https://note.com/pareorogas/n/na72b4c1e923c
Thank you for allowing me to join your community!
I'm currently researching, translating, and assisting native Japanese researchers in regards to Japan's manga and anime subcultures.
The above article is one I recently translated for a young researcher born in 1997 called 'Mushizuka Mushizou', but you may call him Kera. Kera is a member of Labyrinth'24, and he has been maintaining the Japanese wikipedia page for Suzumi-Bune. The above article Kera originally had published in 'Eiga Hiho' (映画秘宝) goes over all of his research into the anime and its creator with news of a great discovery of the century that hasn't been reported to the media.
Suzumi-Bune is the only adult anime whose copyright has expired. That's because it was created before World War II, preceding this board's focus on 1950~1990 anime, but the legends surrounding Suzumi-Bune have inspired artists even to this day.
I hope you enjoy the article.
Be sure to note that Kera's copyright notice isn't the typical one. You're free to use the contents of the article, even for commercial purposes, so long as you credit Kera and note any parts you have altered. Crediting me as the translator (Taruby) isn't necessary, but would be a kind gesture nonetheless.
- image9.png (434.88 KiB) Viewed 119 times
※～※～※～※～※
In any case, the reason I'm posting in the fandom board is because there's something I've been curious about for decades. And that is the western term 'Hentai' in reference to 'hentai anime', 'hentai manga', 'hentai game', and so on. As far as I'm aware, at no point has Japanese bookstores categorised or labelled adult manga or anime as 'hentai', making it something akin to a culture shock for native Japanese manga and anime fans encountering the western fandom for the first time; back in the early 2000s, there was a joke bounty by a Japanese internet user offering a million dollars to whoever names the gaijin that started the 'hentai manga' phenomenon.
So far, I have physical evidence of a advertisement flyer from 1997 by J-List referring to their products as "Hentai" Software. And by 1998, websites like Anime Web Turnpike linked to 'hentai' websites.
Request One from Older Members:
I'm wishing for recorded examples of 'hentai x' (anime/manga/game) earlier than 1997.
I've found an older website from 1995 August 15th with a text article written by Curtis H. Hoffmann sharing information about the various adult manga magazines in Japan called "Doctor Etchi's Guide to 'H' Manga". In the article, he gives definitions for Sukebe, Hentai, Etchi, Ecchi, H, Chikan, and Ero Hon. He doesn't refer to ero-manga magazines as hentai, but rather by H or etchi, which does appear occasionally in Japanese media, but not as a way to categorise manga, so I'm curious if this guide was what sparked 'H-manga' which later became 'Hentai Manga'. What I found most interesting about Curtis is that he splits what he called etchi manga between ones with photo-realistic painted covers, and ones with covers that look cartoonish, which he calls Cream Lemon-style magazines.
The photo-realistic magazines would probably be ero-gekiga, and the cartoonish ones would be Lolicon/Bishoujo Comic. Cream Lemon is among what the Japanese called Lolita Anime.
Being that I'm largely researching and translating articles from the 1980s, a common word used back then is Lolicon, which is short for Lolita Complex. I searched this forum board to see at what level this term is understood by the users here, and it seems some here might misunderstand it in a sense completely different from the way it's been used in the 1980s~2000s by the Japanese manga and anime fandom. For those seeking a proper definition, please refer to Sharon Kinsella's 'Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society'.
Request Two from Older Members:
I'm wishing for recorded examples of the word 'lolicon' (or any English variation of ロリコン such as Rorikon) used by the English-speaking fandom earlier than 1995.
Ultimately, I know how the western fandom incorrectly understood this word in the early 2000s, but back in the 1980s, the word Otaku was born as a synonym for what the Japanese fandom called Soft Lolicon, and Urusei Yatsura was categorised as Lolicon along with the rest of what people would call campus love comedies in shounen and seinen magazines. Within the Urusei Yatsura anime itself, the word Lolicon was used in an episode and even defined for the benefit of Japanese anime viewers when applied to a fictional character who had feelings for the heroine, Lum. Anyone experiencing the production and broadcasting of Urusei Yatsura would've been bombarded with the word Lolicon in magazines discussing it; even in a 1985 Comiket documentary, a Japanese manga maniac was leafing through a Lum doujinshi and was asked, 'Is this Lolicon stuff?'.
https://twitter.com/bomdman9111/status/ ... 5542338564
Hence why I'm very interested in the early English fandom's experience regarding this word in the 1980s. So,I greatly appreciate everyone involved in this community, and elsewhere, in uploading scans of old English-language anime fan club newsletters and catalogues. It's interesting seeing which Japanese words are used and defined by the English-speaking side of this fandom, though I find it incredibly eerie that I have yet to encounter the word Lolicon. The only way this absence would make sense is if something like Urusei Yatsura was only dubbed into English, and English-speaking anime fans collectively had zero interest in collecting or importing any Japanese magazines discussing it. It's like having a fleet of zeppelins fly overhead with loudspeakers, one would need to be both deaf and blind to not notice.
I'm under the assumption the tab image representing oldschoolotaku is also Lum, which is why I'm focusing on her anime instead of Cream Lemon itself. Though I did see a thread about Cream Lemon's localisation on this board (Link), and something I would like to share is the two artists responsible for the character design and illustrations for the Cream Lemon works localised into English, such as Star Trap, are Konoma Waho and his disciple Kazuna Kei; Kazuna Kei is a self-proclaimed Lolicon and a Star Trek fan, who is utterly obsessed with Lum from Urusei Yatsura (whenever he draws manga, he often inserts Lum into it). One of my goals in the future is to collaborate with Kera and another researcher to get the permission of both Kazuna Kei and Oki Yukao for the video footage from his 'Yonezawa Memorial Kazuna and Oki Yukao TALK', since he was around since the early days of Comiket when the first representative, Harada Teruo, passed the baton to Yonezawa Yoshihiro, the second representative. These artists getting old, so the clock is ticking.
※～※～※～※～※
Speaking of Comiket, if someone here can read handwritten Japanese and is willing to transcribe it to make it more accessible for Japanese researchers, I also have all of the 'Comic Critique' issues published by Labyrinth'75, the founders of Comiket. The table of contents of 'Comic Critique' can be found here (Wikipedia).
If you have the required background and interest to help with the above, let me know!
As much as I would like to do more of these myself, there's way too many other things I need to work on. I did do a later article (1981) written by Aniwa Jun in 'Comic Critique' discussing his feelings regarding Lolicon, though it would be more correct to say it's regarding his feelings towards proto-Otaku, people who 'play' with commercial manga and anime. Aniwa Jun was a proponent of original story manga creation, and he was upset by the trend that all manga was degenerating into 'being nothing more than 'cute girls', 'gags', and 'anime SF''.
I think I'll share Aniwa Jun's speech for the 1981 Comiket Review Meeting on this forum board later if there's interest.
You can compare your own comic convention experiences with the one by Aniwa Jun, the man who saved Comiket!