[JAPAN] THROUGH OTAKU EYES / First and last manga exhibition answers important question

July 4, 2008 by Dennis Amith

In the latest column for “Through Otaku Eyes” for the Daily Yomiuri, Ishida Kanta writes, “Although it will end Sunday, Inoue Takehiko: The Last Manga Exhibition, which is being held at the Ueno Royal Museum in Ueno, Tokyo, is an unprecedented event in the study of the relationship between museum and manga.”

“Museum exhibitions of work by mangaka are now somewhat commonplace, but they do not have a long history. Until about 20 years ago, there were few people in the world of art who considered postwar manga “art.” It might have been possible to hold such a show at a department store gallery, but displaying manga at an art museum was out of the question.”

“The exhibition of the works of Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astroboy, in 1990 at the National Museum of Modern Art in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, was a turning point for such perceptions. The event, held about one year after the death of the manga giant, was a large-scale retrospective with about 1,500 original drawings. The event drew headlines along the lines of, “Public museum opens its doors to manga.”