Pah

TEZUKA

Eight days ago, I went to see an exhibition of Osamu Tezuka’s comics work at NGV.

The exhibition is a brief survey of Tezuka’s work, showing off dozens of titles. A handful of (b&w) pages and some (colour) covers are provided for each title. Some of the art is represented by reproductions, but a lot of it is original artwork, complete with corrections. The comics read right-to-left and in Japanese, but curatorial comments provide a gloss, plus context needed to understand a single page by itself. Seeing the work this way is probably a little misleading, but is the nature of the beast for such an exhibition, I guess (I’ve never seen actual comic art at a gallery before).

I know Tezuka from the Kimba the White Lion and ’80s-version Astro Boy cartoons, both of which were written by him, and generally adapted from his comics. I visited Tezuka Osamu World in Kyoto in 2001, and came away with a photo of me posed with Astro, and a nice magic motion t-shirt, but little sense of the man and his achievements. I know he’s called the “Walt Disney of Japan”, and was one of the most important figures in the creation of the Japanese comic and cartoon industries; but that didn’t mean too much to me, living far away from that culture.

NGV’s exhibition was a lovely revelation. To someone familiar with American comics, Tezuka could be profitably called the “Jack Kirby of Japan”, only his output was about seven times as great. The range of genres and graphic styles pioneered or developed by Tezuka is astounding: at the exhibition we see sci fi, medical drama, costume drama, romance, an adaptation of Crime and Punishment, a biography of Beethoven, thrillers, war stories, religious contemplations, and more; for children, for adults, for both; in everything from gritty realism, to his well-known cartoon figures, to modernist abstraction, and often combining them in ingenious ways.

Invention is the order of the day. Tezuka draws what was previously undrawn: music, mental states, conception, an organ’s view of surgery; going where only a master imagination can go. Despite descriptions of his style as “cinematic”, he often produces panel sequences that are anti-cinematic, either relying on full page composition or packing in a density of visual information that the big screen couldn’t carry.

My favourite titles were:

• Astro Boy (1952–68). The style is similar to the ’80s cartoon, but more complex. It’s fun and action-packed, but there’s a lot of clever visual tricks going on. (This series is available in translation and I’ll definitely be picking some up; volume recommendations anyone?)
• Ludwig B (1987–89, unfinished). How do you draw music? How do you draw lots and lots of music? Tezuka takes on the task. My favourite was the page with panels of audience members who have their faces substituted with Beethoven’s playing fingers.
• Ode to Kirihito (1970–71). Mental anguish and psychosis are rendered here through abstraction, reification, visual puns, and more. Plus, exciting chase scenes as our main character turns into a kind of dog mutant. (This was Pen’s favourite too and I’ve ordered a copy to read to her.)
• Phoenix (1956–89). Possibly the most psychedelic art I’ve ever seen, this is Tezuka’s masterpiece meditation on human nature and karma. (I’ve already picked up volume 2.)

This exhibition gave me another European gallery feeling. In this case, I do have access to more Tezuka (the above-mentioned, plus Adolf and Buddha, maybe some more), but it’s likely that I’ll never make much of a dent in his output.

(A question for someone from Japan, a Japanophile, a Tezuka fan, or just someone who knows: what should I make of the sexual ambiguity in Tezuka’s works? (Characters are often of indeterminate sex, undeveloped sex, or able to swap sex. It’s not just an artefact of this exhibition: the curator notes it.))