What better way to address this than presenting a major retrospective in a Western art gallery on TEZUKA Osamu (1928-1989), Japan's most important manga artist. The exhibition Tezuka: The Marvel of Manga, developed by and for the National Gallery of Victoria, is at once an introductory celebration of this artist's unique vision in manga and a critical marker for how we in the West can further our understanding of the power of manga through the Tezuka's talents.

Tezuka's career parallels the growth of the manga industry to such an extent that his life is inextricably entwined with the postwar formation of manga. Early works like New Treasure Island (Shin takarashima), 1947, helped channel the explosion of the Osaka-based akabon red-book manga rental system of the late 1940s. This in turn led to an incorporation of novelistic and cinematic structures into manga serialisations like Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atomu) for the Tokyo-based competitive weekly and monthly magazines. Concurrently, works like Princess Knight (Ribon no kishi) amplified the hitherto mute market of shojo manga (girls' comics) in the mid 1950s, while works like Jungle Emperor (Jungeru taitei) (referred to in the West as Kimba the White Lion) articulated humanist themes in the guise of cute animal manga for young children.

By the 1960s Tezuka had attained mainstream success through the manifold manga commissions he had received from a wide range of publishers. He also responded to changes in Japan's post-occupation social climate by developing gekiga (adult pictures) manga of deepening and sometimes disturbing political and philosophical content. Titles as varied as Black Jack (Burakku Jakku), Eulogy to Kirihito (Kirihito sanka) and MW (Mu) were topical enough to be embraced equally by general audiences and university students. All these strands of Tezuka's notable work - most of them successful, some unabashedly experimental - culminate in his meta-works instigated toward the end of the sixties and serialised for years beyond: Buddha and Phoenix (Hi no tori). Their densely patterned meld of cosmology, folklore, history, politics and psychology capitalised on Tezuka's drive for concentrated dramatic energy and the explosive thematic consequences of his open-ended arrangement of plot, character and setting.

Tezuka was an internationalist by strategy yet wholly Japanese by practice. His outward declaration of preference for the emotional impact of American movies allowed into Japan during the postwar occupation by the Allied Powers is only slightly based on desiring to emulate American conventions. More to the point, his fascination with America's cinematic sensationalism can be equated to the high impact American pop culture had on Japan after being banned from its shores during the repressive war years. Tezuka's appreciation of Hollywood was always less about an alignment with US-styled universalism and more about discerning effective mechanics in storytelling which he employed to stretch manga form into unimagined shapes.

(From Philip Brophy - Editor of the book)

Edited by Philip Brophy and published by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2006), this 156 page hardback catalogue contains:

1. A set of 6 critical essays written by English and Japanese writers, dealing with various aspects of Osamu Tezuka’s manga (with some reference to his anime)

2. A complete checklist of all 234 works exhibited in the exhibition

3. A summary bibliography

4. 66 reproductions from the exhibition