Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2018

Dual Legacies: MAVO, Manga, and the Avant-Garde in Interwar Japan

Andrea Horbinski

June 15th, 2018
18:30-20:00
Room 301, 3F, Building 10, Sophia University


The leading creators of the two most significant movements in manga in the 1920s and 30s, proletarian and children's manga, have a common origin in the short-lived but extremely generative radical art movement MAVO. Both Yanase Masamu (1900-45) and Tagawa Suiho (1899-1989) participated in MAVO in the early 1920s, and after its demise they put its principles into practice in their manga: Yanase was particularly influenced by German artist George Grosz (1893-1959), while Tagawa's smash hit manga Norakuro (1931-41) incorporated diverse influences that ranged from Constructivism to Charlie Chaplin. Not coincidentally, the wartime state took a dim view of both men's work, but MAVO and the European avant-garde thus exerted a lasting influence on the history of manga overall, as the manga output of both men challenged the existing consensus on what "manga" was, extending its scope in terms of subject matter, artistic strategies, and audiences.


Andrea Horbinski holds a PhD in modern Japanese history with a designated emphasis in new media from the University of California, Berkeley. Her book manuscript, "Manga's Global Century," is a history of Japanese comics from 1905-89. She has discussed anime, manga, fandom, and Japanese history at conventions and conferences on five continents, and her articles have appeared in /Transformative Works and Cultures, Convergence, and Mechademia/. She served on the Board of Directors of the Organization for Transformative Works, ending as Secretary of the Board, from 2012-15, and was elected as Secretary of the Board of the Ada Initiative from 2015-17. In her spare time, she edits video for fun and can be found tweeting as @horbinski.

http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/html/events/2018-2019/180615_Hobrinski.pdf



Language: English / No Prior registration necessary
This talk is organized by Professor David H. Slater (FLA)


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