Eroticism for the masses: Japanese manga comiss and their assimilation into the U.S.

Abstract

In this article, we describe translated Japanese comics or "manga" with sexual content. Because in the West comics have been treated as junk culture, they lack canons for critical analysis. We have developed methods for analyzing manga that focus on objective assessment of content, on reader subjectivity, and on how the emotional tenor of the artwork is created. We briefly review some history of Japanese art and culture, in which sexuality has always been a legitimate subject for art and which forms the cultural underpinnings of manga. We summarize the erotic themes and visions of manga with sexual content, including heterosexual courtship and consummation, female and male homosexuality, sadomasochism, transvestitism, incest, and bestiality. Critics of manga argue that it glorifies rape, a view we could not confirm. We identified 87 stories with rape or sexual assault; 80 (92.0%) show the woman or others taking violent, often murderous, revenge on sexual attackers. We also analyze visual modalities for depicting men and women, in common with older Japanese aesthetic traditions, the manga we have seen depict women as beautiful, powerful, and erotic. Finally, we suggest that manga functions as an art form by mobilizing the reader's involvement with the characters, especially female characters, in a complex narrative framework in which sexualityThe authors thank Robert T. Francoeur for first bringing this topic to our attention. We thank manga experts Frederik L. Schodt, Toren Smith, and

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“…731, 737). In their analysis of erotic depictions in manga, Perper and Cornog (2002) meticulously apply Setsu Shigematsu's distinctions between levels of ''Fantasy'' to the reading and interpretation of such material: Fantasy Dimension 1 comprises the internal logistics of the work in question and the reader's acceptance of the plot conditions and hermeneutical constraints of said universe, while Fantasy Dimension 2 involves the audience's subjectivity and personal responses to the material as a narrative and cultural product. These planes of response are equally applicable to animated hentai insofar as the viewer, having accepted the conditions of the film, is not only a spectator but a participant in both the subjective and physical fleshing of the narrative.…”

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