In our last video we learnt what kashihon’ya (rental book shop) are, and how big an influence they had for the development of a kind of alternative manga produced solely to be distributed in the kashihon’ya circuit, that is to say, “kashihon manga” (rental manga books). As kashihon manga publishers needed more and more products to feed the hungry kashihon’ya circuit, they hired young, inexperienced artists, as well as artists who were not good enough to get published by the mainstream publishing houses. This means that the vast majority of these works were poorly written and drawn, but of course some of them stood out.
Opportunities for young artists mean of course a door wide open for promising talent to start working as professionals. Kashihon manga, as “alternative” as it was in the beginning, provided a chance to a lot of the most important mangaka in history, who made their debut in this market. In the 60s and the 70s, many of these huge masters of manga helped shape what we know now as “seinen manga” (manga for adult readers) or “gekiga” (dramatic drawings). Takao Saitō (Golgo 13), Yoshiharu Tsuge (Neji-shiki), Sanpei Shirato (Kamui-den), Yoshihiro Tatsumi (A Drifting Life), Hiroshi Hirata (Satsuma Gishiden), Gōseki Kojima (Lone Wolf and Cub), to name a few, are examples of kashihon mangaka.
In this video, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, actual father of the word “gekiga”, tells us what the manga industry was like back in the 1950s, when he made his debut, and why he and his fellows decided that a new name was necessary for the kind of comics they created.
(Also on Vimeo)
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