Manga Medievalism: The Japanese Middle Ages

The establishment of the Japanese Middle Ages is built on a combination of the adoption of ‘what [Japanese scholars] described as European historical methods and a European historical apparatus’ and comparatism between elements respectively from medieval Europe and pre-Meiji Japan.2 Keirstead, ‘Inventing Medieval Japan’, p. 51. That Japan too has a ‘medieval’ past loaded with elements equivalent to the defining features of medieval Europe was also another reason given by the early generations of Japanese medievalists, as explained by Ikegami and Matsumura. Ikegami and Matsumura, ‘La famille médiévale’, p. 103. As Thomas Keirstead has conclusively demonstrated, the reconstruction of Japanese history itself is led by, among other late Meiji intellectuals, a ‘triumvirate’ of medievalists who studied in Europe and the United States and whose expertise, intriguingly, clearly focused on the history of the Germanic people. Disregarding the dynasty-based periodisation of history of the Chinese and Confucian traditions, Japanese history is now divided into ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern periods, thus creating a narrative of steady progression. Among them, the ‘medieval’ period has been identified in one view as lasting from the end of the Heian period (1185) to the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate or the Edo period (1603): an era of upheaval and political unrest sandwiched between two periods renowned for peace and stability.3 Keirstead, ‘Inventing Medieval Japan’, pp. 68–9. The Heian period is marked by an imperial court and courtly culture modelled on the Chinese court in the Tang Dynasty, and the Tokugawa Shogunate is believed to be responsible for a series of social and cultural declines that would have led to Japan to the fate of Qing China, had it not been ‘corrected’ by the Meiji Reformation. To locate Japan’s roots thus in the ‘middle’ period allows Japan to separate itself from China – seen as a necessary condition for Japan to form its own distinctive identity, while the martial function of the Samurai class reinforces and legitimises the militaristic nature of Imperial Japan. In another view, the end of the Japanese Middle Ages could be extended to 1868, i.e., the beginning of the Meiji period, allowing for the inclusion of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which is also considered to be ‘feudal’;4 Oleg Benesch, ‘Bushido, Chivalry, and the Crusades in Japan from the 1870s to the First World War’, in Mike Horswell (ed.), Nationalising the Crusades (London, 2022), pp. 98–121, at p. 102. under this periodisation, the problems and the declines of the Edo period also become ‘crises and turning points’, in which the national character of modern Japan was forged. Once framed as such, it is not difficult to find ‘equivalences’ between the two pasts and, henceforth, to re-interpret Japanese history in a medieval European paradigm. For instance, for Keirstead’s ‘triumvirate’, the thirteenth-century transformation in Japanese Buddhist thought can be understood through the Reformation, the legal system in ‘medieval’ Japan through that of the Franks, and the rise of warrior power in Japan through the Norse invasions.5 Keirstead, ‘Inventing Medieval Japan’, p. 56. More generally, however, the comparatism tends to dwell on imagery that is or can be loosely associated with ‘feudalism’: daimyō (feudal lord), tenshu (castle keep), and samurai.6 As we are not experts on Japanese history, we refer to the scholarship of Oleg Benesch, whose monograph Inventing the Way of the Samurai maps out in great detail the re-modelling of bushido – the alleged code of behaviour for the samurai class – based on the notion of chivalry and gentlemanship of Victorian Britain by Yukio Ozaki (1858–1954), and its development henceforth. Oleg Benesch, Inventing the Way of the Samurai: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushidō in Modern Japan (Oxford, 2014; paperback edn, 2016), in particular at pp. 45–56. It is noteworthy that the conceptualisation of bushidō itself as a codified system of samurai behaviour is a construct after the samurai class has long lost their military function under the Tokugawa Shogunate – in other words, it is born out of a nostalgic sentiment during the Edo period for ‘the good ol’ days’ when samurai were warriors instead of administrative personnel. The most famous treatise on bushidō, Hagakure (Hidden by Leaves), was composed in the early eighteenth century and was not rediscovered and popularised until the early twentieth century. More recently, Oleg Benesch has expanded his research focus to examine Meiji Japan’s adoption and adaptation of nineteenth-century medievalism, particularly from Britain. Using the reconstructed Nagoya Castle as a case study, he traces the changing attitudes of the Meiji intellectuals towards Japan’s own past, which follows a similar trajectory to the rising cultural and political significance of ukiyo-e prints and manga: tenshu as a feudal symbol with a high maintenance cost was initially rejected as obsolete but was then ‘rediscovered’ at home and integrated into the narrative of a national identity.7 Oleg Benesch, ‘Medievalism, Modernity, and Militarism in Imperial Japan’, in Ayelet Zohar and Alison J. Miller (eds), The Visual Culture of Meiji Japan: Negotiating the Transition to Modernity (New York, 2021), pp. 58–74, at p. 60. In the case of Nagoya Castle and Japanese castles in general, this on the one hand has to do with their popularity among foreign visitors, who interpret these castles within ‘the medievalist ideals they had absorbed at home’ and eagerly embrace them as such; on the other hand, Japanese visitors and dignitaries to Europe, notably Britain, who were fascinated by the restored castles in Europe and brought the same ‘medievalist ideals’ back home, bear some responsibility.8 Ibid., pp. 64–5, where Benesch supports his arguments with the success enjoyed by one of the two shachihoko figures at the 1873 Vienna World’s Fair: taken from the roof of the Nagoya Castle keep, both figures were initially going to be melted down, but were salvaged by the Austrian consultant hired by the Japanese government to assemble the exhibition; as a result, the other figure was also exhibited across Japan. Likewise, the to-be-demolished Nagoya Castle itself was also preserved and reconstructed into ‘a Japanese equivalent of the Tower of London’. As a result, the familiarity of the terminology allows the Japanese past to be easily framed and received in an internationally recognisable medievalist paradigm, which further enables modern Japan, a country so geographically and historically remote from medieval Europe, to share with Europe and the United States the ‘unequal power’ in ‘setting cultural trends’.9 Weisl and Squillace, ‘Introduction’, p. 8. For Japanese medievalism in both cinema and tourism, see also Jennifer Frost and Warwick Frost, Medieval Imaginaries in Tourism, Heritage and the Media (London, 2021), pp. 216–26.

As far as the manga media is concerned, the general fascination with medieval Japan and with samurai in particular has been instrumental for its introduction and success in the US and European markets. According to Frederik L. Schodt, the first manga that entered the US market is Nakazawa Keiji’s semi-autographical atom-bomb manga Barefoot Gen (1973–87); it was an individual endeavour by Leonard Rifas, the owner of a small San Francisco publishing house, who in 1980 diligently reformatted this manga based on western reading habits. However, Barefoot Gen was a commercial failure and had to be prematurely curtailed.10 Schodt, ‘The View from North America’, p. 19. Before Rifas, a group of peace activists tried to introduce Barefoot Gen to America for its educational and anti-war values in the format of a book series in 1978 and 1979, but to little success. Having obtained the group’s consent to use their translation, Rifas endeavoured to publish Barefoot Gen in its original comic form but had to end it after only two issues. Roger Sabin, ‘Barefoot Gen in the US and UK: Activist Comic, Graphic Novel, Manga’, in Berndt and Richter (eds), Reading Manga, pp. 37–57, at pp. 41–2. This is in contrast to the high-profile introduction and popularity of Kozure ōkami (literally, ‘wolf carrying his child’) or Lone Wolf & Cub (1970–76) in 1987; partially translated and published by the then Chicago-based publisher First Comics, the manga tells the story of an ex-samurai father who took his three-year-old son on the road of revenge in the year of 1655.11 Originally, Lone Wolf & Cub was not advertised as a manga but as a gekiga, ‘dramatic picture’, to emphasise its more realistic style and a more cinematic way of storytelling, as well as to attract adult readers who might consider manga childish. Köhn, ‘Glimpses of the Past’, p. 127. While Schodt attributes (part of) Lone Wolf & Cub’s US success to the foundation laid down by Barefoot Gen, we need to highlight two other factors that we believe are essential for the different outcomes for these two manga titles – and both of which have their origins in the fact that Lone Wolf & Cub is framed in a medievalist narrative paradigm that was already familiar to its prospective readers. First, for the first twelve volumes, First Comics commissioned Frank Miller to redraw the cover and write forewords to introduce each volume’s main theme. As an established Marvel artist who had published Batman: The Dark Knight Returns just a year before, Miller’s art and recommendations naturally attracted readers who were already avid consumers of superhero comics. They quickly recognised the similarities between Lone Wolf & Cub and the superhero genre: in one of the readers’ letters published in volume six, Ogami Itto (the father) and his son are compared to Batman and Robin.12 Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima, Lone Wolf & Cub, Vol. 6 (Chicago, 1987), ‘Letters’. All citations of Lone Wolf & Cub are taken from this edition; only in-text reference will be used below. Intriguingly, Batman/Bruce Wayne is the combination of the two medievalisms discussed above: while both of his most common appellations – the Dark Knight of Gotham and the Caped Crusader against crime – are explicitly drawn from the European medieval past, that he used to be trained in samurai martial art in Japan has long been incorporated into Batman canon – and he even time-travelled, at one time, to fifteenth-/sixteenth-century Japan.13 Batman Ninja, animated film, directed by Junpei Mizusaki, Japan and USA, Warner Bros., 2018. For Batman/Bruce’s training in Japan, see, for instance, Batman: The Animated Series, animated TV series, directed by Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski, USA: Warner Bros., 1992–95, at season 1 episodes 35 and 44, titled ‘Night of the Ninja’ and ‘Day of the Samurai’, in which Batman/Bruce is praised for having ‘a warrior’s spirit’ and is ‘the essence of samurai’, in contrast to his adversary, ‘The Ninja’, who fights stealthily and dishonourably. Intriguingly, in Lone Wolf & Cub, Ogami is also contrasted to a Ninja clan, who resorts to conspiracy and assassination while Ogami is shown to have been stick to bushidō even when he is a disgraced outlaw.

The second factor for Lone Wolf & Cub’s success, as Köhn argued, lies in the allegedly ‘historical authenticity and the unique samurai spirit’ of the manga.14 Köhn, ‘Glimpses of the past’, p. 128. Although focusing on the manga’s German reception, Köhn’s analysis applies, too, to the success of its North America debut, from which the first German edition was translated. One of the main appeals of Lone Wolf & Cub, as shown by the readers’ letters and Miller’s various forewords, is clearly its supposedly accurate portrayal of the beliefs and cults surrounding the samurai class. Bushidō, in particular, surfaces multiple times as ‘a system of warrior ethics and philosophy’ that gives ‘every kind of sword stroke a particular mystical context’ (‘Foreword’, Vol. 5, 1987). This is further bolstered by a retelling of the Akō Incident or ‘The Forty-seven Rōnin’ (1703), which is believed to have identified undying loyalty to one’s master as the defining feature of bushidō as codified in Hagakure; not unlike the comitatus ideal seen in Cynewulf and Cyneheard, a ‘true’ samurai should keep on fighting even after the death of his lord so as to avenge the lord or die trying (‘Foreword’, Vol. 7, 1987).15 However, as Benesch has convincingly shown, the Akō Incident was seen as controversial among its contemporaries, as it was in fact an ‘anomality, representing possibly the only case of a lord being avenged by his retainers’; however, the story was romanticised with the rise of samurai nostalgia and had become one of the most popular sources for samurai legends by the mid-eighteenth century. Benesch, Inventing the Way of the Samurai, pp. 21–7, at p. 22. And, from there, there is an emphasis on the significance of death – ‘honour of a samurai lies in death’ (Vol. 1, 1987, p. 80) – and the practice of seppuku or ritual disembowelment, which has to be explained twice in Miller’s forewords: in volume six, he cites the suicide of Minamoto no Tametomo, a twelfth-century samurai, as the originator of seppuku (‘seven hundred years old, and it’s probably true’) and concludes that ‘their code of ethics and philosophy demanded the samurai to seek death before shame, and to feel no pain’; then, in volume ten, he continues to explain the various forms of suicide in ancient Japan, ranging from junshi or seppuku (exclusively reserved for samurai upon their lord’s death) to shinju, said to have been practised by separated peasant lovers (‘Romeos and Juliets’). Last but not least, it is worth noting that First Comics’ edition of Lone Wolf & Cub is in fact a redaction: less than a third of the series was serialised, and in a selective manner so as to foreground the characters’ supposed samurai and bushidō ethos or their lack thereof.16 It was only in 2000 that Dark Horse Comics began to translate and publish Lone Wolf & Cub in English in its entirety; it was completed in 2002. Intriguingly, this selectiveness reflects the readings and interpretations of Hagakure until recent years. See Chiharu Hasegawa’s chapter in this volume, pp. 177–8.