Mangashi - The Cartoon in Japan from Toba Sojo to Internet, organised by both Naples’ COMICON and Udine’s Far East Film Festival, is an exhibition which traces the history of the Japanese cartoon and its authors in an evocative layout which aims to document the long tradition of the ninth art of the Far East.
Manga can rightly boast of a very ancient tradition, as this exhibition demonstrates, starting in periods less familiar to the public, from the end of the nineteenth century to the revival of the 1960s, through the boom years of famous magazines and authors like Osamu Tezuka, to the rapid advance of Manga comics and Anime (animated cartoons) from the 1970s onwards.
Today the Japanese cartoon, which alone accounts for half the European market, is able to thrill thousands of readers and captivate a growing number of young people, thanks to its particular themes and format, and to storylines with a strong graphic impact, and it has become a cultural phenomenon, with social and anthropological implications beyond the publishing environment. Also significant is the increasing quality of animated film production with the result that feature films which have hitherto been the prerogative of children, now gain recognition at international festivals and in cinemas throughout the world.
It is an original retrospective on the Japanese world whose point of departure is the recent Exhibition of Printed Cartoons and Animation by COMICON Naples, which this year featured works from Japan and South Korea, and thus aptly blends into the Udine Festival which has always shown an interest in other forms of artistic expression from the Far East. The Exhibition was on show at the ancient Castel Sant’Elmo in Naples until 3 April, that is, beyond the three-day Neapolitan event which successfully concluded on 6 March. The seventh edition of the great Friulian festival from 22 to 29 April offers this ideal cultural bridge uniting the whole of Italy and inaugurating a collaboration between the two festivals which promises further projects in the future.
COMICON Naples, the Exhibition of Printed Cartoons and Animation, which reached its seventh edition in March 2005, is now the most important festival of the cartoon in Italy, a position established after only a few years, thanks to factors which make it a date not to be missed in the panorama of the ninth art: the particular attention given to the quality of the exhibition, from the selection of original material to the refined hanging of the works, combined with the prestigious setting of Castel Sant’Elmo, an increasingly popular venue for exhibitions in Naples.
Also there is the impressive list of guests, designers, authors, and other professionals from the field, who annually have the opportunity to meet in the Castle, from Mattotti to Manara, from Jodorowsky to Bilal. And, there is the prominence of the cultural project at its base in the form of debates, seminars, film previews and reviews, including competitions and exhibits of the work of talented young people, events and shows which involve the whole city in the first week of March. Furthermore, there is collaboration with the most prestigious international festivals from Angoulême in France to Seoul in South Korea; numerous exhibitions and activities throughout the year, in addition to the three days of the Exhibition, in collaboration with the most important institutions. All this aims to lift the cartoon (and cartoon animation) from its status as mere entertainment for children, and to reduce the gap between this work and works that are considered more important forms of art, and to do it in Naples, a city increasingly viewed as a centre of contemporary art.