The Merging of Eastern and Western Traditions: Manga and the Power of the Classical Object Amanda Potter (Open University) and Guendalina Taietti (University of Liverpool) In its native Japan, manga is a well-respected, popular art...
moreThe Merging of Eastern and Western Traditions: Manga and the Power of the Classical Object
Amanda Potter (Open University) and Guendalina Taietti (University of Liverpool)
In its native Japan, manga is a well-respected, popular art form, but since the 1980s its appeal has also grown abroad, particularly in the US and Europe, where it found fertile ground among local traditions of producing comics. Like manga in Japan, in France and Belgium comic books are not viewed negatively as a low art form, suitable only for children, as was the case in the UK and the US. More recently in the UK, as elsewhere in Europe, manga, alongside other traditions of comics, have gained a significant audience along with wide critical acclaim. In 2019 the British Museum organised a major exhibition on manga. However, to date, there has been limited critical attention paid to manga by classicists. This paper seeks to address this gap, because like many other popular art forms, manga draws on tropes from different cultures, including Graeco-Roman mythology. The manga texts we explore in our joint paper blend European and Asian traditions, but what distinguishes them is that their classical connections are primarily linked to specific material objects. This is unsurprising, as three of the texts were specifically commissioned by two famous European museums, the British Museum and the Louvre, as made explicit in their titles.
In Guardians of The Louvre the famous Winged Victory of Samothrace comes to life. In Rohan at the Louvre, the manga artist Rohan visits the Louvre basement and passes several classical objects, which act as clues for his quest. In Professor Munakata's British Museum Adventure museum employee Chris Caryatid protects the museum, and Stonehenge, from thieves. Chris literally holds up the museum, as the ancient caryatids did ancient Greek temples (raising the problematic separation of the four columns of the Erechtheion temple, given that one of the caryatids is exhibited in the British Museum, while her sisters are in the Acropolis Museum). In the Legendary Musings of Professor Munakata, an accidental discovery leads the protagonist to discover previously unknown connections between the ancient Hittites, Chinese astronomy, and Greek and Japanese mythology.
In all four of our case studies ancient objects are integral to the story, they influence the characters and drive the plot. Through the art of manga these objects can gain new audiences, widening their global impact, even among readers who have not had the opportunity to see the objects in situ in the museums. In a post-COVID world, when potentially the availability of museum collections online will gain even more impetus, the role of such texts in creating an interest in ancient objects, and the ancient world more generally, becomes ever more important.
