Paper short abstract:

This paper studies Shakespeare in manga, anime and cosplay, such as Tezuka's "Robio to Robiette". I would argue that such cases offer insights into Japan's negotiations with the dichotomy between high culture and pop culture, between the global and the local, and the West and the East.

Paper long abstract:

The combination of manga, originally local pop culture coming from Japan, and Shakespeare, a global Bard regarded as the icon of high culture, might be surprising, but Shakespeare in manga has a long history, back to, if we try to be conservative, Tezuka Osamu's manga adaptation of The Merchant of Venice (1959) in which the scenes are set in Venice, with Portia as the only daughter of a media tycoon who televises his dying moments, or if we include manga-style black-and-white images, back to a 1874 drawing by a British artist residing in Japan of a Hamlet as a samurai speaking "To be or not to be" in gibberish Japanese, or slightly later to 1885 illustrations of Antonio as a handsome entrepreneur in the Edo era (the first adaptation of The Merchant of Venice).

This presentation examine Shakespeare in illustration, manga, anime and cosplay such as a drawing by Kyujin Yamamoto of O-Nami (Natsume Soseki, Kusamakura:1906) as an Ophelia on water (1926), a cartoon of Baron Shidehara, Minister of Foreign Affairs as Hamlet (1932), Tezuka's "Robio to Robiette"(1965), a Korean boxer traumatized by the Korean War as Macbeth/Lady Macbeth in Chiba Tetsuya's Ashita no Joe, Moto Hagio's Poe no ichizoku with Edgar as Rosalind (As You Like It) (1974), Morikawa Kumi's manga adaptation of Twelfth Night (1978), leading up to more recent ones such as GONZO's sci-fi animation Romeo x Juliet (2007) and a character named William Shakespeare in Fate/Apocrypha (2012-14). It also examines Manga Shakespeare Series by SelfMadeHero (2007-), a British publishing house, as an important case of glocalization both of manga and Shakespeare.

By studying these cases, this presentation argues that Shakespeare in manga-style illustrations, graphic novels, anime, games and cosplay offers insights into Japan's negotiations with West as represented as Shakespeare, in the ways that problematizes the dichotomy between high culture and pop culture, between the global and the local.