The Four Immigrants Manga Pdf

[Sebastian Thorndike]

Kiyamahad the immigrants speak in Meiji era Japanese, with the Americans speaking in broken English and the Chinese speaking in Cantonese.[4] In his translation, Frederik L. Schodt had kept the Americans speaking broken English, with the immigrants speaking in perfect English.[4][11] This had the effect of "[helping] readers see the Japanese characters as "us" and the Americans as weird, frequently baffling foreigners, consistent with the general viewpoint of the comic."[11] Schodt found Kiyama's work in 1980 in University of California's East Asian Library.[4][6][13] He began translating the work in 1997, which was published by Stone Bridge Press in October 1998.[4] Through interviewing Kiyama's surviving relatives in Japan and studying his private papers and artwork, Schodt concludes that the characters Charlie, Frank and Fred "are roughly based on the people that Kiyama knew."[14] He further claims that the manga is "one of the very first journalistic comic books".[15]

Racism between the immigrants and the locals was predominantly between Japanese immigrants and European-American locals, however "racial animosity . . . existed between Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the United States."[14] Garrity comments on the prevalence of racism of that era: "a hundred years ago, everyone, of every background, was openly and casually racist." The "four immigrants [refer] to white people as keto and black people as kuroto."[11]

This Saturday, the San Francisco Public Library will host foundational manga historian Frederik L. Schodt for a talk on a book he translated fifteen years ago: Manga Yonin Shosei, initially self-published by one Yoshitaka Kiyama, a first-generation Japanese immigrant (or Issei) to the United States. Kiyama, a student artist, had lived in San Francisco since 1904, though his residency became less permanent in the 1920s; apparently printed in Tokyo, Manga Yonin Shosei was nonetheless intended for the eyes of new American immigrants, scripted in a unique blend of Japanese and English that couldn't possibly make sense for any other audience. It was a collection of semi-autobiographical newspaper strips, fifty-two in total, intended for a year's weekly serialization but reformatted instead as a singular original work, thus anticipating the way certain rejected strips would find new life in the later phenomenon of the comic book.

But what is the early "manga"? Is it narrative picture scrolls of the 12th century? The whimsical drawings of Hokusai? Or should we start with Rakuten Kitazawa, the artist who popularized "manga" in the sense of caricature - who founded the cartoon-laden Tokyo Puck, and, at the dawn of the 20th century, began publishing multi-panel narrative manga for the western-style newspapers and magazines enabled by new access to advanced printing technology? Perhaps it should be Ippei Okamoto, a newspaper cartoonist and pioneer of emonogatari, whose enthusiasm for American comic strips resulted in full-blown Japanese translations for Bud Fisher's Mutt and Jeff, Frederick Burr Opper's Happy Hooligan, and -- perhaps most crucially -- George McManus' Bringing Up Father, which, in 1924, directly inspired a Kitazawa apprentice, Yutaka Asō, in his creation of the wildly popular Nonki na Tōsan ("The Careless Father" or "Easygoing Daddy"), an American-styled newspaper strip which touched off a wave of merchandise, including collected editions.

Indeed, by 1931, numerous Japanese newspaper comics enjoyed compiled releases, and it could be that Kiyama's exposure to these books -- in addition to stateside compilations of Fisher and the like -- inspired the ultimate publication of Manga Yonin Shosei. Certainly his application of American strip style to Japanese concerns was in keeping with the aforementioned developments in "manga" from the decade subsequent. Of course, there were concurrent evolutions in children's manga, magazines, etc. - we mustn't limit ourselves, though it would be a disservice to Kiyama not to see him as an active force in an ongoing effort at comics synthesis.

Schodt first encountered Kiyama's work in 1980, but wasn't able to bring it to wide, English-only attention until 1999, under the title The Four Immigrants Manga. As you can see, a compromise was struck in the localization; Kiyama's own English lettering was left untouched, which his hand-lettered Japanese (employing a rather tricky, old-timey style, per Schodt's extensive introductory essay) was replaced by a rather bloodless font. This was done both to distinguish the usage of English-as-Japanese from English-as-English, and to ensure Kiyama's rather dense clouds of Japanese dialogue would actually fit the word balloons in bulkier English.

I can't say it's the most attractive solution (and I mean "attractive" in the aesthetic, rather than pragmatic sense), yet to my mind this also underlines the artifice at the heart of Kiyama's endeavor. What the white characters say in this book -- along with the occasional Chinese and black, rudely caricatured in the racist manner of the day -- are never really what they're saying, but what Kiyama and his friends can understand of them, and likewise what the Issei can communicate. In this way, having these words spring up from the same hand that draws their bodies seems appropriate, as their hesitancy shakes with the slapstick of bodies. The Japanese language, in contrast, comes from some eternal interior: thoughtless and automatic, issuing from humans but internalized, and stripped of the consciousness of composition.

There was much in the way of conscious performance at that time. The name "Henry" was adopted by Kiyama to ingratiate himself to the monied whites he would rely upon for work and lodging. We don't need Schodt's intro to tell us this either; it is presented to us flatly in the first of Kiyama's strips. Subsequent installments transform personal history into comedy vignettes, several consolidated (at times anachronistically) from community lore, and each one wrapped up in a gag by the twelfth panel. There are references to the earthquake of 1906, Margaret Sanger, the Alien Land Laws, and the difficulty of romance when men outnumbered women eight to one and miscegenation was illegal. Eventually, Kiyama surrenders the protagonist's role to "Charlie," a student of democratic systems and classic twit. There's even a little action:

This is pretty funny stuff, I think, although Schodt's extensive translation notes draw special attention to the most rueful bit of humor: Charlie's plan to "buy some land, marry a white woman, and build a HOME" is farcically predicated exclusively on things which were illegal for him to do at the time; "HOME," after all, denotes citizenship, which would not be on offer to Issei veterans of WWI until well after the publication of Kiyama's comic. By that time, the artist himself was coming and going; the final strip of The Four Immigrants Manga discloses the author-as-character's angst over the Immigration Act of 1924, which effectively banned Japanese immigration to the United States. Feeling down, Kiyama decides to start a family back overseas. By 1937, international tensions had guaranteed a permanent stay in Japan, where he died in 1951.

Still, this is not a bitter work, even if some bitterness is atmospheric; it's difficult to see images of adult men referring to employers as "mom" as anything other than painful. Yet looking back to the bathtub gag a ways above - it's raucous, yes, and a little sinister, with its humor premised in part upon the white woman's fear of rape. There is little lasting blame, though. Kiyama has made an honest mistake, and the woman is understanding. She doesn't fire him until a little later, when he inadvertently teaches her beloved parrot to cuss in two languages. It's a struggle, but we'll learn.

PLEASE NOTE: What follows is not a series of capsule reviews but an annotated selection of items listed by Diamond Comic Distributors for release to comic book retailers in North America on the particular Wednesday identified in the column title above. Be aware that some of these comics may be published by Fantagraphics Books, the entity which also administers the posting of this column. Not every listed item will necessarily arrive at every comic book retailer, in that some items may be delayed and ordered quantities will vary. I have in all likelihood not read any of the comics listed below, in that they are not yet released as of the writing of this column, nor will I necessarily read or purchase every item identified; THIS WEEK IN COMICS! reflects only what I find to be potentially interesting.

Insufficient Direction: From old autobio to new, suddenly we land in the 21st century for a 176-page one-off from Moyoko Anno, a 2005 account of her married life with otaku icon Hideaki Anno, the director behind Neon Genesis Evangelion and (more recently) the unlikely star of Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises. M. Anno is a versatile and talented artist -- a protg of Kyoko Okazaki, whose influence seems to have hung heavily over Anno's last translated manga release, Sakuran -- but we've never quite seen her in this mode, and that alone should provide a bit of interest. My manga autobio dream translation, incidentally, is errant Sailor Moon creator Naoko Takeuchi's Princess Naoko Takeuchi's Return-to-Society Punch!!, concerning (in part) her lingering inability to follow-up a world-smashing hit with anything of comparable success, but, perhaps in keeping with the theme, I don't think it's ever been collected into a book, let alone slated for licensing. A Vertical release; $14.95.

Rusty Riley Vol. 1: Dailies, 1948-1949: And so the Golden Age of Reprints found respected illustrator Frank Godwin, creator of Connie and, most applicably, this 1948-59 saga of American boyhood among Kentucky horses, scripted by Rod Reed. Classic Comics Press is the publisher, and its 342-page package promises a interview with the late cartoonist's daughter, various bonus illustrations and an introduction by Howard Chaykin; $49.95.

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