We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2020
The Trojan cycle has been retold and re-envisioned many times from antiquity to modern times. The themes covered by these myths, especially the Homeric poems, have captivated the minds and hearts of poets, historians, authors, and others. Homer's Iliad extoled the grandeur as well as exposed the ugliness and folly of war. These humanistic virtues resonated with various cultures around the world. In this article we examine the reception of the Trojan cycle, especially the Iliad, on the noted manga artist Tezuka Osamu (1928–89). Recent reception theories focus on the creation of a new composition or artefact as part of the reception process; we shall thus discuss the Phoenix: Early Works manga as an example of such reception.
1 Discussing the reception of Homer in the ancient world, Graziosi, B., Inventing Homer (Cambridge, 2002), 87Google Scholar, concludes that ‘the name Homer invites audiences and readers to define their own claims to, and interpretations of, the poems’.
2 With Japanese names, we follow the Japanese order: family name first and then the given name.
3 Manga is translated as ‘Japanese comics’, although it is different from American or European comics. On the origin and various kinds of manga, see Schodt, F., Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics (New York, 1983), 12–68Google Scholar; Phillipps, S., Erzählform Manga. Eine Analyse der Zeitstrukturen in Tezuka Osamus ‘Hi no tori’ (‘Phönix’) (Wiesbaden, 1996), 11–16Google Scholar.; Ito, K., ‘Manga in Japanese History’, in MacWilliams, M. W. (ed.), Japanese Visual Culture. Explorations in the World of Manga and Anime (New York, 2008), 26–47Google Scholar; Norris, C., ‘Manga, Anime and Visual Art Culture’, in in Sugimoto, Y. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture (Cambridge, 2009), 236–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 G. Nisbet, ‘Mecha in Olympus’, in G. Kovacs and C. W. Marshall (eds.), Son of Classics and Comics (Oxford, 2016), 67–78.
5 In the case of our article, which examines Tezuka's manga Phoenix: Early Works, it has proven almost impossible to find reliable data on the acceptance of Tezuka's work, which was published in 1956–7 and was aimed at young girls.
6 This definition was suggested by the anonymous reviewer and we completely agree with it.
7 For an overview of the prevailing recent views in reception studies, see L. Maurice (ed.), The Reception of Ancient Greece and Rome in Children's Literature (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2015), 4–7; L. Maurice (ed.), Rewriting the Ancient World. Greeks, Romans, Jews and Christians in Modern Popular Fiction (Leiden and Boston, 2017), 5–8; A. Bakogianni, ‘What Is So “Classical” about Classical Reception? Theories, Methodologies and Future Prospects’, Codex. Revista de Estudos Clássicos 4 (2016), 96–113. As mentioned, we support the more free/open concept of reception, which is not limited by direct literary references. D. Hopkins, Conversing with Antiquity. English Poets and the Classics, From Shakespeare to Pope (Oxford, 2010), 10, explores a reception model of ‘conversation’: ‘the conversation in question is conducted across time, and across large cultural divides’. We detect such conversation between the Japanese Tezuka and his engagement with ancient Greek tradition.
8 See n. 3.
9 Norris (n. 3), 238–40, 244.
10 See for example Nisbet (n. 4); N. Theisen, ‘(Un)reading the Odyssey in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind’, in Kovacs and Marshall (n. 4), 79–93; L. Cardi, ‘Riconfigurazioni dell'antica Roma nel manga Thermae Romae e nei suoi adattamenti cinematografici’, in M. C. Migliore, A. Manieri, and S. Romagnoli (eds.), Riflessioni sul Giappone antico e moderno, vol. 2 (Roma, 2016), 275–97; A. Peer, ‘Thermae Romae Manga: Plunging into the Gulf between Ancient Rome and Modern Japan’, New Voices in Classical Reception Studies 12 (2018), 57–67.
11 From a comparative literature point of view, in her elaborate study on the similarities between the Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman worlds, W. Denecke, Classical World Literature. Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman Comparisons (Oxford, 2014), uncovers many similar aspects in Latin and early Japanese literature. A similar argument for the universalism of ideas in today's literature is stressed by T. Ellis, ‘Literary Culture’, in Sugimoto (n. 3), 199–215. We should, of course, differentiate between various authors and works. While some authors use Western classical references to impart a more exotic appeal to their work, others such as Tezuka (as we argue) and also Masamune Shirow (as discussed by Nisbet [n. 4]) are more interested in the mythological story and its implications.
12 For a discussion of these views, see N. Theisen, ‘Declassicizing the Classical in Japanese Comics’, in Kovacs and Marshall (n. 4), 59–71; Peer (n. 10), 58. See also Shirow's adaptation of the Greek Pantheon in Nisbet (n. 4), 74–7.
13 O. Tezuka, Phoenix. Early Works, trans. J. Cook and F. L. Schodt (San Francisco, CA, 2007), 192. On Helen of Troy and similar movies, see G. Nisbet, Ancient Greece in Film and Popular Culture (Exeter, 2008), 31–6; M. M. Winkler, Cinema and Classical Texts. Apollo's New Light (Cambridge, 2009), 210–23; J. Solomon, The Ancient World in the Cinema (New Haven and London, 2001), passim.
14 F. Schodt, Dreamland Japan. Writings on Modern Manga (Berkeley, CA, 1996), 233–44; S. Phillipps, ‘Characters, Themes and Narrative Patterns in the Manga of Osamu Tezuka’, in MacWilliams (n. 3), 68–90; H. McCarthy, The Art of Osamu Tezuka, God of Manga (Lewes, 2013).
15 Schodt (n. 14), 24–5.
16 F. Schodt, The Astro Boy Essays. Osamu Tezuka, Mighty Atom, Manga/Anime Revolution (Berkeley, CA, 2007), 25–30. McCarthy (n. 14), 100, notes that, during the 1950s, Tezuka was troubled by the question ‘whether contact between different races always leads to war. He was profoundly and passionately against war, with its inevitable violence and discrimination, but he was particularly concerned about the impact of war on children.’
17 McCarthy (n. 14), 100–1.
18 G. C. Godart, ‘Tezuka Osamu's Circle of Life: Vitalism, Evolution, and Buddhism’, Mechademia 8 (2013), 35. On Tezuka's war experience, see also Y. Tanaka, ‘War and Peace in the Art of Tezuka Osamu: The Humanism of His Epic Manga’, Asia-Pacific Journal 8 (2010), 1–16.
19 McCarthy (n. 14), 19.
20 On the influence of American cartoons in post-war Japan, see Norris (n. 3), 241. On Tezuka's style, see also M. W. MacWilliams, ‘Japanese Comic Books and Religion: Osamu Tezuka's Story of the Buddha’, in T. J. Craig (ed.), Japan Pop! Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture (Armonk, NY, 2000), 109–37.
21 Phillipps (n. 14), 68.
22 Theisen (n. 12), 60. On Tezuka's deliberate mix of old and new and mixing of different cultures as part of his style, see MacWilliams (n. 20); MacWilliams, analysing Tezuka's adaption of the story of Buddha in the manga Budda (which was first published in 1972 and was continued until 1983, after he finished the Phoenix series), notes that ‘part of Tezuka's genius is his ability to insert modern symbols, characters, events, and details into the archaic setting of the story without creating anachronisms that seem “out of place.” By drawing in features from the modern world, Tezuka draws out the Buddha's relevance for today’ (121).
23 Tezuka's work was not the only one which was linked to Greek mythology. By an interesting coincidence, in the course of the original magazine publication of the stories collected in Phoenix: Early Works in 1956, the renowned Japanese scholar of classic literature Shigeichi Kure (1897–1977) published Greek Myths (originally titled Girishia Shinwa). This was a pioneering translation of selected stories from classical mythology. Greek Myths made its mark owing to Kure's unique style, which brought together archaic and modern language. This resulted in both foreignization and domestication of the original; it made classical myth feel distant and exotic to Japanese readers, but also close and familiar. These writers engage with the classical myths simultaneously and thus we may concur that, at the time, erudite Japanese manga-ka were starting to take an interest in Western classical themes. On Kure's influence, see I. Taida, ‘A Pioneer of Classical Studies in Japan, Shigeichi Kure: A Focus on His Translations’, Classical Receptions Journal 7, (2015), 260–75.
24 Schodt (n. 14), 261–7. See also R. Hutchinson, ‘Sabotaging the Rising Sun: Representing History in Tezuka Osamu's Phoenix’, in R. Rosenbaum (ed.), Manga and the Representation of Japanese History (London and New York, 2014), 18–39. A fuller analysis of the Phoenix manga is presented in Phillipps (n. 14). See also Godart (n. 19), 38–46.
25 Since this volume, as we shall note, was serialized in a girls’ magazine, it focuses more on romance and some of the panels are comical.
26 On the significance of Tezuka as the alleged creator of the genre of shōjo manga see H. Hikari, ‘Tezuka, Shōjo Manga, and Hagio Moto’, Mechademia 8 (2013), 299–311.
27 Tezuka (n. 13), 192.
28 As K. Ito, ‘Chikae Ide, The Queen of Japanese Ladies’ Comics: Her Life and Manga’, in T. Perper and M. Cornog (eds.), Mangatopia. Essays on Manga and Anime in the Modern World (Santa Barbara, CA, 2011), 8, explains: ‘when Japanese girls’ comics first emerged, many stories dealt with girls’ dreams and fantasies…these stories focused on emotions and on the psychology of female protagonists and their developments as human beings’. On girls’ manga, see also M. Takahashi, ‘Opening the Closed World of Shōjo Manga’, in MacWilliams (n. 3), 114–36; D. Shamoon, ‘Situating the Shōjo in Shōjo Manga: Teenage Girls, Romance Comics, and Contemporary Japanese Culture’, in MacWilliams (n. 3), 137–54.
29 Hutchinson (n. 24).
30 Phillipps (n. 14), 86.
31 Tezuka (n. 13), 192.
32 On the great appeal of such love stories, see E. Izawa, ‘The Romantic, Passionate Japanese in Anime’, in Craig (n. 20), 138–53.
33 Tezuka (n. 13), 67. Interestingly, Tezuka (and the translator) uses the term ‘city-states’, although this applies to a much later historical and political development in Greece. We can therefore assume that Tezuka disregarded ‘chronological niceties’, to use the term of our anonymous reviewer, to whom we are thankful for this insight.
34 Homer himself does not make the two cities very different from each other.
35 J. Gerald, ‘Introduction: The Big and the Small’, in A. Roman (ed.), Adolf. 1945 and All That Remains (San Francisco, CA, 1996), 7–11.
36 This could be the influence of the movie Helen of Troy which Tezuka mentions, in which there is also a reference to Ulysses and not Odysseus.
37 Even in the original Iliad, Hector and Paris were less enthusiastic about the fighting, Paris because he was a coward (for example in Il. 3.31–5 and Hector's refutation of him [3.41–60]), and Hector mainly because of his care for his household and city: he even contemplated, before fighting Achilles, returning Helen and thereby stopping the war, yet quickly dismissed these shameful thoughts (Il. 22.96–130); as a true Homeric hero, Hector also sought the honours of a warrior.
38 This description could also be greatly influenced by the movie Helen of Troy and the performance of Stanley Baker as the villainous Achilles. We once more thank the anonymous reader for this point.
39 Tezuka (n. 13), 67.
40 Ulysses is the sole human survivor of the war, probably since, as Tezuka knew, he was off to his own adventure.
41 S. McCloud, Understanding Comics. The Invisible Art (New York, 1993), 41–4.
42 Tezuka (n. 13), 108.
43 Ibid., 109.
44 Ban, T., The Osamu Tezuka Story. A Life in Manga and Anime, trans. Schodt, Frederik L. (Berkeley, CA, 2016), 160–9Google Scholar.
45 Tezuka (n. 13), 112.
46 Ibid., 102.
47 Graver, M., ‘Dog-Helen and Homeric Insult’, ClAnt 14 (1995), 41–61Google Scholar, examines Helen's self-deprecation in the Iliad and asserts in the opening sentence that ‘Helen does what no other Homeric character does: she insults herself’ (41). In the manga, however, she is not treated so respectfully.
48 Tezuka (n. 13), 105.
49 Tezuka (n. 13), 189.
