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Resource type: Journal Article Language: en: English BibTeX citation key: Rifas2004 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details |
Categories: General Keywords: "Barefoot Gen", Interculturalism, Japan, Manga, Nakazawa. Keiji, Reception, USA Creators: Rifas Collection: International Journal of Comic Art |
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Abstract |
The author is the publisher of the first manga – Japanese comics – published in America (1980 and 1982), the translations of Keiji Nakazawa’s stories about the bombing of Hiroshima. In this paper, he describes the failure of his republication not primarily as a result of the supposed limits of Western tastes or of Nakazawa’s supposed failing as an artist, but in relation to his situation as a publisher on the fringes of the American comics industry and to the generally cool response of the American peace movement to Nakazawa’s work. In explaining how Nakazawa’s stories came to be the first manga to be republished in English, the author illuminates a contrast between “globalized media” and media “globalized from below”. The republication of Nakazawa’s comics was one piece of a paradigmatic project of “globalizing comic books from below,” and thus may yield lessons and warnings, not only for American comic books and Japanese manga, but also for the broader potential of comics as tools for raising social awareness.
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