Literary classics in Japanese manga: сomics by Tezuka Osamu

Abstract

Tezuka Osamu is one of the first manga artist, who started to transform works of classical literature into the language of Japanese comics. Among his works we can distinguish the comic adaptation of Goethe’s “Faust” (1950) and “Crime and punishment” (“Tsumi to batsu”, 1953) by Dostoevsky. These works, according to the assurances of Tezuka Osamu, were created by him in order to introduce the younger generation to the masterpieces of world literature. But, in fact, they are rather a courageous experiment by the author, which is based on Tezuka Osamu’s personal experience with the works of American and Soviet animation and cinema (“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, “The Humpbacked Horse”, “Moth and the Flame”, “The Third Man”, etc.). Being a big fan of cinema since childhood, Tezuka Osamu unwittingly transferred a set of different cinematic techniques to the art of comics, thereby expanding its capabilities. In this article we will consider in detail the mechanism of adaptation of literary texts in Tezuka Osamu’s manga, starting with the indication of direct quotations from movie and animation of that time and ending with a variety of effects (Kuleshov effect) and principles of the film industry (“Star System”).