Some Criticisms of Sharon Kinsella's “Adult Manga”

Camille Huang


Though Sharon Kinsella's Adult Manga offers a number
of interesting insights, it still is one of those
books that left me deeply disturbed, as there are
several things that I think are highly problematic
with the work. Speaking broadly, they are:

1. The rather convoluted and confused system of
classification that the book employs. (To begin with,
she does not define just what the heck is "adult
manga" until the very end of her first chapter.) She
also drew a rather artificial (and at times erroneous)
divide between "commercial" and "amateur" manga. This
is related to point two.

2. Even though the book is essentially a product about
the realm of the masculine "mainstream" "adult" manga,
Ms. Kinsella nevertheless tries to cover the
"sub-cultures" like shoujo, lolicom and yaoi but does
a very half-assed job at it. First of all, she places
all these under the mantle of "amateur manga", which
is extremely puzzling given the huge commercial
success of so many of them. Also, at one point she
defines "girl's manga" as "produced by and for men".
(Another "WTF" moment for me.) This inevitably invites
many contradictions and yet more confusions: For
example, Ah! My Goddess is at first cited as lolicom
manga (by extension amateur) and then as an "extremely
successful" series produced for a magazine (in other
words, commercial). Furthermore, she does not
adequately explore the gender relations within these
genres (as in, what is depicted in the works
themselves rather than who's reading them) that I
think would be indispensable to any serious
scholarship on the topic.

3. Ms. Kinsella seems to be prone to asserting
conclusions without proper analysis. (For example, she
claims that the majority of the Japanese young people
have been persuaded that reading/drawing manga is not
a worthwhile activity. However, she offered zero
numerical data/publication/interview/personal
impression to support this claim.) A similar problem
happened with her brief (and I mean brief) analysis of
the yaoi psychology amongst young girls.

4. Specifically about yaoi: First, there is again a
massive confusion of terminology, in which more or
less amateur = doujinshi = yaoi (which she takes to
properly mean all doujinshi work) = homoerotica.
Second, even though I partially agree with her
ultimate conclusion about yaoi (which is that there is
a high level of uncertainty and ambivalence about
traditional masculine gender/sexual stereotypes), her
explanation (that "young female fans feel more free to
depict idealized strong and free characters, if they
are male") is only half convincing to me. What about
the sexual nature and image of the genre, which is
essential to its understanding? She says the
characters are "genderless", but that is not quite
true (in my views, they are more like androgynous than
genderless, and there is a big difference). The
characters' behaviors certainly aren't genderless but
fully laden with gender stereotypes! Lastly, anybody
who thinks Western slash today is still commonly
called "K/S" and cites "Alien Nation" as a huge slash
fandom (and who gives the impression that slash
fandoms are few and far in between) is definitely not
going to get any respect from me on the subject
matter.

5. The issue of manga culture exportation: First, she
entirely ignores the exportation of manga (often in
pirated forms) to East Asia and the growth of
indigenous (although admittedly quite influenced,
especially by shoujo manga) manga cultures there
(Taiwan, Korea, and Mainland China are the ones I know
of). Second, for all her enthusiastic talk about Japan
using manga as a tool to project a revitalized
Japanese culture abroad, she fails to address the fact
that the manga series that are really "making it" in
the West aren't "adult manga" (as she depicted
throughout her book with the sole example of the
promotion of Japan, Inc, as if that's the book you're
going to find in an American anime-manga store) but
rather mostly commercialized shounen and shoujo manga
(which to her is somehow not mainstream).

6. I've saved the thing that distressed me the most
for last: the complacent and almost apathetic attitude
Ms. Kinsella took towards new right-wing manga that
surfaced in the 80s and 90s. (Personal bias
disclosure: Assertive contemporary nationalism in
Japan is a topic that I researched and wrote about at
length last semester, so I may sound especially
vehement about this particular point.)

To begin with, she exhibited a shocking ignorance
(either that, or unwillingness of full disclosure)
about the political figures involved in the production
of such right-wing manga. ISHIHARA SHINTARO? FUIJIOKA
NOBUKATSU? I mean, HELLO? She made a passing mention
about Ishihara being a central LDP figure before 1993,
but not the fact that he is probably the most famous
xenophobe in Japan (and as we all know, Japan has more
than its share of xenophobes, not that other countries
don't too) and that he co-wrote the virulent (and
sadly popular) nationalism book titled A Japan That
Can Say No. On Fujioka, she painted him as someone of
"orthodox nationalism" and a central figure of
"Democratic History Association" network, but no more.
Okay, before all else Ms. Kinsella needs to get her
facts straight: It's not called "Democratic History
Association" but rather Jiyshugi
Shikan Kenkykai), aka the infamous "The Liberal View
of History Group"). And what does the said group do?
In a nutshell, it denies Japan had committed massive
atrocities (such as the comfort women system and the
Rape of Nanking) during the Pacific War. You'd think
this is relevant to her analysis of the political
orientation and implications of the manga, but nope,
no mention at all.

Then from this fundamentally incomplete basis grew an
even more flawed conclusion: that these (extremely
popular, by her own account) manga brands which
advocate re-militarization of Japan, aggressive
nationalism, xenophobism and historical revisionism is
actually not indicative of a bigger phenomenon which
is rooted in the Japanese national conscious. This was
done in most instances by merit of conspicuous
omission, even though the cultural analyst that she
was did not hesitate to seize on every other
opportunity to extrapolate things about Japanese
society. This suspicion of mine was explicitly
confirmed, however, by her treatment of the series
Silent Service.

The overriding sentiment echoed in Silent Service is a
perfect miniature of the root of "New Right" movement
in Japan: intense resentment of perceived Japan's low
political status in the world and a thirst to
overthrow the current hegemonic oppressor (and then
becomes hegemon itself, for like Aimee Cesaire says,
it is the permanent dream for the oppressed to become
the oppressor). It pictured a Japanese vigilant, armed
with the most advanced submarine (named Yamato, after
the mystic Japanese race and the super-battleship sunk
by the Americans during the Pacific War), taking the
U.S. and U.N head-on on behalf of the small and weak
countries. When the said vigilant entered NYC, he was
treated to a royal welcome by the common American
citizens, complete with the picture of a little black
girl trustingly smiling in his arms and confetti
everywhere on the street (think St. Patrick's Day
Parade).

I felt literally sick as I read about this: as anybody
with a half-decent background in modern East Asian
history would know, this is EXACTLY the picture Japan
painted during the war time (even after surrender)
about its bloody invasion of East and Southeast Asia:
that Japan was "liberating" its Asian siblings,
delivering them from the evil grasp of Western
imperialism, and that the people in these countries
welcomed the Japanese Imperial Army as saviors.
(Emperor Hirohito's surrender speech: "We cannot but
express the deepest sense of regret to our allied
nations of East Asia, who have consistently cooperated
with the Empire toward the emancipation of East
Asia.")

You'd think this would ring a bell of alarm to Ms.
Kinsella about Silent Service. But amazingly enough,
and again without offering any evidence to her claim,
Ms. Kinsella blithely asserted: "While accused in 1990
of supporting the ideas of Right-wing military groups,
Silent Service in fact reflected the experimental
fusion of left-wing and right-wing ideas and symbols
in a new political era."

In case you haven't guessed already, that was another
"WTF" moment for me.

--------------------------------

The above six points are what have particularly
bothered me as I read through the first four chapters
of Adult Manga. It is my sincere hope that not many
more will surface as I finish this required reading.
The lesson of the day, though, is stick to what you
know and avoid talking about what you don't.

The end.