Kyoto Journal Issue 28

¥880

(US$8)

Dedication, Commitment & Spirituality in Shonen Manga
Japanese Dreams, American Nightmares
20 years of Terror: Indonesia in Timor
Kobe Quake Notes
Jizo & Sacred Spaces

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Practically every culture and period has heroes, figures that express and exemplify cultural values through their behavior and their stories. One modern source of heroic images in Japan is manga, Japanese comic books, and in particular shonen manga, boys’ or young men’s comic books. The behavior of shonen manga heroes depicts a system of popular values centering upon the belief system seishin, a word defined as spirit, attitudes, or will-power.

Manga stories depict conflict of many different types — interpersonal, social, institutional, physically violent, and political. However, shonen manga concentrate most upon epic, fantastic stories. Such stories depict a world of fantastic scale conflict and can be populated with equally fantastic, strongly ideal-oriented characters while still retaining a sense of consistency with their literary genre. Indeed, such characters even seem a primary characteristic of shonen manga.
—Michael Nagara, Seishin in Shonen Manga

A prototype of the American dream may have existed before there was any written record of the continents we know today as ‘America.’ The myths and legends of most cultural traditions in Asia and Europe spoke of a once glorious empire that existed somewhere to the West. The ancient Egyptians revered ‘the West’ as a place of emancipation while the old Greeks speculated about the bliss that would be experienced after death in the ‘Isles of the Blessed’ that lay to the west of the Gates of Hercules. In some schools of Mahayana Buddhism mention is made of a legendary ‘western paradise’ in which resides the teacher of all humanity, Avalokiteshvara. Long before the appearance of Buddhism, Hindu traditions spoke of the existence of a continent geographically opposite Mount Mem, the axis mundi, whose roots were believed to be found in Central Asia. This antipodal land was appropriately called “a-meru.”
—Philip Grant & Kyoko Nozaki: Japanese Dreams, American Nightmares

Contents:

Dedication, Commitment & Spirituality: Seishin in Shonen Manga Michael Nagara
Japanese Dreams, American Nightmares – Philip Grant & Kyoko Nozaki
Sacred Spaces – Text & photographs by Shigeya Inoue
A Day in the Life of East Ninth Street – Photographs By Residents Of Higashi-Kujo
The Cicada People – Stephen Kohler
Borneo Mud: Dispatches from the World’s Toughest Race – David Tracey
Interview:
20 Years of Terror: Indonesia in Timor – An angry education with Max Stahl, by W. David Kubiak
Fiction:
Double-Decker Night – Michael Fessler
Ramble:
The Walking Head – Robert Brady
Kobe Quake Notes – Robert Brady
Reviews:
The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan, by Ian Buruma — Eric Gower
Call Me By My True Name; For a Future to be Possible: Commentaries on the Five Wonderful Precepts; Love in Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change; Interbeing: Fourteen Guidelines for Engaged Buddhism, by Thich Nat Hanh — Morgan Gibson
The Jew in the Lotus, by Roger Kamenetz — Lauren W. Deutsch

Cover Image by Santa Barbara Historical Society
82pp
published March 10, 1995

 

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