination. …I suppose most people don’t think (his work) is racist.”
The majority of reply letters to Osaka ASRAB, co-written by Tezuka Productions Inc. and major Japanese publishing companies, declare their intention to continue selling many of the manga under protest. Any racial stereotypes found in Tezuka’s work, the company officials explain, were purely unintentional and due to outside influences.
“We have no choice but to admit that Tezuka might have depicted Black people in a stereotyped manner, since the (postwar) culture of white people influenced his perception of Blacks,” according to Kodansha spokesman Hiroshi Sugiyama.
Tezuka Productions defends the work of its namesake as a Japanese “cultural heritage” that cannot be revised or altered. Instead, the company has proposed to include this yet-unpublished disclaimer in selected issues of Tezuka’s comics:
To readers: Some of Tezuka’s works contain many illustrations of foreigners, including Black people and Asians, that exaggerate the appearance of their descendants. There is a great difference between the drawings and those people nowadays Such methods of illustration have been pointed out as being discriminatory toward Blacks and other foreigners. As long as some people find these drawings offensive and embarrassing, we consider them inappropriate.
In tribute to the manga master, city officials in Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture (western Japan), are planning to build a museum solely exhibiting cartoons by the late Tezuka, who grew up in the area. He died in 1989 at age 60.
The 1 billion yen ($7.5 million) “Osamu Tezuka Memorial Hall,” slated for completion in 1993, will be a multi-story building displaying at various intervals more than 150,000 units of Tezuka’s complete works, including the manga now being protested.
“We are quite honored to establish a museum here to proudly introduce such a world-class Japanese cartoonist — indeed, a philosopher who passed on his ideas to posterity through the medium of manga,” said Minoru Yamashita, planning director at Takarazuka City Hall.
Both Takayuki Matsutani, president of Tezuka Productions, and Tezuka’s widow, Etsuko, have declined to comment on the ongoing protests.