Theorizing Manga: Nationalism and Discourse on the Role of Wartime Manga

of its modern institutions. A mass culture emerged and media consumption expanded. As Japan’s total war system intensified in the 1930s, the field of manga, one of the emerging visual media of the time, witnessed the rise and fall of the proletarian movement, the dominance of “nansensu” (nonsense) as a popular genre, and the increasing presence of war, whether physically or ideologically. This was also the period when cartoonists began theorizing about the nature of manga. After the Japan–China War broke out in 1937, discourse on the role of manga and cartoonists appeared as a response to Japan’s wartime mobilization. A close study of the discourse on the status of manga as expressed by cartoonists themselves reveals that, by defining manga as an ideal medium for conveying nationalism, cartoonists played an active role as agents of the war. They did not simply submit to state thought control in order to continue drawing manga. Rather, in the course of this theorization, they attempted to “recover” the artistic quality of manga from being merely a commodity of consumerism, as was the case with nansensu manga. This recovery was articulated by, for instance, the former proletarian cartoonist Katō Etsurō. This Theorizing Manga: Nationalism and Discourse on the Role of Wartime Manga