It’s no secret that I go shopping in Japan, almost all of my travelogues have been retail oriented. But one of my favourite stores is a little boutique home goods/decor place called FrancFranc, located just outside the Shinjuku JR New South Entrance, the same pedestrian walkway and shopping promenade that housed Tokyo’s first, busiest Krispy Kreme Donuts. Its upscale, a mix of Euro and Japanese sensibilities, a chain of great shops found across Japan and throughout Asia, and I would basically decorate my entire home with this stuff if I lived in Japan.
…and they love Christmas. Seriously, we walked by this place on (I think) the first of November, and it was already splashed out with every manner of Christmas goods. For a Christmasophile like myself, it was like heaven. I wanted to buy everything, but sadly my luggage was reserved almost entirely for otaku-related-goods.
So I took pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. With that lovely Olympus PEN EL-1 Digital Camera. Incidentally I tried to get this up online before Christmas, but computer troubles tripped me up. Enjoy this late breaking Christmas spirit. 🙂
Can you believe that these are CHRISTMAS CARDS? They come flat in the envelope, and then you pop them out and decorate them and they’re amazing. I did pick up a couple of these actually, since they packed flat. If anyone knows if/where to get these in Toronto, I’m all over them.
Nicest. Disposable. Silverware. Ever.
Mini Abstract Christmas Trees, Mini Decorations, and everything sparkles.
Click the “Keep Reading” for all the rest of the sparkle….
Yes, the Japanese have a supermarket called FOO:Dmagazine (Foodie Magazine), an upscale grocery store in the massive SEIYU chain. I’m not going to lie to you: I love grocery stores. When I go I need to visit every aisle, I look at tons of items, I buy way more than I need because I don’t go to grocery stores often, living downtown… and hey, that’s why they’re called “non-perishables” anyway, right?
All photos taken with an Olympus PEN EL-1 digital camera.
Just inside the front door is the produce section, which makes it… well, just like home really. Admittedly some of the produce is a little different, and differently priced.
85 yen (about a buck) for an Orange? That’s not too crazy. And $3-$4 for a bag of kiwis? Reasonable enough I guess.
Although the apples range between $1.30 and $4.50 a pop here. Still, not the most expensive apples I’ve saw on this last trip. I think the most expensive single apple was $10. 🙂
Or an anemic little basket of Strawberries for 12 bucks. Actually, these looked gorgeous, like illustrations of strawberries…
Or a tiny bunch of grapes for about $10 (Green, Seedless) or $8 (Red).
Bread? Not too bad, about 3 times what it would cost at home. But here’s a neat thing! The bread is 88 yen (about a buck-ten) for bread, whether you want to buy 4, 6, or 8 slices. Because the amount of bread is the same, it’s just sliced at different thicknesses! And yeah, the four-slicers are ridiculously thick pieces of bread.
For my October 2010 trip to Japan, I wanted to go to places I’d never been before, but also explore places I’d been more thoroughly. Really get a rich experience out of this trip. Roppongi is the former–a Tokyo neighbourhood that I’d consciously avoided on past trips. Frankly, the alternative descriptions of Roppongi as a soulless shopping district for the wealthy and a playground for drunken foreigners and the military… dissuaded me. But on a rainy Saturday afternoon, travelling to a massive indoor shopping mall appealed more than being outside (or staying in the hotel), and so off we went.
Oh, and I should mention, all photos in this post taken with my new Olympus Pen E-PL1, which I am learning to use and loving.
We took the subway (rather than the JR trains) to get to Roppongi, because you can’t really get there any other way. The subways are more complicated and intimidating than the JR, but honestly once you get the hand of them they’re phenomenal. Cheaper, they go to far more locations in Tokyo, and best of all the subway companies sign different vending machine contracts than the JR companies, and so there’s all kinds of never-before-seen drinks!
Herb & Relax Lemorea, for example, lists (seriously) CATNIP as an ingredient/selling feature. So we had to buy it. It tastes… Herbacious. And weird. Not unpleasant on the palette, but it seems to be flavoured with artificial sweetener, which leaves an unpleasant viscous feeling on the tongue and has an unfortunate aftertaste. Still, now I can say I’ve had a drink with catnip in it.
I’m sort of convinced we took the long way around, but this is the exit to Roppongi Hills shopping complex that the signage told us to take. It let us out at a bookstore, and a rain-drenched city street.
On the way into the complex, we spotted a little grocery store selling these ridiculously packaged apples. We got the least-expensive of the bunch, just to the right, at 490 yen for 3 apples–or about $5.50.
This is the photo where Andrew remarked “look at all the insane architecture you can build if you don’t have crazy Canadian weather!” It’s hard to explain, but imagine a large underground mall, with this three-or-four-storey escalator coming up out of the middle of it into a covered-but-open-to-the-air dome filled with advertising billboards; breathtaking in its excess.
And that led out into the courtyard of the West Walk and the Mori Tower, basically the main part of the Roppongi Hills complex. Lots of dramatic architecture here as well.
And pouring rain, and gusting winds up to 70km an hour. Did I mention that there was a typhoon off the coast of the country, making for ridiculous rain and wind? There was. Even this short open-air walk was a little gross.
Safely ensconsed inside, you can get an idea of the drama they were going for. Big spaces, lots of verticality and natural light. It’s really impressive.
Clean lines, polished and textured surfaces interacting… Hyper-contemporary. The whole thing felt like a rich-person’s bathroom.
I love this photo because it feels so warm and inviting. That’s more to do wit the camera than the space though.
The center of the space featured this amazing halloween display, simultaneously brilliant with its bent wood and real pumpkins, and kind of crappy by tacking dollar-store decorations all over it. Happy Halloween?
Up from my vantage point I was able to capture… off in the distance…
The Halloween marching band.
A group of costumed children have congregated around the pumpkin… What will happen?!
The band smacks right into the kids! The kids send their princess out as official envoy. One of the band’s assistants dutifully passes out candy to all of the children, before they take up their instruments and continue on, parading through the mall with their halloween songs.
Loved this display of watches, hated the design of the individual watches.
Joel Robuchon has a restaurant and bakery here! OMG! OMG! We had to check it out.
So delicious-looking! Aiee1 Sandwiches with real, fresh, delicious-looking ingredients. Sliced buffalo mozerella and more.
We bought 4 things. The first, a croissant. We devoured almost all of it before I got a picture, it was that good.
Then, a gorgonzola-dolloped bun, but the bun was a hearty bread… Omg so good. Just… just amazing.
Fearing a repeat, I immediately photographed the last two items before we inhaled them as well. On top was a truly amazing four-cheese, honey, and walnut pastry, and on the bottom is the single greatest croque monsieur I’ve ever had. It’s pretty hard to fuck up ham and cheese, but no one has ever gotten it this right before either. It exploded with flavour, and was still warm too.
Actually, here’s the video we took where I was over the moon about our experience:
Basically, the bakery at Atelier by Joel Robochon is amazing, inexpensive, and delicious. Get to it. It might even be worth going back for the actual restaurant, just to see if it’s as awesome.
The marching band played through our seating area.
Oh, on that, you’ll see all the green carpet and flags above, that’s one of the sponsor-spaces for the Tokyo International Film Festival, going on right now and taking place entirely within the Roppongi Hills complex.
Then we went to the Roppongi Hills Art & Design Store, conveniently located at the entrance to the Mori Art Gallery.
So way up on the 52nd floor of the Mori Building is the Mori Art Gallery and the “Sky Deck”. For $20 you get access to the regular gallery, the special exhibition, and the whole skyview thing. Not a bad deal if the art is good and the view is clear. But as I mentioned…
…the typhoon made for some mediocre views. Still, you get a real feeling that 52 stories up is pretty far…!
The skyview area was decorated sporadically with Halloween-related decorations and items, though it really felt kind of sad and awful, honestly. Above you can see a waste of $20–the cost of dressing up your kid in one of the available costumes and having them photographed in front of that scene. Considering it cost at least $5 just to get up to the top of the tower in the first place, you’d think they’d let people take pictures for free but…
The architecture is no less impressive though.
No words.
The classy entranceway into the ritzy 52nd floor bar.
The Mori gift shop…
You’re being subjected to a bit of blogging trickery here, I’m going to put the Mori gallery exhibition into it’s own post, up next. So let’s just pretend 2 hours have passed, and check out the gift shop!
Oooh!
Ahh! Famous art in plastic miniature, distributed via specialized vending machine!
Then we headed to the restaurant floor for a bite to eat. Every public building has a whole floor devoted to restaurants, sometimes 2 or 3. It’s awesome, you’re spoiled for choice.
We almost ate here, but the unmoving crowd of slack-jawed yokels blocking the menu–so we could see what they actually served in addition to just looking fun–prompted us to continue onward. We instead went to a very classy vegetarian shabu-shabu restaurant…
…that none-the-less spared no expense decorating the walls for halloween. 🙂
A gloomy view on a gloomy day, with Tokyo Tower obscured by the low-cloud-cover in the middle-right.
On the way out, we spotted possibly the greatest Halloween decoration yet. The office reception desk was vacant, save for this lone, unadorned pumpkin, watching over all of us. It summed up my feelings about the Roppongi Hills complex really–it’s all very impressive, imposing, but soulless and not-quite-there… in a way that I don’t think the folks in charge can even _see_. Still it was busy even on a rainy Saturday afternoon, they most be doing something right…
So, surprising no one (I guess) I am heading back to Tokyo today for a business trip with as much ‘pleasure’ as I can cram in there as well. Buying more stuff for The Beguiling, hopefully doing a bit of TCAF business, that sort of thing. As always it’s going to be a hoot.
The big change is that all of my photo-taking, and subsequent photo-blogging, will now be done with this beauty of a camera–the Olympus PEN E-PL1–which I am test-driving for the trip. Thanks to various folks for helping me set that one up, I should have some great photos to share this week and next.
Meanwhile, before I had a chance to break out the Olympus (shot with my Fuji Finepix), I spotted this rack at the exceptionally well-stocked-for-graphic-novels airport bookstore. Archie Marries…, Bone and Amulet on the bottom shelf, and… is that?
…yes! This is an airport bookstore that actually stocks Jason Shiga’s MEANWHILE…. That is awesome! I mean, it’s on a shelf with “Herman Classics”, which is less awesome, but still! And just around the corner on the same display…
Scott Pilgrim! Pokemon! And… THE NEW CHARLES BURNS!? This airport bookstore has more copies of these books in-stock and displayed than _most comic book stores_, which is why _most comic book stores_ make me incredibly sad. But wait there’s more!
The staff picks! Since they’re 95% DC, I’m tempted to say that DC’s Cdn distributor bought and paid for this section, but either way, that’s some great, prominent display for these books! That’s pretty incredible and an auspicious start to this trip…
On that note, let me share a couple more pics with you.
These are two pictures that I took of the Taiyo Matsumoto section of my bookshelf, just so they’d be on the camera when I was out shopping and I’d know what I already had!
Top photo (l to r): TekkonKinkreet Animation Book 2-pack, PEN magazine with comic article, 5-issues “Black and WHite” mini-series, Tekkon Kinkreet All-In-One Edition, GoGo Monster, Black & White 1-3, ZERO 1-2, “Brothers of Japan”, a novel Matsumoto did the cover for, Hana-Otoko 1-3 Special box set, Hana-Otoko v1, Blue Spring, Le Samurai Bambou 1-2 (French), Number 5 Omnibus Editions 1-2 & 4, No. 5 v3 (French), No. 5 1-2 (English), No. 5 volume 1 Gift-box edition with figure (Japanese), Cosmic Comix Magazine with Matsumoto interview, 100 & 101 Matsumoto art books, Something(?), French colour comics album.
Bottom photo (l to r): PING PONG Film book box-set edition with Paddle & Rubik’s Cube, Ping Pong 1-2 & 5, Ping Pong Special Edition Oversized version 1-3, and then a bunch of other stuff. Oh, and Bambook Samurai Volume 7 is on the top there, laying on it’s side.
Click for larger!
Alright, I’ve got a plane to catch. Expect lots of blogging this week! Take care!
So I went back to Japan in May of 2010! That was trip #3, and since I’d crossed the vast majority of ohmygodImustdothisthing things off my list, I dug a little harder into what was “going on” while I was in Tokyo, to see if there were any cool events, gallery shows, or comics things that I could visit while I was there. It turns out that Design Festa vol. 31 was all three!
Design Festa is a twice-yearly… Design… Festival… held at Tokyo Big Sight, the massive convention centre on the artifical island floating in the middle of Tokyo Bay (Odaiba) that also houses the world famous Comiket doujinshi convention, also twice yearly. Design Festa was started by Takeshi Murakami and friends in 1994, to give aspiring artists in Tokyo a chance to put their work on display in a commercial context… or as the website says “Making an artistic impact is not easy, regardless of talent but if many people get together and make an art movement, the possibilities expand infinitely!”
The event is comprised of more than 2500 “booths” of artists, with about 8500 individual artists participating in some way. Painting, sculpture, drawing, crafts, performance, commercial products, it’s all sort of smushed together to create one of the most vibrant spaces I’ve ever visited… and I attend comic book conventions for a living.
I think what was most surprising to me was the range of material on display. Though it tended to be very contemporary in scope (and often post-modern), there were still real elements of traditional Japanese arts that tended to come through. It was a pretty amazing thing to do on my first day in Japan, to be dazzled by all of these wonderfully talented young artists. I plan to visit Design Festa Vol. 32 when I go back to Tokyo this fall.
At the entrance to Design Festa, cosplayers, crossplayers, crossdressers, and people who just like to dress up congregated to see and be seen. Artistic events draw out artistic people of all stripes…
I think it’s fair to say that on my Summer 2009 trip to Japan, I spent a lot of time in stores that sell manga. I’m a pretty manga-specific guy actually. Sure, I’ll get suckered in for some cool looking toys, and I’ve got no resistance to Gashapon at all. But generally, the other otaku goods fall a little flat with me–given the choice I’m filling up my suitcase with books. Manga mostly, a few artbooks, and the occasional oddity. 🙂 So when I say that my favourite manga displays in Japan were found at the Shibuya location of Tsutaya–the country wide chain of media stores–well, I hope you’ll consider it a ‘considered’ opinion. The Shibuya Tsutaya has an enormous depth and breadth of selection, well-organized and with lots of creator and series-specific displays, lots of hand-written recommendations and decorations, and the taste of the staff seems to be exactly the same as my own.
For example, it’s where I found this mini-shrine to Tekkonkinkreet creator Taiyo Matsumoto:
Everything in one convenient place? Don’t mind if I do.
To get to the Shibuya Tsutaya (and I’m sure it’s just one of dozens), take the Hachiko exit from Shibuya JR Station. Hachiko is the name of the dog up top there. Directly across the scramble crossing, in the same building that houses the Starbucks, is Tsutaya. Actually, I covered it briefly on my 2007 trip, if you wanna go check it out: https://comics212.net/2008/02/24/japan-2007-shibuya-ginza-ramen-museum-macadonaru/
I enjoyed it so much I went for another spin and came away just as impressed at their manga retail acumen! Here are some shots from inside the store.
The elevator to B1 drops you in the middle of the shoujo section, and a large poster promoting the work of Fumi Yoshinaga, amongst others…! Zooming in to the top of the post there?
A signing card/poster by one of my favourite mangaka, Paradise Kiss and Nana creator Ai Yazawa!
The English editions of Paradise Kiss from Tokyopop were sort of awful approximations of the elegant Japanese designs–complete with metallic inks. Gorgeous. On the very edge there, you can see 2 copies of the Paradise Kiss postcard set and “Welcome to the Gokino World”, an artbook of Ai Yazawa’s pre-Parakiss work. I have both of these items, I’ll try and blog them at some point in the future… they’re amazing!
This is one of the new-release tables, which features giant stacks of manga, hordes of manga… and the cool, fashionable young people checking them out. I really dig the interior page reproductions, I think that’s a cool idea that I wish we did more of here… that I wish we had more space to do at The Beguiling where I work…! 🙂
A closer look at the new releases sees a two-volume best of edition of OISHINBO, “Maverick” and “Tycoon” for the opposing father and son culinary enemies! Also, some sort of ridiculous salaryman manga, and another cool-looking food manga in the upper-left corner.
Some more new releases.
The magazine-wall of new releases. Love the full-face display too.
This month’s Shonen Ace Monthly Gangan comes with a DVD!
Meanwhile, it looks like the Azumanga Daioh gang make a return engagement…?
I loved these fat Golgo 13 collections. Note the complete run of Golgo 13 also on the shelf around it… 120+ volumes.
I guess with all of these close-ups, it’s kinda hard to get the best idea of just how big this place was…? Apologies, I don’t seem to have taken a reallllly wide shot. Still, trust me, it’s a pretty big floor 🙂
Here’s another one of those ‘shrines’ I was talking about… this time to Naoki Urasawa, creator of the then just-completed PLUTO series! As you can see, Pluto is prominently featured, but it’s his (then) brand new manga series BILLY BAT that really took the cake!
Oh and a signing card from the creator of Emma, Kaoru Mori, peeking through on the right hand side there… I may not have even seen that in store. Good thing I took photos eh?
This weird food manga looked fascinating too. Love the display signage of the sardine on the plate.
So here’s something weird. Junji Ito did a very strange cat-manga…? The horror guy, you know, Uzumaki and Gyo? Yeah, I had to buy it. I haven’t read it yet though, but it’s kind of amazing that it exists. I’ll try and blog that too.
Here’s the shrine to all-things Takehiko Inoue. I love that Slam Dunk STILL has more facings than his 2 current series, Vagabond and Real.
So I just wanted to post this–this is how BUDDHA by Osamu Tezuka is sold in Japan. As a box of 12 manga, each with a different weirdo animal illustration on the cover. I… I don’t get it.
An amazing collection of some of the awesome signing cards they’ve got in store from the folks who’ve visited! That’s Junko Mizuno up top, followed by Suehiro Maruo in the middle. And the bottom is familiar to me, but I can’t make it out. Feel free to let me know in the comments, and I’ll correct it!
Speaking of which, this hand-made sign for Suehiro Mauro’s adaptation of Edogawa Rampo’s “Mysterious Tale of Panorama Island” is awesome! Make sure to check out the English-language edition when it gets released this fall from Last Gasp!
How it all works: These manga shelves are the most fantastically designed things I have ever seen. Stroke of genius, really.
How it all works: Have a standing special order? Supposed to get a toy with your magazine purchase? Want something really thefty? You can find that material behind the counter, ready for pick-up when you’re ringing out.
That’s it for this time! Look for the last post in this travelogue very, very soon. We’re visiting one more Tsutaya before we leave the country…
So, continuing from my last post (https://comics212.net/2010/07/06/japan-2009-harajuku-kiddy-land-tintin-shop/), I spent a bunch of time in Harajuku this time around, and it was great. We set a very relaxed schedule, and planned only to walk around and try to go to places and see things that we hadn’t seen before. That said, I couldn’t resist the lure of either Kiddyland (the awesome toy store) or the beautiful Tintin shop, but we did decide to disappear into the sidestreets and back streets of Harajuku, a mostly residential part of town that didn’t get much in the way of tourists. It was wonderful, and a great reminder that there’s so much to Tokyo–and really any travel destination–than the must-see stops in the guidebook.
Popping back around the corner from the Tintin Shop is the Louis Vuitton flagship, which featured a massive installation of work by and based on the art of Takeshi Murakami, which is… pretty awesome! We explored a little bit and found it utterly delightful, but in retrospect I wish we’d lingered a little longer. They were pretty serious about a lack of indoor photographs, unfortunately.
This is Monthly Shonen Gangan, a monthly manga anthology published by Square/Enix, best known in the west for their video game properties. It is where the very popular Shonen series Fullmetal Alchemist, published in English by Viz, is originally serialized. This is one fat piece of comics.
For comparison’s sake, here’s how this puppy stacks up against my USB plug… it’s about 3 inches thick, and about a 90/10 split comics and advertising.
As you can see, the final story begins serialization on page 1103. The magazine, by my count, weighs in at 1144 pages. In addition to FMA, it serializes a number of popular stories currently being released in English, including Soul Eater from Yen Press. Stan Lee has a serial in here too (really) called HEROMAN, which I’m sure is coming to the U.S. annnnny day now.
In addition, the magazine was even FATTER on the shelf, coming with two gifts! A double-sized Fullmetal Alchemist folder, and a Fullmetal Alchemist mechanical “sharp pencil”. A nice little bonus…!
So how much was all of this? 1144 pages of manga, two free gifts?
That’s right, 500 yen. Actually they charged me 499 yen. That’s about 5 bucks, give or take.
I kind of wish manga would continue taking off in the states, rather than stumble into the plateau it’s hit… Because man, there’s so much further to go.
– Chris
P.S.: Having a wonderful time in Japan, wish you were here. 🙂
I absolutely had to go back to the Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum on my second trip to Japan. It was one of the highlights of my first trip, and while I felt like I really got a good run at it the first time through, Tezuka popping up all over the place on my second trip reminded me that, even if it was going to be out of the way, I knew I’d enjoy going. It turns out that I absolutely did. 🙂
The approach to the Museum was pretty great, but I feel like I covered that last time. I will say that when the familiar Phoenix statue and glass dome came into view, my heart swelled a little.
Love that statue.
The notice-board outside the museum announced… well, a title of an exhibition entirely in Japanese, and I didn’t have any idea what it said. I was able to figure out that it was an exhibition of Tezuka’s early works, with a specific focus on “Shin Takara Jima”, the first-ever Osamu Tezuka manga graphic novel. Oh, Shintakarajima translates into English as “New Treasure Island”.
The last time I was in this area, there was a permanent exhibition outlining just what the 100,000+ pages of manga that Tezuka had completed in his lifetime looked like. Now, it’s the introduction to the exhibit, which thanks to commenter “Kransom” I now know says:
“5 Periods of Tezuka Osamu: #5 / 1947: Tezuka Osamu’s Story Manga”
Looking at the website the other periods were (roughly)
1) “Exhibition of Eternal Stories – Final and Unfinished Works”
2) “1966-1973: Opened Eyes”
3) “2008: To a New World”
4) “1961: A Passion for Anime – The Age of Mushi Pro”
So apparently it was a multi-part, non-linear exploration of Tezuka’s manga career. This, the fifth part, was about the origins of Tezuka’s story manga… or basically “all the rare stuff we could find and display”.
Which, as exhibits, go, is FUCKING AWESOME.
These are digital printouts of some earlier, pre-Tezuka work. When I saw this I was kind of prepared to be let down… I mean, if it was just going to be reproductions, not that cool…
They did have a neat selection of pre-Tezuka manga graphic novels on display, and you can sort of see the natural evolution from strip comics and gags.
Interestingly (and stupidly) I did see some reproductions of these early pre-Tezuka books elsewhere on my trip, but did not buy them. Maybe next time?
A brief aside… Tezuka’s 80th birthday would’ve been in 2008, and the museum still had this little tribute room still set-up for him. This is the room that had Tezuka’s actual work-desk in it, last time I was there. Alright, back to it…!
The entrance to the exhibit was pretty awesome, starting with Shintakarajima and a bunch of the books under glass… as well as individual panels blown up everywhere… It was very immersive, and super-cool to see all the original hardcover graphic novels even if they were under glass.
It was also where I first noticed…
Original art! Aieeee! Click for larger on all of those btw.
So yeah, it was an informative and interesting exhibit (if you could read Japanese especially) and I liked seeing the books, and the blow-ups, and all of that. But the walls were completely lined with original artwork from Shintaka Rajima…! I mean COMPLETELY LINED. I didn’t seem to get a photo of it (somehow!?) but there were at least a hundred framed pieces of original Tezuka art from Shintakarajima up on the walls at this exhibit. It was awesome, I didn’t know what to look at first!
These pages of original art were remarkably well-preserved and beautiful… so much so that I wasn’t convinced that they were real, that they might have been high-quality reproductions or something. I mean, this was a story that came out in 1947, right? Well, I went and checked and… they’re from a re-drawn, later edition of the book, from the 1980s…! Tezuka’s notorious for redrawing panels, pages, whole scenes from his work, and apparently in this case he redrew THE ENTIRE MANGA. Here’s the story (it’s a good one):
Shintakarajima - New Treasure Island, Original 1947Edition (from 2009 Archival Edition)
New Treasure Island is based on an original story written by a veteran cartoonist in Osaka, Sakai Shichima. Tezuka Osamu, who was not yet THAT popular in 1947, adapted Shichima’s book into manga, which became Tezuka’s debut work (excluding some earlier gag manga and short newspaper strips). It became incredibly, incredibly popular, almost overnight, and sold more than 400,000 copies, laying the groundwork for the manga craze. While “New Treasure Island” was based on the work by Shichima, Tezuka had essentially created an original manuscript for the work. But before publication, substantial modifications were made by Sasaki Shichima, who cut nearly 60 pages and also changed some of the dialogue. Mostly, Shichima felt that some of what Tezuka had drawn wasn’t appropriate for children. While the book did very well, Tezuka basically stopped collaborating with people and eventually he refused to allow the work to be reprinted at all.
Shintakarajima - "Complete Works" edition, published 1984, Kodansha
In the late 70s/early 80s, Kodansha undertook to reprint a line of books called “The Complete Works of Tezuka Osamu,” (which aren’t even close to complete btw, a little less than half of his work isn’t included), and Tezuka Osamu basically rewrote and redrew the entire thing from scratch so that it could be reprinted and to bring it closer to his vision for the original, and maybe to thumb his nost at Shichima a little too…! He also improved it dramatically, frankly. The “Complete Works” edition of Shintakarajima weighs in at 228 pages and was published in 1984 (5 years before Tezuka’s death), as compared to 192 pages in the original. In 2009, seemingly in conjunction with this exhibition, the original version of Shintakarajima was reprinted for what seems to be the first time in nearly 50 years, in an archival slipcase edition that set me back 20 bucks. Yeah, of course I bought it. 🙂 Totally worth it too, btw.
I also feel I should point out that “Shintakarajima” is written in romanji (English characters) on the cover of the book as Shintaka Rajima, but this is just an arbitrary phonetic break… Neither “Shintaka” or “Rajima” are real words. The title is three Kanji Characters, Shin (?), Takara (?), Jima (?), and on the original edition it’s also written out phonetically next to the big characters as 7 syllables, for the little kids who might not know their Kanji yet.
So yeah, all of the original art I saw on the walls? Tezuka going back and re-drawing himself from more than 35 years earlier, in a style even more influenced by filmic traditions than the original. As a point of comparison, here’s the first sequence from the original 1947 edition (scanned from my copy of the archival re-release):
The version that Tezuka ultimately redrew was even more cinematic, more “filmic”. So much so, in fact, that the panels that make up the beginning of Shintaka Rajima were set, one-at-a-time, on an HD monitor and run sort of like an animatic, or limited-animation cartoon, next to the original art at the museum. Luckily, I captured it on film! Check it out:
So this is the first chapter, presented a panel at a time. You can see that to tell the same amount of story in the new 1984 version, Tezuka took 45 panels(!) compared to 16(!) in the original one. While he did establish the dog in the story earlier (he basically comes out of nowhere in the original version…) that’s 3 times as many panels to tell the same bit of story. Scott McCloud oughtta work that into the revised edition of Understanding Comics… 😉
Anyway, this was a fascinating little discovery for me, I hope you enjoyed learning about it as much as I did. 🙂
Here’s a close up on a display case worth of early Tezuka graphic novels. It’s worth noting that many of these books, including Metropolis, Next World, and Lost World 1 & 2 were translated and released into English by Dark Horse in the early 2000s, and all four of them are currently “between printings”… Unfortunately. If you find’em, snap them up. I can’t imagine Dark Horse deciding to go back to print on them at any time in the near future.
Actually a quick check shows that Dark Horse’s online store has everything but Metropolis in stock for 40% off. Probably money well-spent…! They’re a little rough as works… unsophisticated maybe? But fascinating glimpses at early manga.
It’s kind of remarkable to see that some pages Tezuka got on the first or second go, almost no whiteout or paste-ups or anything. And some of them are just laboured over, you can see where Tezuka is trying to carve the illustrations out of the page, drawing and redrawing to get it as simple as it looks in the final…!
Following the original artwork, there was a bunch of history of manga that I could not read, but it was a fun (though a little cramped) way to move through the exhibition… and through the years! While the exhibition starts in 1947, it quickly moves through Tezuka’s career, highlighting his most popular works.
It led us into… more original art!
So this might be a bit difficult to tell, because there’s nothing in the picture for scale… but this is a wall, probably 8 feet tall, a reproduction of how the manga page appeared in print. I photographed it because it’s from my favourite story from Tezuka’s Phoenix series, “Space”, the fourth volume of the series. And on the wall opposite it was…
The original art for the page! Oh, how I covetted it. The page dates from 1968 or 1969…
You can click for larger if you like. 🙂
Here’s another page from that story (I believe).
More art!
Two things I find amazing:
– The paper has yellowed a little, but the white-out hasn’t, which makes the white-out practically GLOW… drawing attention to all of the mistakes! That’s gotta be brutal for an artist to see. 🙂
– The zipatone looks like it was laid down yesterday! These pages are basically 40 years old, and the zipatone (the grey dot patterns, pasted on a clear backing and cut into the shape of the grey areas above) is still clear and crisp. North American zipatone from even 20 years ago has started to yellow, badly. I don’t know what Japanese zipatone is made of, but damn, did they do it right!
Unfortunately, that’s everything for this visit. Sure, I went to the gift-shop, and took dozens of photos, but most of them are the same as my 2007 visit. Some of them will make it into “Random Japan” posts, so don’t feel too bad.
Luckily, robo-Tezuka is still working away in the basement, creating new dreams for kids of all ages.
What I really want to get across to you though, is that you really, really oughtta visit the Tezuka Manga Museum if you’re any kind of fan of manga or comics, it’s just amazing and inspirational to be in the place, and the proximity to original art (and so much of it) by a master of the form? Amazing.
See you next time!
– Christopher
Thanks to the following people who made this post possible with their Japanese language and research assistance:
So last time I went to Japan (2007), one of the first things we did is visit NAMJATOWN, a theme park inside a mall. Except it’s not just any theme park, it’s the weirdest theme park I’ve ever been in. And it’s not just any mall, but the Sunshine City shopping complex, a huge collection of malls and shops and a 60-story skyscraper. It’s all exactly what you want out of a truly overwhelming, immersive, alien experience. I highly recommend it.
So we found ourselves in Ikebukuro in 2009, and so we went back and got us some gyoza, and decided to chronicle a few more things. We’ve tried, wherever possible, not to double up on photos we took in 2007, and most of this stuff is going to go uncommented-upon, because really, what needs to be said? It’s Namjatown.
Namjatown
Photos by Christopher Butcher and Andrew Woodrow-Butcher
June 2009
He’s cross that we haven’t been back to visit in a few years. We are sorry, Mr. Namja.
This year’s theme is: Pudding Festival, with pudding’s from around the world. This festival’s slogan is NO PUDDING, NO LIFE. Needless to say, we got ourselves some pudding.
Sadly they did not sell restroom paper lanterns. Cuz? Awesome.
So right outside the washrooms in the ghost village is this special little surprise, a dilapidated old milk fridge. But could it be… haunted?
Black-light!
It’s actually much darker with more pin-pointy black-light effects. This is a long exposure.
No idea.
We got hungry so we headed off to Gyoza Stadium (also known as Gyoza Bazar). Outside of the stadium they sell beautifully packaged gyoza for you to take home and enjoy!
Delicious beer and fried dumplings. Beer by the creators of Pac-Man.
At the top of the stairs, there’s this whole animatronic show with a little stage and Mr. Namja and some eagles. Actually, why don’t I just show you?
There’s a sort of jukebox where you can put in a few bucks and bring this stage-show to life. Except the control panel is in Japanese, and I do not read Japanese. So I picked a song that is a terrifyingly creepy ‘western’ with no voices.
Then we went to the Christianity-themed portion of the theme park.
Notice the cross as his hat, and the little baby angel things.
One of the animatronic angels on top of the gate surrounding the Merry-Go-Round in religious-themed area (also a weird conflation of French and Italian too). This one plays violin, the others play other instruments like harps and things.
One of the Namjarians was nice enough to pose with us, alongside the baby angel egg(?) that you bring around with you to play the games in the religious area. He was dressed as a sort of techno-elf.
We visited the Pudding installation, where there were refrigerator cases with all kinds of pudding from around Japan. Seeing as Hokkaido milk is highly prized, we decided to sample a Hokkaido pudding. After all, No pudding, No Life. Which we took as a bit of a threat.
They also sold the incredibly popular boobie-pudding there. The boobs are filled with pudding.
We did not buy any.
Our pudding choices. The one on the left was a pudding-drink. The one on the right was a traditional thick japanese milk pudding with syrup. I’ve never found them outside of Japan, even in import stores (they do have short expiry dates). They’re AWESOME.
The little container is ceramic, with a pretty lid. The pudding was delicious, in case you were wondering.
Then, some creepy fucking marionettes.
There is no better way to follow up pudding than with Ice Cream, so here’s the Dairy Lab, a deserts-only food court.
Here is the mascot of desert. Rowwwwrrr!
Adjacent to Desert Lab is the Ice Cream Museum, which has lots of displays and information on ice cream in Japan. They are in Japanese. There are, however, lots of videos that are neat, and some English puns. Zooming in on the top there…
I think these are supposed to be video-cassette cases. Which is funny in a different way. 🙂
I didn’t show it, but they had a huge selection of little cups of ice cream like this. Hundreds of flavours, including Horse. Which I did not try. Instead we settled on Shochu (rice-liquor) and Cucumber (left), and Garlic (right).
It even had a slice of cucumber frozen in it. Anyway, our complaints about both were that they weren’t STRONG enough. Last trip we had a curry-ice-cream that’d knock your socks off. These ones barely tasted of their professed flavours (and were a little freezer-burned to boot!).
That’s not to say we didn’t finish them, however. But the puddings were better. After all, no pudding, no life.
Then it was time to go. A quick trip to the gift-shop evidenced some of the worst merch I’ve ever seen. This was a t-shirt that we elected not to buy. I mean, it’s great in a truly awful way, but I prefer my ironic t-shirts professionally crafted.
