THE Manga are on every shelf these days. Comics and bookstores have devoted large rooms to this medium from Japan, which has created a very important space for itself, especially in recent years. The Japanese pop influence was already evident in the 80s and 90s, it is even more so now.
Unlike other countries, Japan doesn’t limit itself to comics for boys, and indeed there are plenty of mangas that sell big on the annual charts, but there’s also no shortage of comics targeting Shojo, Josei, and Kodomo – for girls each , adult women and children – and thus confirms the heterogeneity of the stories that will be told in the new millennium. But where does it all originate? What was the first manga in history?? Let’s go back several centuries to understand the origins of the Japanese medium.
The art of drawing has been ruled by mankind for tens of thousands of years, but some scrolls of drawings that can be directly related to the Manga style date from the Kamakura period. or between 1185 and 1333. During these one and a half centuries, the Choju Jinbutsu Giga and the Shigisan Engi Emaki, two works that can be traced back to Manga, were created. However, one has to wait between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century for the actual term to be born.
The “Shiji no Yukikai” by Santou Kyoden and the “Manga Hyakujo” by Aikawa Minwa date from these years. One of the most famous Japanese artists, Hokusai, who created the “Hokusai Manga” in 1814, followed a few decades later. all of them work mostly funny and satirical. These could therefore be seen as the basis of the modern mangaalthough the full development of the genre took place in the 1940s and 50s with the arrival of Osamu Tezuka, the god of manga, who greatly expanded the production and vision of this medium and solidified the foundations for today’s products.
Even today, the manga is widely read by the vast majority of the Japanese population and beyond, as mangas are depopulated in the US rankings at the expense of local comics.
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