Mangasia: A Timeline

16th Century Korea

A real 16th-century Korean outlaw was famous for stealing from wealthy, corrupt aristocrats, much like England’s Robin Hood. Later, as Hong Gil Dong, he would become a cultural icon, celebrated in novels, movies and comics on both sides of a divided Korea.

1776 Japan

Toriyama Sekien compiled the first bestiary, a visual inventory cataloguing Japan’s otherworldly creatures.

1814 Japan

Hokusai Katsushika chooses the term ‘Manga’ for the title of his sketchbooks.

Originally Chinese in derivation, the term ’manga’ was repurposed in 1814 by Hokusai Katsushika to denote his lively sketchbook drawings, which he claimed were made by ‘a brush gone wild’.

1868 Japan

When Japan opened to international trade in 1868 artists began imitating the West’s forms and styles – like exaggerated caricatures, and organising stories in sequential panels.

1894 India

European trained artist Raja Ravi Varma issued affordable oil portrait prints of characters from the Ramayana as lighter-skinned, sentimentalised ideals of their conventional selves influencing modern Indian culture and more recent adaptations.

1895 Taiwan

In 1895, an expansionist Japan defeated China, and, despite some resistance, annexed Taiwan as its first overseas colony.

Early 20th Century

With modernisation, new technologies and mass media the popular press expanded through Asia, introducing humorous magazines, often modelled after Britain’s Punch and America’s Puck.

Early 20th Century China

China’s unique palm-sized booklets, known as ’lianhuanhua’ or ’images in a chain’, started to be produced in the early twentieth century.

1941 – 1942

Japan’s wartime occupations of the Philippines and Singapore provide the backdrops for the Filipina mischief-making tomboy Suicide Suzy and a Singapore street urchin who bonds with a Japanese soldier in The Bicycle.

1945 – 1948 Indonesia

Indonesia’s war of Independence and revolution marked end to Dutch administration of Indonesia. In two-part novel Rampokan Dutch comic artist Peter Van Dongan illustrates the story of Dutch Soldier Johan Knevel during Indonesia’s war for independence and explores the history of his own ancestral roots.

1947 India and Pakistan

The partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 - I Too Have Seen Lahore, a short comic by Salman Rashid tells the story of a Pakistani survivor’s experiences of how one armed group, rather than retaliate in response to the slaughter of their fellow Muslims, accepted an elder’s plea to grant his Sikh families safe passage through east Punjab.

1950s Japan

Post war baby boom fuelled prominence of genres in manga - ‘shōnen’ for boys and ‘shōjo’ for girls

1950s Japan
Rise of ‘gekiga’ - In Japan a fresh generation reflected the darker spirit of the times and aimed their more dramatic manga at their own generation. Their ‘gekiga’ (dramatic pictures) would invade and forever transform Japan’s mainstream.

1950 and 60s Phillipines

Fifties and sixties saw the Golden Age of anthology ‘komiks’ in the Phillippines, their serials were widely read and adapted into hit movies.

1966-76 China

After the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) the popular ‘lianhuanhua’ culture was banished but booklets were still produced as a tool for Chairman Mao’s propaganda machine spreading approved dramas about proletarian exemplars.

1967 India

Much-loved publishing house Amar Chitra Katha is founded.

First release of Amar Chitra Katha (Immortable Picture Stories) in India which became the country’s most successful locally created comic books.

1970s Japan

Numerous female artists working on ‘shōjo’ manga developed a means to reveal their characters’ innermost thoughts that were not always evident from a character’s face. Their solution was to decorate the background around the head with expressionistic effects. They also developed a symbolic language using flowers to express a wide array of sentiments and moods.

1970s Japan

The popularity of ‘gekiga’ led to the explosion of ‘seinen‘ comics for men such as the edgy urban comedy Dokudami Tenement, about “a left-behind man, late off the starting line of life” by Fukutani Takashi.

1980s Japan

1980s saw the development of ‘josei’ manga, aimed at late teenagers and young adults, and ‘redikomi’, or ‘Lady Comics,’ for adult women.

1980’s Taiwan

Sean Chuang is a part of Taiwan’s first generation to grow up in the early 1980s, an era which witnessed the gradual lifting of martial law and a widening choice of popular culture. He affectionately recalls and recreates this period in his cartoon diaries.

1991 North Korea

North Korean authorities starts producing picture books known as “kurimchaek”.

1994 India

Controversial plans for the largest dam on India’s Narmada river demanded mass displacements of indigenous locals, an environmental organisation commissioned artist Orijit Sen in 1994 to report on their case, in what became the first Indian graphic novel.

2012 Vietnam

B.R.O. Comics publishes a manga version of Nguyen Quang Sang’s 1966 story about a Viet Cong soldier, The Ivory Comb.

2014 Hong Kong

Umbrella Revolution

Tribute to Joshua Wong, one of the youngest student leaders of the sit-in street protests that defined the 2014 Umbrella Revolution.