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MULTIPLE IDENTITIES VIA THE GLOBALIZATION OF ART, MEDIA AND PERFORMANCE 107A Lighthearted CharacteristicBeside those visual styles I found in manga, there is alsoan interesting assertion from Taiyo Matsumoto, ayoung manga artist known for his much-praisedTekkin Konkurito (Black & White) and Go GoMonster.In his youth, Taiyo traveled to Paris and America, insearch of the essence of style in European andAmerican comics. He found that European comicstend to be intellectual, while American comics tend tobe cool. And he concluded that Japanese comics tend tobe lighthearted.When I looked closely at my manga collection, I feltthat the “lighthearted” traits Taiyo perceived appliednot just to the way the stories developed but to thevisual nature of the story telling too.The visuals of manga, with all their over-the-tophumorous takes on everything, felt like a feast of mortalmoments, a jubilation in everything that is ephemeral.No logic, no burden of meanings, no biblical scale ofbattles between good and evil, just laughter, games,poses, cute things, and the joy of an imagination inwhich anything goes. The seriousness in manga is oftenvery playful. There is always a detached view of theworld lurking behind most of the high drama in mangastories.Thailand: an affirmation of dominationAnd then, I went to Thailand. First, to Bangkok for afew days; and then to Chiang Mai for another two andhalf months of research. After the cold climate and thestress from the Great Tohoku Earthquake of 11 March2011, the dust and the heat in Chiang Mai felt like afirst step in my eventual destination, the equally dustyand hot Jakarta.“In Thailand, there is no such thing as comics”, saidPooh, in the library of the Jim Thompson Art Center,one rainy afternoon. “We don’t usually use the term“comics”. We use the term ‘cartoon’, and it is used forcomics, cartoons, drawings for cover art, andanimation”.It is true. My dear friend in Chiang Mai, Jay Santiphap,a documentary filmmaker who I met in Yokohamaduring his artist residency program in 2010, once gaveme three books with cartoon covers, and saidenthusiastically, “I want to show you a legendary Thaicartoonist! He was very popular when I was a kid!”When I opened the books, they weren’t comic booksor cartoons at all. They were storybooks for children,with cartoon illustrations here and there.But there is now a whole lot of manga everywhere.They are translated into the Thai language, whosescript is more similar to Javanese than Japanese script.Along Suthep Road near my apartment in ChiangMai, I found at least 10 comic rental shops with mostof their books being manga.Are there no Thai comics? Of course there are someThai comics. Actually, the history of popular Thaicomics began as early as the Siamese Revolution of1932. After the revolution, Thailand had manypopular comics such as Sang Thong and Khun Mauncomics, which adapted the Popeye and Mickey Mousecomics for local readers. In 1952, Thailand’s firstindigenous comic book series for children wasintroduced: Tuk Ka Ta, written by Pimol Kalasee.Traditionally, ghost stories and humorous comics arethe main genres produced in Thailand.But there was no advance consumption-economy inThailand. There is no industrial approach attached toThailand’s own comics, unlike the brutally effectiveapproach in Japan.Pooh said that this was because Thailand’s popularculture has no roots, but I still think it’s an economicthing. A case in point, Pooh also thinks that Americanpopular culture has no roots, and look at how bigpopular culture industry is in America. (Of course, Idon’t share her opinion about the rootedness ofAmerican popular culture either.)And so, economically speaking, Thai comics arevulnerable from the surge of cultural product frommore developed countries such as America and Japan.In manga’s case, the penetration of the Thai marketbegan in the late 1970s or early 1980s. “I have readmanga and watched anime since I can remember”, saidJay Santiphap, who is in his late thirties.Fusanosuke Natsume, in his research on mangainfluence in Thailand and Indonesia under the APIfellowship program, divided Thai comics into twomain categories. First, the traditional Thai comics, soldon newsstands at very cheap prices (five baht). Second,comics of Japanese origin, targeted at children of thenew middle class. And now, there is a new trend ofThe Work of the 2010/2011 API Fellows