This is a follow-up to a story I reported a few weeks ago about the International Manga Award. As a reminder, the Award was established by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for manga artists from outside of Japan. For this, the inaugural International Manga Award, the winner was Lee Chi Ching of Hong Kong for his work Sun Zi’s Tactics. The three Shorei (Encouragement) Awards were given to Kai (Hong Kong - 1520), Benny Wong Thong Hou (Malaysia - Le Gardenie), and Madeleine Rosca (Australia - Hollow Fields). All four were invited to the awards ceremony. They also were able to spend over a week touring parts of Japan courtesy of the Japan Foundation.
Click on the links below to jump down to the appropriate section, or keep reading!
- The Awards Ceremony | Interview with NHK
- Visit to Shogakukan Publishing | Visit to Studio Pierrot Anime Studio
- Kyoto International Manga Museum & the Tezuka Museum | Visitng Kinkaku-ji Visit and Nijo Castle
- Akihabara, The Ghibli Museum | Meeting manga-ka Inoue Takehiko
- Madeleine’s Manga - Hollow Fields
One of the runners-up, Madeleine Rosca, has written several entries in her journal (part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4) about her experiences at the ceremony and at many of the places she and the others visited during their stay. She has graciously permitted me to post excerpts from her journal as well as some of the photos (including captions) she took.
Of the four, she had the furthest to travel. She is from the state of Tasmania in Australia…so she had a 2-hour "e;hop"e; from Hobart (capitol of Tasmania) to Sydney, a 9-hour wait, and a 9-1/2 hour flight from Sydney to Tokyo-Narita. Since this was her first trip to Japan, she made the unpleasant discovery that Narita is nowhere near Tokyo proper…it isn’t even in the same prefecture. It is over an hour travel by fastest train to Tokyo.
Once Madeleine got to her hotel and was able to partially recover, she met the other winners. Quoting from her journal:
They were all extremely nice, although they all spoke Cantonese as their common language, so this formed a pattern for the rest of the trip - the three of them talking in Chinese, and me following them around deliriously going ‘huhh??’ a lot.
During the first night, she and Ben (the Malaysian runner-up) explored Roppongi. She was impressed by all the late night activity:
“Coming from li’l ol’ Tassie [Tasmania], I was amazed at how everything was still perfectly open, even 10pm at night. Bookstores, cafes, dominatrix sushi lounges (yeah, it had one of those). The local magazine store was still doing a huge trade even at this time of night, and the sheer volume of crazy publications you could get from there was pretty astonishing to a first-time Japan traveller.”
The Awards Ceremony
The following night was the awards ceremony. Madeleine was surprised by the number of people who attended including plenty of press and the manga-ka who were the judges:
“It is at this point another irritating thing happened, although I’m sure Kai and Li were feeling the same as me…we had all these great manga artists in one room…and none of us had brought a sketchpad for a quick sketch and an autograph. None except the ever resourceful Ben. Boy was I steamed when I saw him get a signed sketch from Doraemon’s creator!!”
Then it was time for the ceremony:
“The ceremony itself wasn’t long, but was scary due to a) the presence of a hell of a lot of cameras, b) the presence of Mr. Taro Aso, the Foreign Minister who had created the award, and c) the fact that the award itself was 5kg, and very easy to drop. Luckily that didn’t happen to us. We each got to go up to the podium, recieve the award from Mr. Aso, and make a speech. I was very nervous, so I think my speech may have been delivered two octaves higher than usual, but the crowd seemed to like it. After that was done with, there were loads of photo opportunities with Mr. Aso, as well as a press conference (in which the press just delivered all their questions to first place winner Li anyway, letting the rest of us off the hook)…”
“…At the end of it I was supremely exhausted…but I felt extremely happy. I can’t really describe how good it has felt, winning an award for Hollow Fields vol.1. It’s like you look back on your life, remember all the folks who doubted you and thought you’d never get anywhere with this line of work, and everything discouraging they said is just snuffed out of existence. Best of all though, it makes you want to do so much better.”
Incidentally, the photo of the awards is the only one not from Madeleine’s journal. It came from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. The awards were designed by Taku Satoh and take the shape of connected “speech bubbles” (vertically for the International Manga Award and horizontally for the Encouragement award).
Interview with NHK
Once the ceremony was over, the rest of Madeleine’s (and the other winnners’) stay was devoted to visiting various manga and anime related sites as well as some regular tourist sites. Before they started touring, the Japan Foundation had arranged for all of them to be interviewed by NHK (Japan’s version of the BBC). Once the interviews were over, it seems that NHK wanted to get additional material with Madeleine:
“Turns out NHK had some broadcasting time to burn, and they wanted to spend it by following around the most foreign of the award winners (i.e, me) to get my wide-eyed first-time impression of Japan. The foundation had given them permission to film me at Shogakukan…as well as a thumbs-up to follow me to our next location later that afternoon, which was to be Studio Pierrot in Mitaka.”
Visit to Shogakukan Publishing
More on this in a bit. First, Madeleine’s visit to the publisher, Shogakukan (Doraemon, 20th Century Boys, InuYasha, etc.) sounded informative and at times amusing:
“We got to sit with five of the editorial staff and discuss the state of manga in both Japan and overseas. This was where I discovered that most people were labouring under the belief that because I am Australian, Seven Seas Entertainment is an Australian publishing company. They also think Australians license and translate manga directly from Japan ourselves, rather than buying the American versions which translate Japanese slang into American colloquialisms, thus making us aussies feel like we are reading dialogue only after it has been dragged through two foreign cultures (grrr!). Cutest question - ‘I know you are speaking English right now for our benefit, but do Australians have their own separate language?’”
Visit to Studio Pierrot Anime Studio
They next visited the animation studio, Studio Pierrot (CLAMP School of Detectives, Midori Days, Naruto, etc.). They were able to watch the animators working on Naruto Shippūden. However, it was here that Madeleine discovered some drawbacks to having a TV crew following her around:
“One of the many things I have discovered on this trip is that being the one person in a group with your own camera crew trailing you makes you an instant social pariah in most work settings, and whenever I entered an animation room with camera in tow the workers tended to dive behind their desks and refuse to resurface until I left. Never has the phrase ‘you are cramping my style’ taken on so much importance with me…”
Still, this inconvenience would be worth it if it meant that she would become famous in Japan:
“Afterward, my translator remarked that the NHK people were pleased with their footage, and that I was going to be on Japanese TV.
TRANSLATOR: That’s right! You’re going to be a star!
MAD: (chuffed) Oh yeah! What time will this program be on?
TRANSLATOR: Oh, they say around…4:15am in the morning.
MAD: *insert sound of rapidly deflating object here*”
maybe not…
Kyoto International Manga Museum & the Tezuka Museum
Later in their visit, the four went to Kyoto. This included a stop at Kyoto Sekai University which has a course in Manga Studies. They sat in on a class being conducted by Keiko Takemiya (Toward the Terra).
Another stop was the Kyoto International Manga Museum which has a very large collection of manga and, as their name suggests, many volumes of Western comics as well. The four were also surprised to see that:
“They even set up a little exhibit for the International Manga Award, with little pictures and descriptions of our manga books. It was set up in their ‘how to’ room, which includes an artist’s desk where a manga artist gives demonstrations every day. We were all pretty flattered that our stuff was being featured as an exhibit!”
left to right: Kai, Li, Madeleine, Ben
“At the end of our journey around this manga mecca, the museum curators asked each of us to draw something for the museum to show. The pressure was on - I hate drawing in front of an audience, and it didn’t help that Superartist Li finished his masterpiece in about two minutes flat! They provided us with a selection of media to use, and since everyone else went with inks, I decided to be maverick and break out the coloured pencils. From left to right - me, Ben, Kai, Li…”
“Here’s a closer shot…You wouldn’t believe how long this took me, only Ben was slower because he was adding insane levels of background detail to his. What can I say - I’m nervous when I’m being watched! (Lucy’s sketchbook says - ‘Arigato! Kyoto Manga Museum!’)”
From the Manga Museum, the group went to the Tezuka Museum dedicated to the work of Osamu Tezuka (”Father of Manga”). Unfortunately, they got there shortly before closing time:
“…and sadly, we had gotten there too late in the day to view the movie feature that was part of our price of admission. Curses! I just had time to descend into the basement and check out the ‘boiler room’ where Tezuka’s character ideas are spelled out in bright designs on the wall in a steampunk-theme, before we had to leave…” They were also able to spend some time visiting more standard tourist sights like:
Visitng Kinkaku-ji Visit and Nijo Castle
Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion)
Barbarian at the Gate (of Nijo Castle)
Akihabara and the Ghibli Museum
Once they returned to Tokyo, they finally made the pilgrimage to Akihabara:
“There is no other way to say it – Akihabara makes you weep with sheer bitterness that you did not bring more spending money with you…For all lovers of anime/manga shopping, this place was just heaven. I blew most of my trip money here, particularly in K-Books, a manga/otaku bookstore which occupies the whole top level of a department store. I have never seen so many art books dedicated to anime…auurrghhhlll…”
“…And more than a third of that entire floor was the hentai section, which women shoppers never stepped foot in. Dirty, dirty otaku.” They also visited the Ghibli Museum:
“I took in the exhibit rooms upstairs, which featured loads of artwork, conceptual and production, from Ghibli’s various features. Obviously, Totoro was huge, and Kiki’s Delivery Service got a lot of devoted space as well. Curiously a bit absent were any displays on Princess Mononoke, and I’m surprised Spirited Away wasn’t as visible in the exhibitions as Totoro and Kiki were…the museum definitely leans towards the nostalgia of the studio’s early works.”
Meeting manga-ka Inoue Takehiko
Their final stop was a visit with manga-ka, Inoue Takehiko (Slam Dunk, Vagabond), at his studio:
“He turned out to be an extremely super-nice guy, although when he discovered I was Australian his face fell and his expression became agonized. For a few seconds I was wondering what I did wrong until he communicated through my translator that he was still feeling wounded about Australia knocking Japan out of the world cup last year. Drat, I never thought the Socceroos would get me off to such a bad start with one of Japan’s leading manga-ka! Fortunately he didn’t take it personally, and we were able to relax and have a chat. Li, being confident, asked most of the questions, and Takehiko was happy to answer. It turns out he believes pretty solidly that artists should get up and take breaks in which they go for a walk or play some sports, because spinal problems are common in this profession (tell me about it).”
left to right: Madeleine, Kai, Inoue Takehiko, Ben, Li
Her final thoughts about the ceremony and her visit to Japan:
“Hmm…what can I say? Definitely one of the best experiences of my life, although also a huge learning curve…it was a shock to my system to see how unprepared I was for the trip, and next time will be different!”
Again, I would like to thank Ms Rosca for allowing me to use her text and images from her journal.
Her journal may be read here…and these entries again are here (part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4).
Madeleine’s Manga - Hollow Fields
If you would like more information about her manga, Hollow Fields (publisher Seven Seas Entertainment has ordered a second printing), you can check out the Gomanga Hollow Fields Page (which has synopsis, sample art, and ordering info).
Julie of Manga Maniac Cafe has reviewed Hollow Fields, Vol. 1. You can read her review here.
Awards Photo: ©Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs
