Recommended: "Anime-ted Japan"

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Headline: Anime-ted Japan
Byline: Gloria Goodale Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Date: 06/24/2005

(TOKYO)As taxi driver Osamu Nozawa waits for his next fare, he often reaches
for his favorite manga to pass the time - a small graphic magazine
about a sniper called GoruGo 13. While a grown man reading a comic book
might seem unusual in other parts of the world, in this small island
nation Mr. Nozawa is only one of millions of consumers of anime (as
animation is known here). "I've been an anime fan since I was a child,"
says Nozawa with a laugh as he navigates the busy midday traffic. "So
is everyone I know."

What began as a distinctly Japanese style of visual storytelling has
gone global. As culture watchers from Tokyo to London point out, anime
is far more than Pikachu and PowerPuff girls. The art form has achieved
what no other indigenous cultural expression has managed to do: become
widespread enough to challenge America's stranglehold on entertainment.

"It is one of the only true rivals to American pop culture," says Kaoru
Mfaume, vice president of acquisitions for Manga Entertainment.

"Westerners tend to look at the style and think it's simple," says Al
Kahn, CEO of 4Kids Entertainment, the firm responsible for launching
the worldwide Pokemon craze. "But that's the secret to its success,
especially with young people, because the Japanese [value] the story
and writing more than the style."

The form emerged nearly a half-century ago from a war-torn Japan that
was struggling to make sense of its losses. Japan has a long pictorial
tradition and pictographs were a natural form of popular entertainment
for artists, says Mr. Mfaume. "They began expressing all their
fantasies about the future," he adds, pointing to the Japanese manga,
or comic books, which became the foundation for the film and TV
incarnations. "Everything they feared about death and war and life and
peace after nearly being annihilated in the war, went into anime," he
says.

The form first emerged with the work of Osamu Tezuka, who incorporated
certain cinematic elements that began to distinguish anime from other
forms of animation such as Walt Disney's familiar cel animation, says
Joanne Bernardi, associate professor of Japanese film and media studies
at the University of Rochester, New York.

"Tezuka was clearly preoccupied with ... a response to Japan's national
psyche as it emerged from World War II," says Professor Bernardi. "The
devastation of the nation physically, economically, psychically had a
lot to do with his choice of subject matter - good versus evil, the
conflict between humanmade technology and nature, even the basic
questions of the meaning of humanity."

Anime still reflects these early concerns but has now morphed into a
wide range of artistic expressions. However, says Bernardi, it is still
characterized by its ability to accommodate what Americans might
consider "uncartoonlike" or adult subjects "with a sophisticated sense
of both narrative and visual style." This includes everything from the
Saturday morning cartoons of "Sailor Moon" to bleak, psychosexual adult
novels, to the entire world of "cos-play" in which fans adopt the
costumes of their favorite characters. It also includes the bestselling
works of perhaps the country's most internationally well-known anime
artist, Hayao Miyazaki, whose latest film, "Howl's Moving Castle,"
opened earlier this month in the United States.

Mr. Miyazaki won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2003 for
"Spirited Away," which was a top box-office draw in Japan. His other
films include "Porco Rosso" and "Princess Mononoke." Tokyo's Ghibli
Museum is devoted to his work. The playful building underlines how
seriously the Japanese take their anime. Crowds of all ages file
quietly through rooms papered with his drawings, studying the notations
and elegant pictures. "We like anime," says 20-something Rie Tokura,
"because it is not American. We like it especially because it is
Japanese."

Scholars outside Japan have begun to take anime seriously because they
say it serves as a window onto deeper trends. "I would more accurately
call the phenomenon the emergence of an art movement or way of thinking
and viewing the world," says Marjorie Manifold, assistant professor of
art education at Indiana University, "just as Impressionism presented a
new way for artists, musicians, and philosophers to view the world at
the turn of the 19th to 20th century." The Internet has helped the
style spread from country to country. The fans who dress as their
favorite characters are part of a larger cultural shift as well, one
she describes as life as theater and theater as life.

Anime does have its dark side, says culture writer Masanobu Sugatsuke,
editor in chief of Composite Magazine in Tokyo. This includes
everything from the violent pornographic subculture to what he calls
the "nerd factor."

The streets of Akihabara, once known strictly as the electronics hub of
Tokyo, are now filled with young men in pursuit of the growing number
of anime shops. "These guys just hang out, [they have] no other life,"
he says, standing on the sidewalk next to a small knot of anime fans. A
young woman nearby, who does not want her name used, adds, "many of
them don't know how to love a real woman because all they know are
these silly anime women."

Nonetheless, anime continues to earn new fans - and please the old.
Tamotsu Ohnishi grew up with Astro-Boy, one of the earliest
international symbols of anime. The cab driver, who's in his 60s, says
he still reads the mangas and likes the movies of Miyazaki. "It's
Japanese, but it's all over the world," he says. "It's just anime now."

A director who stands as one of Japan's national treasures

Mitaka, Japan - Newcomers to Hayao Miyazaki's world often wonder why so
many of his films feature a plucky young heroine. A stroll through
Miyazaki's creative process at the Ghibli Museum here makes the answer
clear. Deceptively simple images of children reveling in natural
settings - fighting the power of machines and triumphing against
malevolent specters - illustrate the important role of the child. In
the timeless fashion of spiritual teachers and prophets, this man whom
many regard as the greatest living practitioner of the art form, takes
the innocent child as his foil for the evils of the world and as an
agent of change.

"He sees the world through the eyes of a child and makes the truth
appealing to everyone," says Rie Tokura, a 20-something fan from Tokyo.

Miyazaki is often treated as a cross between a rock idol and a head of
state. He travels with a large retinue, and his many assistants seem to
be in awe of him. But this is not an accurate picture of the man, say
those who know him. "He's a very normal man," says Kaoru Mfuame. "When
he is working through a new idea, he will often go down to the local
Pachinko parlor to mingle with everyday people."

This emphasis on innocence and simplicity is what allows anime to serve
as a window into the Japanese soul, says William Ellis, assistant
professor of English at Penn State and a past president of the
International Society for Contemporary Legend Research. "It certainly
reflects the Japanese lack of distinction between religion and 'real
life' concerns," he says. "Everyday social issues tend to get
transformed into mythological adventures in anime - not to exaggerate
or dramatize them, but to point out that if we are all
angels-in-training on this earth, our daily adventures are mythological
in nature."

(c) Copyright 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

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