Forum - View topicREVIEW: Satoko and Nada GN 1
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doctordoom85
 Posts: 2093 |
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This sounds interesting, I'll check it out. I've really enjoyed reading the Ms. Marvel series of the last few years with the teenage Muslim girl Kamala Khan as the new heroine bearing the title (even if it had a really rough patch during Civil War II, god that whole event should just never have happened), and it'll be interesting to read a manga also discussing Muslim culture.[/i]
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Scalfin
Posts: 249 |
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I tried reading some "scanlations" (it's from a webcomic, but I think the term still applies) a while back and found it tiringly dull, but I might give it another shot.
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shosakukan
Posts: 317 |
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Famous scholar of the Old Testament Sekine Masao translated Exodus into Japanese, and it became an inexpensive papaerback published by a prestigeous publishing firm in Japan. Bernard Malamud's The Assistant has at least three different Japanese translations. Scholar of Jewish thought Yamaga Tetsuo translated Norman Solomon's Judaism: A Very Short Introduction into Japanese. Kyōbunkan sells matzot (Kyōbunkan is a well-known bookshop in Ginza which also deals in books related to Christianity). So Japanese people who belong to the intelligentsia probably know of the Passover and foods related to it. This Japanese guy bought matzot at a Costco store in Japan and tried it. http://www.costcodanshi.com/パン/20161210_matzos/ It seems that he is an ordinary guy who was curious about 'odd crackers', rather than an egghead, though. |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13590 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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Outside of symbolism and there being a lot less of a Muslim or Jewish presence in Japan than Christians, why are depictions of Muslims and Jews so uncommon in manga and anime?
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 2632 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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In my experience, they're relatively uncommon in a lot of literature and pop culture. Growing up, the only books I remember reading with Jewish characters were WWII books, so the only time I saw myself in my reading was kids running for their lives or imprisoned by people who wanted them dead. (And didn't that feel great...) It's only in the last eight-odd years that I've started see more representation in the form of characters in books or TV shows not about the Holocaust, and believe me, it's very welcome. That timeline is even shorter for Muslims in pop culture and literature - an earlier poster mentioned Ms. Marvel (who is awesome) and in graphic novels like Raina Telgemaier's Ghosts or Svetlana Chmakova's Brave we get hijabi characters, even if only in the background. On the TV show Legends of Tomorrow we've had both Jewish and Muslim characters, and it's wonderful. If I had to guess, I'd say that manga and anime may catch up, but with even more diverse countries suffering from a lack of these characters in fiction, more homogeneous ones like Japan are going to take longer to see that same inclusion. |
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Chester McCool
 Posts: 322 |
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Is there some reason why Japan should have more depictions of those groups, or any other groups that have such a small presence in Japan? They don't really have any obligation or reason to do so. |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2266 |
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No, but you see more than a few references to Christianity--even barring religious symbolism--in more than a few manga and anime. Things like all-girls schools being named after a "St. What's-her-name", nun outfits, papal institutions or similar religious hierarchies, heck, even the Saint's Young Men manga. Given how small a minority actual Christians make up of Japan's population, I'd say the sheer prolificness of their iconography being adopted in manga in anime is actually a little strange when you stop to think about it. |
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2239 |
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The remarkable thing is how much this holds even with Jewish creators. Consider how many of the most prominent figures in American comic history were Jewish, then ask yourself how many of their characters are textually Jewish. Ben Grimm was introduced in 1961 and his Jewishness wasn't made explicit until 2002. Magneto's Jewishness is mainly relevant to his backstory as, like you said, a Holocaust survivor. Kitty Pryde's Jewishness didn't even make it on-screen; it's not clear whether Batwoman's will either. I honestly don't think there's any real comic counterpart to Kamala Khan, whose Islam is prominently portrayed on page one of her first issue ("delicious, delicious infidel meat") and is, along with her Pakistani-American heritage, inextricable to her character. Or take A Series of Unfortunate Events -- Daniel Handler's mentioned, I believe, that its characters are Jewish-by-default, but there's only hints to that in the text. Even when characters in mainstream fiction are explicitly Jewish, it's often treated as something embarrassing, or something to be brushed over and mostly ignored. (Sarah Lynn is one of the most important secondary characters in BoJack Horseman, and her Jewishness is directly referenced in like one line.)
That doesn't really surprise me. Christianity proper may have a small presence in Japan, but it's one with a fair amount of history. (See: the Shimabara Rebellion.) And a lot of the other nations that have had the biggest cultural influence since 1853 have been majority Christian, not to mention all the Dutch books that got read in the ~200 years before that. Islam has a similar world population, but Muslim countries don't have the same history with Japan as Christian ones. Meanwhile, Jews are a fraction of a percent of the world population, with no comparable local history. |
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Zimmer
Posts: 195 |
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It really does show you can get a message across while being fun and not preachy. There's a lot about the whole culture I don't like and I still have a blast with it.
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JustinTaco
 Posts: 118 |
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spoiler[Is it against the rules to ask to see a locked thread out of morbid curiosity?] |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 943 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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My observation is that when anime and manga creators care to do the research on something, they really go all-out and lovingly depict everything to the smallest detail, but when they don't they just make up any old thing or fall back on what everyone "knows"... ie stereotypes. It's just a pity that they so seldom care to do the research on other cultures and depict them accurately. But of course, Western creators aren't much different in that regard, and tend to be especially bad about anything Middle Eastern. Anyway, I've been a bit on the fence about whether to check this one out or not, but it's sounding like it is worthwhile. |
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Galap
Moderator
 Posts: 2354 |
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It's not outlined in the rules (this has actually not come up before lol), but we're not going to do it. The wound was closed for a reason, after all; no need to reopen it. Not that I don't understand your curiosity. |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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shosakukan I am not trying to imply that no one in Japan knows about Judaism or Jews (in fact, there are a few very small synagogues and Jewish community centers in Japan). But just like I didn't know about Oban before I learned about it through Japanese pop culture, so too the average Japanese native might not know about Jewish holidays, and it's really great that people all over the world can learn from each other's cultural heritages.
Also, all this talk about representation and no one's brought up Osamu Tezuka's Adolf which features a Jewish character named Adolf Kamil living in the small Jewish community in Kobe, Japan before WWII, and their communities' efforts to save Jewish refugees from Europe. It's inspired by actual events---My grandfather escaped to Kobe during the war before settling in the Jewish refugee community in Japanese-controlled Shanghai. |
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shosakukan
Posts: 317 |
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Oh, of course I did not think that you were trying to imply that no one in Japan knew about Judaism or Jews. Some Japanese people know much about Jewish stuff, but Japanese Joe Bloggs probably does not know of the Passover.
Yes, Tokyo's facility of the Jewish Community of Japan is in Hiro'o, and the facility is near to the Japanese Red Cross Medical Centre and Tokyo Jogakkan (a prestigious school for girls).
Jewish refugees whom Japanese diplomat Sugihara Chiune had issued visas to went to Kobe, because, as you have said, Kobe had a Jewish community. These are photos of Japanese clergymen in Kobe who were providing apples to Jews who had come to Japan with Sugihara's visas.
Speaking of Jewish characters in anime/manga, in spoiler['Freud 1/2'], a manga by Kawahara Izumi, spoiler[the ghost of Sigmund Freud] has appeared as an important character. Whilst Kawahara Izumi is a well-known manga-ka in Japan, it seems that she is not very well-known to manga fans in the Anglosphere. Sentai Filmworks seems to have got the licence for the live-action adaptation of a manga by Kawahara, though. |
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Hellfish
Posts: 391 Location: Mexico |
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Nice to see this one licensed.
 I wasn't really expecting it as even if the strips are very good the art is not exactly the thing that is on fashion.
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