The Story Lines in Postwar Japanese Manga : Comparing with Child Culture Prewar and Wartime Japan

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K13391
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Japanese literature
• Research Institution: Tokyo Seitoku University
• Principal Investigator: Morishita Hiroshi 東京成徳大学, 人文学部, 助教 (00775695)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: マンガ / 手塚治虫 / 児童文学 / 石ノ森章太郎

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study reveals the continuity and change of postwar Japanese Manga from child culture prewar and wartime Japan, focusing on the story lines in these works. In the child culture prewar and wartime, there were some works affected by western children’s literature and treating orphans as main characters. Tezuka Osamu used these motives and drew the plot that characters got their internal growth as time went on in postwar Akahon Manga works. The postwar Manga cultures, mainly consists of monthly children’s Magazines and weekly boy’s Manga Magazines, inherited these story lines. And then, some works tried to deal with social problems as the main theme and to reform the framework for how the standards of good and evil were established.

Free Research Field

ポピュラー・カルチャー研究

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

戦後マンガがその表現を整えていくにあたり、児童文学や映画といった他の表現領域や、社会的環境とどのように関わっていったのかということは、いまだ十分に論じられてはいない。こういった視点を内包しつつ、戦前・戦中期の児童文化と戦後マンガとの連続性と画期性を分析している点に、本研究の学術的意義がある。