Conversations with The Translator: the Arts

Kate: I'll start with the arts that Americans often think of first with Japan: manga and anime!

I've determined that being an adjunct, an instructor on contract, is miles more secure than being a manga artist/writer.

One of the most distressing things about manga is reading afterwords. They inevitably go something like this:

I wrote this story three years ago. I didn't know if I would ever get a chance to turn it into a series. Then the idea was bought by X company. But that company went defunct. So then X company bought it about which I am very excited . . . it's been several years, but I finally got this published . . .

The afterword was written in 2012, and the next volume hasn't come out (in English) yet. And these are the afterwords of reasonably successful series!

Granted, a lot of stuff is going digital but many volumes take literal years to move from magazine serial to collected book. Forget about being translated!

It really gives a new twist to the whole starving artist thing. Do most manga artists/writers have second jobs? Considering the amount of work involved, that would be less than easy, but starving in an attic is really no fun.

Eugene: Being a contract animator is not a road to riches either. The equivalent of an adjunct, as somebody notes in the comments (see link below). But another post points out that exchange rates are a poor indication of buying power; better to use 100 yen to the dollar. That makes it more than what I was making as a free-lance translator.

Another factor is that with the availability of highly efficient mass transit and very small (but reasonable and comfortable) apartments, it's actually cheaper to live by yourself in urban Japan than in, say, New York or LA.

These sorts of numbers are pretty much true of the writing profession everywhere. For most, an avocation. Far fewer earn an income solely from their art. And an even smaller number earn an actual "living." That's why they're called starving artists.

In the end, alas, the economics have nothing to do with what artists ought to be paid, but with what they can be paid and what they're willing to work for. The only reason artists starve these days is because they are willing (even happy) to work for starvation wages.

The economics are similar to any career in the arts. A few become rich and famous, a few more make a good living, many more than that manage to barely get by, and the vast majority can't afford to quit their day jobs. Constantly moving up and down that ladder is one of the themes in Bakuman. Every manga artist in the live-action series Sleepeeer Hit! [sic] (the Japanese title translates as "Print a Second Edition!"), about the manga division at a major publishing firm, seems on the verge of a nervous breakdown. 

In sum, career paths in the arts are pretty much the same in Japan as elsewhere, though there are additional variables in play. Epitomized by Comiket, doujinshi has long been an accepted self-publishing path open to mangaka. Thanks to the old rule that you write what you know, there are manga series about the career arc of the artist like Bakuman and Shirobako and Blue Period (about a teenager who takes up painting).

 Kate: Of course, other arts exist! Does Japan have the equivalent of the Met (art, opera, etc.)?

Eugene: Classical western music is deeply entwined with contemporary Japanese culture, so naturally the subject is mined for story material, as in anime like Forest of Piano, Your Lie in April, and Sound Euphonium.

The NHK Orchestra dates to 1926 and today recruits conductors from around the world. Beethoven's Ninth has been an institution in Japan since it debuted on NHK in 1927, believed to have been brought to Japan by German POWs captured in China in 1914 (Japan was on the side of the Allies during WWI). The Ode to Joy has been a staple of Christmas and New Year's celebrations since 1940.

Kate: What about at the more micro level? In America, there are numerous local artists—bands, symphonies, artists at fairs, dance groups—in any town or city. Does Japan have the equivalent of repertory theaters?

Eugene: A good way to explore local craft and culture in Japan is Cycle Around Japan (and Cycle Around Japan Highlights) on NHK World. The hosts always pay attention to the arts scene in the communities they visit.

There is a big garage band scene too. One interesting recent development is the garage band version of the idol group. The Love Live anime franchise popularized the idol group as a school club. Now there are innumerable small idol groups that perform in small venues for small groups of fans, hoping to break even financially while waiting for their big break. Basically every artist's story.

At the local level, basically any city large enough to provide enough musicians to form an orchestra. This is also true of the traditional arts. Local summer festivals provide the biggest stage for traditional music, dance, and even parade floats based on themes influenced by Shinto and Japanese history.

It's rather like the high school club as a reliable plot device in manga and anime. If you can round up enough people, the show will go on! Whether it's an orchestra or brass band recital, a kabuki play, a koto or shamisen or taiko performance. Many of these musical forms, east and west, old and new, come together in Enka, a uniquely Japanese version of the torch song and the blues.

Kate: I think one of the things that Americans envy is the seeming ability of other cultures to draw on centuries-old traditions. Any effort to do that here results in accusations of “appropriation.” So Americans stick to the Wild Wild West!

Eugene: As in Enka, one of the truly compelling aspects of Japanese popular culture is the willingness to preserve and celebrate old traditions and integrate them into new mediums and genres, also on display in Kiyo in Kyoto. The climactic scene from Kono Oto Tomare! proves once again that anime can turn any subject into a compelling melodrama.

Consider classical poetry. Chihayafuru is about a card game derived from Heian period (794–1185) poetry. Add to Chihayafuru the delightful series Senryu Girl and the cute animated film Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop. All three feature community programs centered around the activity, not just school clubs. The same is also true of calligraphy.

Kate: Is there anything that would be characterized as purely "high" culture?

Eugene: Noh and Kabuki are probably the least accessible forms of extant classical theater. Think opera or Shakespeare. Like Shakespeare, Kabuki was once part of popular culture but has since gone highbrow. Back in the day, Ukiyo-e artists churned out posters of popular Kabuki actors. Kabuki Kool is an NHK series dedicated to Kabuki appreciation. 

In order to reach new audiences, Kabuki has also adapted popular manga for story material. Netflix recently licensed several filmed stage productions (think Broadway) and a "modernized" Kabuki play. 

Noh, in which the actors wear highly stylized masks, has always been highbrow. Today it is designated an Important Intangible Cultural Property by the Japanese government (and thus stays alive through subsidies). Bunraku (puppet theater) falls into a similar category. 

 Kate: Do intellectuals in Japan try to make themselves felt--the way they do here in America (except people kind of ignore them here, at least at the personal level)? Is there an intellectual "arty" class in Japan that gets irritated by "crass" commercialism?

Eugene: The public intellectual is a well-established part of the mass media landscape. Cool Japan uses a format common in infotainment shows: the hosts, the panelists, plus a university professor or other credentialed expert. It's a good gig, and some become bona fide celebrities, like Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan back in the day, or Neil deGrasse Tyson today.

Nobel Prize winners are pretty much guaranteed a second career (if they want it) on the chat show circuit. 

The kind of intellectual who gets irritated at crass commercialism certainly exists in Japan, though they do not dominate the conversation to the same extent as in Europe and North America. A trope in popular fiction is the writer struggling for critical recognition as represented by the Akutagawa Prize (or its equivalent), which then leads to fame and riches.

One of the characters in Always: Sunset on Third Street is a frustrated writer who dreams of winning the Akutagawa Prize, but in the meantime makes ends meet by running a small candy store and writing adventure stories for boy's magazines, much the same as Ranpo Edogawa (though Edogawa never felt he had to apologize for the fact).

In the opening arc of Hanasaku Iroha, one of the guests is a writer who dreams of fame and acclaim, so he holed up at the inn to write the great Japanese novel. Except all he's done after a month is rack up a bill he can't pay. So he tries his hand at erotica and fails there too. When this comes to light, he has to get a job at the inn to work off his debts.

Million Yen Women is a nihilistic comedy about a writer who labors away in obscurity writing postmodern novels only his editor loves, until a sociopath decides to make him famous by any means necessary. At one point, he crosses paths with a bestselling author who carefully crafts his novels to maximize popularity. The classic intellectual standoff.

Kate: There seems to be a thankful degree of practical commonsense.

Eugene: In general, I think the Japanese treatment of a form, like manga, is more upfront about the commercial component, perhaps because everybody is so aware of how the manga farm team system works, and thus the extent to which success is determined by attracting an audience. People have to buy what you want to sell. No one owes the artist a living.

The testing regime probably has something to do with it too. You don't get into college in Japan by "being yourself." You get into college by passing the entrance exam.

Though in Blue Period, the question is raised whether students should create a portfolio that conforms to what the art school admissions committee expects to see. They're told that while it was once possible to game the system, that doesn't work anymore. They still have to pass a grueling entrance exam that involves creating paintings in different mediums on assigned subjects in a specified time period.

Speaking of Egowawa, questions, answers, and a new book to follow!