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Popular Japanese Manga
Focused—Popular Culture Panel
Session
By Zhang Yuan
PKU NEWS 2005--11—17
http://ennews.pku.edu.cn/news.php?s=132212414
Peking University, Beijing, Nov. 17th, 2005: In second round talk of Popular Culture
panel session on the morning of Nov. 17th, Japanese manga was heatedly
discussed as a commonly recognized popular cultural phenomenon in Asia as well
as the rest of the world. This interesting topic rendered a lively and relaxing
atmosphere to the Forum in general.
The issue was brought about mainly by two keynote speakers, Professor Lee Wood
Hung from Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Professor Shimamura Teru from
Joshibi University of Art and Design. The former‘s specific topic was ―Translation as
Cultural Hybridization: A Study of Chinese Editions of Japanese Comics in Hong
Kong‖, while the latter talked about ―Japan Animation: from Commercialism to Art‖.
Both of them showed their great interest and attention to Japanese manga as a
prevailing cultural genre whose production, rendition, translation and reception
deeply reflect some cultural mentality and inter-flow.
Professor Lee gave a detailed case study of Chinese editions of Japanese comics in
Hong Kong, in which he demonstrated that the translating and editing process was
not a mechanical word-to-word translation, but a creative activity which also involved
coinage of new expression in Chinese, avoidance of Chinese cultural taboos and
such. By demonstrating this, Prof. Lee aimed to indicate that ―foreign consumption of
Japanese comics is by no means merely a passive acceptance and
internationalization of Japanese culture‖, but a ―dynamic mechanism of intercultural
flow, cultural localization and hybridization‖.
Following his speech, Prof. Teru provided a closer look at the original Japanese
animations. By showing the gradual trend for the emergence and prosperity of some
artistic and creative animations, which is independent of the main stream commercial
animation, he pointed out the ―possibility of internationalization of animation product
that is fairly different from globalization, which is, in its contemporary context, nothing
but another name of Americanization‖.
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