Few if any creators in the history of the comics medium have wielded the wide-ranging influence of Japan’s Osamu Tezuka, and to prove it Abrams Comicarts recently released a stunning coffee table book comprehensively covering his life and career for the Tezuka aficionado and the curious newcomer alike. The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga by Helen McCarthy is far and away the only volume produced in the west that truly captures the scope of the Astro Boy creator’s contribution to manga, animation and world pop culture, and it’s a fascinating, exhaustively researched study that was quite obviously a labor of love for its British author.
With a manga and anime career that spanned over five decades, Tezuka was a media juggernaut whose output rendered him an eastern analog to Walt Disney. He created such deathless pop icons as lovable robot hero Astro Boy and the lion Leo (protagonist of “Jungle Emperor”), among literally scores of others that continue to be well-known. Americans first became familiar with Tezuka’s work mostly via television syndication of animated versions of Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion (a re-titled “Jungle Emperor,” frequently cited as an uncredited and unacknowledged “influence on Disney’s The Lion King). More recently, Vertical has published Eisner Award winning editions of his more mature manga work, including MW, Ode to Kirihito and what Tezuka considered his masterpiece, Buddha. PWCW talked with McCarthy about Tezuka, his impact and her book.
PWCW: But how did Tezuka's material get discovered in the UK, where you grew up and what got you personally interested in his works?
Helen McCarthy: I knew a little about Tezuka manga, thanks to Frederik L. Schodt's wonderful book Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics, that came out in 1983. If it weren’t for Schodt and Fred Patten, very few people outside a tiny fan circle in either the USA or Britain would even know who Tezuka was. Also Tezuka got more respect than most anime-makers in the movie press because he made art house shorts - back then the general assumption was that ‘Japanimation’ was cheap, basic stuff, most animation was Saturday-morning kiddie fare, and only art house material was taken seriously.
PWCW: What do you feel are some of the themes that resonate most with Tezuka's audience and ensure his work's timeless quality?
HM: Actually, I don't know if it's his themes that make his work timeless, so much as his breadth of interest. He was interested in everything and everyone that lives. He gives every character in his works the respect of allowing them to exist as real individuals; whether they're likeable or not, they're real. I think that's the quality that makes animation director Hayao Miyazaki resemble him most strongly, that insistence that nobody is a stereotype or a cipher, that everybody has equal validity whether they're a 'nice' person or not. Personally, I love his approach to women. He treats them exactly like normal human beings, and so few writers really do that, even in these allegedly liberated times. Because so few of his works have been translated, many English-speaking people don't even know most of them. I'm amazed at his perception—and he also saw very clearly how he and other guys perceived women. He nailed the moe phenomenon in Lost World, right alongside tackling sexual slavery. [Note: “moe” is a Japanese term referring to fans fetishizing and feeling protective of fictional characters.] His social awareness is also pretty acute, maybe because he was a well-educated middle-class boy, like some of the Monty Python team a couple of decades on, he was a sharp observer of social change and snobbery.
And of course, his background knowledge was so broad and deep that he had a huge well of ideas and influences to draw on. He came from an educated family in a cosmopolitan, curious society, and he probably read more European and American classics than most European and American comic artists, loved music and films and was interested in ideas from all over the world, plus of course a huge mass of material from his own culture. He, like Stan Lee and the greats of that era of American comics, plundered classic literature, philosophy, the great cultures of human history, as well as pop culture, magazines and movies and TV, so his work has a sweep and resonance that you just don't get from the work of someone whose only influences are derivative of their own time and place.
PWCW: Interestingly, considering the numerous sources that served to influence him, it is arguable that Tezuka, in terms of his effect on several aspects of pop culture, has had an impact eclipsing that of Disney. But is that an accurate assessment?
HM: In Japan and Asia, certainly. In the west, I'm not so sure. We're still very ignorant of the scope of his work. But I think his most lasting legacy may turn out to be his influence on Japanese science and medicine. Black Jack is an iconic figure currently influencing the public image of medicine in Japan, and the Atom Project has been set up to produce a robot with the mental, physical and emotional capacity of a human child in thirty years.
PWCW: Although the west has warmly embraced both anime and manga in recent years, English-language editions of Tezuka's work, undeniably some of the most seminal and important in those genres, seem to be given rather short shrift by all save those who are already fans or manga and anime scholars. Is it because his work may be perceived as too quaint, "cutesy" or "old school?"
HM: A lot of people seem to be wedded to the idea that things have to look 'contemporary', or alternatively 'adult', to be worthy of interest. That something is only worthwhile to the extent that it resembles us is, I think, a very trivial idea in intellectual terms and one that we'd do well to discard. Is Hieronymus Bosch quaint? Tezuka shares some of his artistic qualities. Is Dickens old school? Tezuka shares some of his storytelling qualities. Are Isaac Asimov's robots or Arthur C. Clarke's aliens cutesy? Tezuka has the same overarching concept of human development and human hubris in his works as they have in theirs. If we stop worrying about the labels and pay attention to the work, we'll soon see how absurd the labels are.
PWCW: The Art of Osamu Tezuka also includes a revealing documentary DVD, “The Secret of Creation,” that allows the viewer a rare look into the workaday grind of the “God of Manga,” and its no-frills lack of glamour is a real eye-opener for those unfamiliar with the process of cartooning. Operating five days a week out of small, virtually featureless studio that he worked, slept and ate in, Tezuka proves to be a prolific workhorse whose self-imposed isolation allowed his fertile mind the room to give birth to an endless parade of manga scenarios at the jaw-dropping rate of an average of twenty pages per day. Was his prodigious output driven by sheer discipline, an insatiable desire to create, the Japanese work ethic, or some indefinable muse?
HM: I don't know how he did it, but I have my own theory as to why. There were two sides to Tezuka. The lighter side was clever and imaginative and just loved to play. Science, art, nature, writing—it was all pure joy, fun, fascination. He couldn't stop having ideas and he recorded them all, or as many of them as he could. Then he did his utmost to bring them to life. He's the perfect example of what the human imagination and intellect can achieve if lovingly nurtured and encouraged to explore. Yeats said ‘Labor is blossoming or dancing;’ well, Tezuka's imagination couldn't help blossoming, couldn't help dancing, and it brought whole worlds into flower.
As for the dark side of Tezuka, I think that side was constantly trying to outrun his inner demons. He suffered from depression and he'd been bullied, then later in life he was written off as a has-been on a number of occasions. As a child, when he was bullied, he escaped into his own imaginary worlds. Whenever he hit a challenge in adult life, he would just work harder and faster and try and come up with something new. He had his spats and his arguments and his black moments, but he never gave up.
He also wrote scripts, essays, film criticism and short science-fiction novels, appeared on TV as a pundit, made animation, designed and illustrated for various commercial projects as well as his own personal stationery, and sat on a whole range of industry bodies. He traveled, played piano and accordion, loved to party and see films and shows, and corresponded with fellow artists and fans all over the world. Alongside that insane schedule, he made time to build relationships; he was a beloved friend, son, brother, husband and father. He wrote to a couple of teachers who'd supported him at school until they died. For the whole of his life, it seems he lived every second, no downtime, nothing wasted. Of course, he had a studio of devoted assistants, many of whom had worshipped his work since they were little kids and knew his style so well that he could leave inking and finishing to them. But he loved to draw, really loved it.
