By Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry
Suihō Tagawa "Norakuro Gochō" [Corporal], p.160 © Suiho Tagawa / Kodansha
Norakuro
This character is called Norakuro, short for “Norainu (stray dog) – Kuro (black) kichi". These works feature Norakuro, who enlists in the "mōkenrentai" (the Fierce Dog Regiment) and then fails repeatedly and foolishly even as he succeeds ridiculously while waging war against monkeys, pigs, and frogs. The titles of the works change as the titular character is promoted, starting with "Norakuro Nitōsotsu" [Private Second-class Norakuro] and then moving on to "Norakuro Jōtōhei" [Superior Private Norakuro], Norakuro Gochō [Corporal Norakuro] and so forth. This manga was serialized starting in the January 1931 issue of "Shōnen Club" (Dainippon Yūbenkai Kodansha)—a popular magazine at the time with over 500,000 issues in print—and it was a smash hit for which over 100,000 separate books sold as well. "Norakuro" triggered the first children’s manga boom.
Suihō Tagawa
Suihō Tagawa, the author of "Norakuro", enrolled at the Nihon Bijutsu Gakkō (the Japan School of Art) in 1922, participated in the avant-garde art group Mavo while enrolled there, and engaged in stage design and other kinds of design work. Later, he found success at a Kodansha magazine as a writer of "shinsaku rakugo" (a type of rakugo that incorporates modern themes). Thanks to his artistic ability, the rakugo illustrations he worked on gave him the opportunity to begin his career as a manga artist. "Norakuro"—which is known for its humorous storytelling and exceptionally well-designed illustration layouts—took full advantage of Tagawa’s creative personal history.
Manga features in magazines for boys and girls
In addition to serializing "Norakuro", "Shōnen Club"—which increased its circulation under the famous editor-in-chief Kenichi Katō—included a ten-page-plus manga feature at the beginning of each monthly issue, using which the magazine published various short manga stories from an assortment of writers. During a time when novels made up the main contents of magazines for boys and girls, this feature played a roll in increasing the popularity of manga, and competing magazines soon followed suit and published their own manga.
A part of the manga feature in "Shōnen Club" No. 20, Dainippon Yūbenkai Kodanshapp, 16-17 (1933)Original source: -
Keizō Shimada’s "Bōken Dankichi" [Dankichi, an Adventurous Boy
Of the works serialized in "Shōnen Club", Keizō Shimada’s "Bōken Dankichi", which was serialized starting in 1933, was the next hit after "Norakuro". This so-called "manga story" depicted the adventures of Dankichi, a Japanese boy who washed up on the shore of a tropical island, and it used the same format as "Shōchan no Bōken" [The Adventures of Shō-chan], including speech balloons inside the frames that contained lines as well as sentences outside the frames to explain the situation. Although the manga’s format might make it seem like more of a throwback than "Norakuro"—which told its stories with nothing but frames, pictures, and lines in speech balloons—"Bōken Dankichi’s" liberal use of flying sweat and other manga-like symbols actually preempts post-war manga in some ways.
Kikuo Nakajima’s "Hinomaru Hatanosuke"
After "Norakuro" and "Bōken Dankichi", "Shōnen Club’s" third hit manga was Kikuo Nakajima’s historical manga "Hinomaru Hatanosuke", which was serialized starting in 1935. Unlike other popular historical manga of the time—which highlighted violent battles involving dismemberment and decapitation—the protagonist of this work didn’t rely on a sword. Instead, he used a lasso and his wits to fight foes and overcome dangers. In other words, this manga set a precedent for "fun and interesting" historical manga that successfully dodged the storm of criticism from educators triggered by the children’s manga boom.
Akahon manga
Spurred on by the roaring success of "Norakuro", a lot of manga books were published in the 1930s. Of the inexpensive publications known as "akahon manga" (red covers), hundreds of titles per year were published with various formats and numbers of pages by publishing companies previously involved in picture books, and these books were distributed not only to general bookstores but also to street stalls, toy stores, general stores, and other stores, thereby enabling children’s manga to circulate all the way to mountain and fishing villages that didn’t even have bookstores.
Nakamura Manga Library
Among the huge number of published akahon manga titles, many boxed hardcover books that were over 120 pages long and imitated the binding style of Kodansha manga books such as "Norakuro" were published, but one especially popular series was Nakamura Shoten’s "Nakamura Manga Library", which even Osamu Tezuka collected in its entirety when he was a boy. These works—which were written by the likes of Kennosuke Nīzeki, Bontarō Shaka, and Noboru Ōshiro—demonstrate an especially high quality of expression and are practically begging to be systematically re-evaluated.
Kodansha no Ehon [Kodansha’s Picture Books]
"Kodansha no Ehon" was a series of monthly picture books published by Dainippon Yūbenkai Kodansha (currently known as Kodansha) four times per month starting in 1936, and—although these were initially treated as individual paperback books—they became a magazine due to their serial publication somewhere along the way. Of the four books published each month, one was a manga compilation, which is where popular serialized works such as Kennosuke Nīzeki’s "Tora no Ko Torachan" [Tora-chan, the Tiger Cub were born. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that Kodansha no Ehon was the best sales monthly manga magazine of the 1930s.
Kennosuke Nīzeki "Tora no Ko Torachan" [Tora-chan, the Tiger Cub], "Kodansha no Ehon" [Kodansha’s Picture Books], volume 2-10, pp. 10-11 (1939)Original source: Dainippon Yūbenkai Kodansha
The view of children's manga as a problem
As was mentioned above, educators started to view the children's manga boom as a problem around 1935. This article was based on an Osaka-based preschool director's research of the homes of students enrolled there, and the article identified both the fact that there were more and more manga books among picture books as well as the content of such manga books as problems. These discussions by educators ultimately led to the "Jidō Yomimono Kaizen ni Kansuru Shiji Yōkō" (Instructional Guidelines on the Improvement of Children’s Reading Materials), which were released by the Home Ministry in October of 1938.
Ryūichi Yokoyama’s "Fukuchan" [Fuku-chan]
Ryūichi Yokoyama’s "Fukuchan" series—which was first serialized in the Tokyo Asahi Shimbun evening paper with the title "Yōshi no Fukuchan [Fuku-chan the Adopted Child]" in 1936—humorously depicted the actions and words of an artless boy as well as the adults who were at his mercy, and this manga’s popularity resulted in the publication of many separate books. Thanks to this work, Yokoyama—whose depiction of Japanese daily life at the time set the standard for humorous daily life manga that could be enjoyed by children and adults alike—was highly praised by educators as well. Many examples of humorous daily life manga were also published in magazines for boys and girls after the war, which marked the appearance of gag manga emphasizing humorous aspects.
Text: Hirohito Miyamoto(Meiji University)
Edit: Nanami Kikuchi, Natsuko Fukushima+Yuka Miyazaki(BIJUTSU SHUPPAN-SHA CO., LTD.)
Supervisor: Hirohito Miyamoto(Meiji University)
Production: BIJUTSU SHUPPAN-SHA CO., LTD.
Written in 2020
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