Research: An Article About The Origins of manga

Toba’s Choju Giga: Telling Stories With Scrolls

The tradition of narrative art or telling stories with a series of sequential images has been a part of Japanese culture long before Superman ever put on a cape. The earliest examples of pre-manga artwork that influenced the development of modern Japanese comics are commonly attributed to Toba Sojo, an 11th-century painter-priest with a whimsical sense of humor.

Toba’s animal scroll paintings, or choju giga satirized life in the Buddhist priesthood by drawing priests as mischievous rabbits, monkeys engaging in silly activities including farting contests, and even depicted the Buddha himself as a toad. While there are no word balloons or sound effects in Toba’s paintings, they do show a progression of events, happening one after another as the scroll is unrolled from right to left. This tradition of reading images from right to left continues today in modern manga.

In later years, Toba’s influence on manga was acknowledged with the introduction of Toba-e or “Toba pictures,” an 18th century style of humorous images bound in books, accordion style. Created by Shimoboku Ooka, Toba-e relied on visual humor and used few words.

The Funnier Side of Hokusai

Another influential artist in the development of modern manga was Katsushika Hokusai, the famous 19th century ukiyo-e ("floating world pictures") artist and printmaker. While Hokusai’s iconic woodblock print images of 36 Views of Mount Fuji are known the world over, his manga sketchbooks are also some of the best early examples of humor in Japanese art.
Hokusai was also the first artist to use the term "manga" or "playful sketches" to describe his humorous images. Hokusai’s manga includes irreverent images of men making funny faces, sticking chopsticks up their noses and blind men examining an elephant. Originally intended as sketches for his students to copy, Hokusai manga were distributed throughout Japan.