International Conference organized by
Jaqueline Berndt (Kyoto Seika University), Franziska Ehmcke (University of Cologne), Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (University of Tübingen) and Steffi Richter (University of Leipzig), in cooperation with the Japan Foundation (Japanisches Kulturinstitut), the Center for Intercultural and Transcultural Studies, University of Cologne and the International Manga Research Center, Kyoto Seika University

Conference venue: Cultural Institute of Japan, Cologne (www.jki.de)

*Program*

Thursday, 30 September 2010

Registration 11.30-13.00
Welcome 13.30-14.00

Paper Presentation 1: Ph.D. Students Workshop
chair: Jean-Marie Bouissou (Paris, France)

14.00-14.35 Felix Giesa (Cologne, Germany) & Jens Meinrenken (Berlin, Germany): 20th century toy, I wanna be your boy: Character and identity in Urasawa Naoki’s “20th Century Boys”
14.35-15.10 Verena Maser (Nürnberg-Erlangen, Germany): Love between girls in the graphic arts: A comparison between yuri and the webcom “Yu+Me: dream”

15.10-15.20 Break

15.20-15.55 Nele Noppe (Leuven, Belgium): Translating the visual languages of Japanese fan comics and North American and European fan art
http://nelenoppe.net/fanficforensics/blog/1
15.55-16.30 I-Wei Wu (Heidelberg, Germany): A flow of satirical pictorials in East Asia: The case of “Shanghai Puck” and “Tokyo Puck”

16.35-17.00 Break: Coffee

Paper Presentation 2: Manga in Asia outside Japan
chair: Franziska Ehmcke

17.00-17.35 Helmolt Vittinghoff (Cologne, Germany): Chinese Comics: Amusement or/and propaganda?
17.40-18.15 Ulrike Niklas (Cologne, Germany): Amara Chitra Katha and modern Indian middle class

18.15-19.00 Break: Snack

Keynote Lecture
chair: Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer

19.00-20.00 Frederik L. Schodt (San Francisco, United States): Creation of a manga-comic hybrid

Reception at the Cultural Institute of Japan, Cologne

Friday, 1 October 2010

Paper Presentation 3: Historical perspectives on manga
chair: Steffi Richter

09.30-10.15 Ronald Stewart (Hiroshima, Japan): “Manga” as a form of “Western” resistance against traditional Japanese Expression: Kitazawa Rakuten and the early discourse on “manga”
10.15-11.00 Pascal Lefèvre (Leuven, Belgium): The mischief gag comic, an international phenomenon: Yokohama Ryuichi’s “Fuku-chan” and its friends in Europe and the Americas

11.00-11.15 Short Break

Paper Presentation 4: “gekiga” movement revisited
chair: Jaqueline Berndt

11.15-12.00 Roman Rosenbaum (Sydney, Australia): From the national to the transcultural: Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s “gekiga”
12.00-12.45 CJ (Shige) Suzuki (Bethlehem, PA, United States): Tatsumi Yoshihiro and the gekiga movement in the global sixties

12.45-13.45 Lunch

Paper Presentation 5: Transmedial and transcultural aspects 1
chair: Thomas Becker

13.45-14.30 Maheen Ahmed (Bremen, Germany): Hybrid methodology for La Nouvelle Manga
14.30-15.15 Elisabeth Klar (Wien, Austria): Mutants and machines: The body in European and Japanese erotic comics

15.15-15.30 Short break

Paper Presentation 6: Transmedial and transcultural aspects 2
chair: Pascal Lefèvre

15.30-16.15 Thomas Becker (Berlin, Germany): Premedialisation as symbolic capital in the intercultural communication of graphic arts
16.15-16.45 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (Tübingen, Germany): Manga/comic hybrid forms in picturebooks

16.45-17.15 Break: Coffee

Paper Presentation 7: Manga in Europe
chair: Jean-Marie Bouissou

17.15-18.00 Marco Pellitteri (Trento, Italy): Manga in Europe: A short study of market and fandom
18.00-18.45 Paul Malone (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada): Transcultural hybridization in home-grown German manga

18.45-19.00 Break

19.00-20.00 Panel Discussion with female German mangaka: Christina Plaka, Anne Delseit & Martina Peters

Dinner (restaurant, just for speakers)

Saturday, 2 October 2010

Workshop:
Transculture, Transmedia, Transgenre: NARUTO challenging Manga/Comics Studies

The sort of manga, which dominates the perception of Japanese comics worldwide in the early 21st century, is hardly to be characterized by intercultural relations, that is, exchanges between discrete entities.
Mainstream manga today are, first and for all, shaped by and engaged in transcultural flows. Whereas previously, American comics, bande dessinée
and manga retained an obvious distinctiveness for both artists and readers, nationally defined styles and narratives have been losing significance under the conditions of globalization and information society. This situation raises, at least, three issues: first, whether the intercultural is actually replaced by the transcultural or rather supplemented; second, whether the cultural is confined to the national,or how the national relates to the regional, local and subcultural, which also applies to trans/gender; third, how the transcultural is facilitated by recent transmedia flows which call the very identity of comics into question. This workshop focuses on one representative work, or more precisely, franchise: NARUTO.

9.30-9.40 Introduction: Steffi RICHTER (chair)

Part 1: A Media Product and its Crosscultural Mediators

9.45-10.05 Radoslaw BOLALEK (Warsaw, Poland): NARUTO on the Polish comics market: Observations from the perspective of a (researching)publisher
10.05-10.25 OMOTE Tomoyuki (Kyoto, Japan): NARUTO as a typical weekly-magazine manga
10.25-10.45 ITO GO (Tokyo, Japan): Particularities of boys’ manga in the early 21st century: How NARUTO differs from Dragon Ball
10.45-11.15 Zoltan KACSUK (Budapest, Hungary): Subcultural entrepreneurs, path dependencies and fan reactions: The case of NARUTO in Hungary

11.15-12:00 Discussion

12.00-13.00 Lunch

Part 2: National ‘Odor’

13.00-13.20 YAMANAKA Chie (Echizen, Japan): NARUTO as a manhwa: On the reception of Japanese popular culture in the Republic of Korea
13.20-13.40 Franziska EHMCKE (Cologne, Germany): The tradition of the naruto motif in Japanese Culture

13:40-14:10 Discussion

Part 3: Gendered Readership

14.15-14.35 FUJIMOTO Yukari (Tokyo, Japan): Women in NARUTO, women reading NARUTO
14.35-14.55 OGI Fusami (Dazaifu, Japan): NARUTO as a transcultural narrative in North America: Uniting superheroes and women

14:55-15:20 Discussion

Part 4: Beyond Comics

15.20-15.40 Martin ROTH (Leipzig, Germany): Playing NARUTO: Gaming experience, databases and unit operations
15.40-16.00 Jaqueline BERNDT (Kyoto, Japan): NARUTO as a challenge to Comics Studies

16:00-16:15 Coffee Break

16:15-17:00 Final discussion