AltJapan

When Toads Attack

From toad wrestling to Teenage Mutant Ninja Frogs? It might sound like a leap of logic, but it's absolutely true: today's ninja susperstars have some decidedly slimy origins.

Hiroko and I were conducting research in the Sackler Gallery archives for an upcoming project when we stumbled across a cache of 18th century frog and toad related prints.

They weren't the first we'd ever seen, but they reminded us of the love-hate relationship Japan has enjoyed with the creatures over the ages. Sure, they're warty and bumpy and hang out in slimy dark places, but there's something about those beady little eyes that demands a certain amount of affection.

The Japanese actually have a word for this type of cognitive dissonance: it's called kimo-kawaii: cute and gross, all at the same time. It's something Japanese designers have a real knack for; you can see it in so many mascots and characters today that it can be easy to mistake for a recent trend. It isn't.

Long before Japanese had a word for it, frogs and toads were the ORIGINAL "kimo-kawaii." 

In spite of being totally common sorts of animals (you can even find them in the midst of the Tokyo metropolis today, if you know where to look), they're often portrayed in decidedly uncommon circumstances: marching alongside yokai, acting as familiars to ninja sorcerers, even cutting loose and staging impromptu wrestling matches when pesky humans aren't lurking about.

Ohara Koson

Now here's where things get interesting.

The following prints show Tenjiku Tokubei (1612- 1692), a real-life adventurer who traveled extensively in Southeast Asia at a time when very few Japanese were allowed to leave their country.

His name translates into "Tokubei of India" -- I guess you could call him a sort of Japanese "Lawrence of Arabia."

After his death, his legend continued to grow. In 1804, Tokubei became the subject of a kabuki play called Tenjiku Tokubei Kokubanashi. It portrayed the adventurer as a wizard-like master of magic gleaned from the Asian continent.

His secret superpower involved casting spells on the large stones used to make pickled vegetables, transforming them into... giant toads. Which would then attack his enemies. (Yeah, toads. C'mon. When you think about it, is this really that much stranger than the powers the X-Men and other modern superheroes are supposed to possess?)

In an amusing twist, the kabuki play's producer promoted his show by fueling rumors that the actors used "Christian magic" to effect their super-quick dress changes during the show. Perhaps one could say frogliness is next to Godliness?

Toyohara Kunichika, 1883.

Utagawa Toyokuni, 1809.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi

As the sheer number of pieces of art produced for it attest, the play was a huge hit -- the contemporary equivalent of a Hollywood blockbuster.

They influenced a writer by the name of Kanwatei Onitake, who borrowed (some might say "swiped") Tokubei's signature attack and fused it with tales of a legendary Chinese burglar to create Jiraiya, who is widely considered to be the very first ninja character in Japanese pop culture.

Jiraiya (who not coincidentally gets a big profile in Ninja Attack!) first appeared in an 1806 illustrated book that could be called the ancestor of the graphic novel. He's a thief with a heart of gold and the ability to conjure up giant phantom frogs. Where Tokubei's powers were said to come from foreign lands, Jiraiya's were good old-fashioned Japanese ninjutsu. 

The tweak to the story seems to have hit home, because Jiraiya is far more well known than his predecessor today. In fact, he's a positive superstar among a certain set. He lives on as one of the main characters in the Naruto anime series.

Kanwatei Onitake's Jiraiya

Update 02/2012! You can see the 1921 silent film "Jiraiya," considered the ancestor of both ninja cinema and tokusatsu (special-effects) films in Japan, here on YouTube! The frog-versus-samurai battle at 12 minutes in is a must-see.

 

Manga Artist Salaries

Top 100 Manga Artists Make Average of 70 Million Yen, Rest Make Average of 2.8 Million Yen (Yucasee Media)

Thinking of becoming a rich and famous manga artist? These stats might give you pause.

In 2009, some 5300 tankobon (volumes of a manga series) were published in Japan. The top 100 averaged a whopping 70,000,000 yen in royalties for their artists -- that's about $900,000 a volume annually for the top performers. Not bad! Sounds like a pretty good living.

But what about the remaining 5,200 artists out there? Their average annual royalty income was just 2.8 million yen -- about USD $35,000. For a year of work. Not counting expenses, of which a manga-ka has many. Not exactly conducive to a rockin' lifestyle, especially if you're living in one of the world's most expensive cities. And remember, that's the AVERAGE. Which means a significant amount are making significantly less than that.

The bottom line? It's extraordinarily difficult to earn a "middle class" standard of living as a manga artist. (Added 6/1: As mentioned in the comments, it's estimated one has to sell 120,000 copies of their works to even match the average salaryman's annual income.)

Related stories:

Manga! Manga! Poverty! Poverty!

"Love Hina" Akamatsu on the Manga Gap

(Correction 5/31: yes, I know I missed a zero in there at first. It's been fixed. These are the correct figures.)

The Manga Gap

In a recent diary entry, manga-ka Ken Akamatsu (of "Love Hina" fame, among others) waxes philosophical about the state of the comic book industry in Japan today. It's one of an increasing number of reports from the trenches confirming a phenomenon that became obvious last year: the famous titles sell, everything else doesn't.

As discussed previously, if you are the average manga-ka, you make your real money not off the weekly serialization of your work but rather the tankobon, standard-sized collections of your work that are released for sale at fixed intervals. The problem is, as Akamatsu notes, that 2008 tankobon sales were off 4.9 percent as compared to the previous year, and the trend is expected to continue.

"As source material for TV dramas, films, and anime, and as a standalone product, the tankobon is here to stay," remarks Akamatsu. "The tankobon that do sell, sell in incredible volumes. But this means that the ones that don't, slide into obscurity."

Akamatsu ties the problem directly to the sagging fortunes of Japan's ubiquitous comic magazines. "In the past, the major comic magazines had a 'multiplier effect' in which the standout titles would also in turn increase the visibility of lesser-known ones... But this effect is on the wane. In short, the chances to get to know lesser-known manga are disappearing."

But the big issue (and one left unexplored by Akamatsu) is: do fans WANT to get to know lesser-known manga in the first place? The interesting thing is how this dovetails with comments by Toshio Okada and other old-schoolers, who  -- despite increasingly sounding like your granddad telling you he had to walk uphill both ways to school -- complain of younger fans' tendency to "ghettoize" themselves into tiny bubble-like individual worlds rather than seeking out new experiences. 

Which leads to the real questions: if tastes have truly changed this significantly, how much does complaining about it really help? And what are Japanese creators and media outlets going to change to address the situation?

Manga! Manga! Poverty! Poverty!

Tokyokeizai Online The Manga Industry's Dirty Secret: the 'Working Poor' (Japanese Language)

Are the declining fortunes of the Japanese comic industry threatening its once legendary diversity? That's what this article from Japanese economics website Tokyokeizai Online seems to suggest. In 1995, Weekly Jump, that cornerstone of otaku dreams, sold some six million copies every week. That number is down to 2.8 million today. And they aren't an exception: Jump is just one of many manga magazines struggling with slumping circulations and revenues.

The manga industry is structured such that weekly comic magazines are the "proving ground" for new content that are eventually collected into pocket-sized tankobon volumes. That's where the real money is made, especially when a series is turned into an animated show or film. Or at least it was. Nowadays, the hits sell like wildfire and the non-hits don't move at all, forcing editors to become far choosier about the content they select for publication.

"The industry is struggling; there's a sense that the marketable standout series have been exhausted," according to Masaharu Kubo of The Research Institute for Publications. "Now the market continues to polarize into series aimed purely at the mainstream, and series aimed purely at otaku." In other words, the niche stuff that makes the Japanese comic scene so great is becoming a much harder sell.

The situation has a trickle-down effect on those who actually create manga as well, of course. Generally speaking, a comic artist can't turn a profit based simply on the per-page rate they're paid for publishing their comics. Particularly interesting is the economic profile of artist Chin Nakamura, creator of the series "Gunjou." Although she is paid from 9,500 yen to 12,350 per page of work, crushing deadlines require her to hire numerous assistants, cutting deeply into her revenues and in some cases forcing her to borrow against her salary from the publisher.

Everyone agrees that the key to ensuring the industry's health is quality content. But the current system, which pretty much forces all published artists to take assistants to crank out huge volumes of content, is taking its toll on the creators. "If we don't take serious action," concludes Nakamura, "the system that allows so many quality manga to flourish will collapse." The article concludes that until the issue of the "working poor" artists is addressed, it will be all but impossible for the vast majority of manga artists to enjoy a decent standard of living -- but where will the money come from given the declining sales of comic magazines and books?