Comics are a free space, hanging in between truth and dreams, into which every culture in the World has poured its own identity, its own dreams and suggestions, but also its very own battles, social protests and their shared hopes.

Japan is now back in Milan, sharing with us as a gift a joyful invasion of Manga, hosted in the Rotonda della Besana, in the Museo del Fumetto, on public transportation, in our stations and many of the installation in our city. On display are over two hundred years of Manga history, from the late 18th century japonisme to today’ s multimedia, touching on myths of our days like Tezuka Osamu and famous magazines of the 70s.

Both Milan and comics share a structure with freedom and creative thought at its core. Their meeting here is a celebration everyone can participate in: a celebration that goes beyond the walls of the Museo and the Rotonda to walk and meet the people of Milan and everyone who loves the kind of fantasy, artistic genius and unmatched refinement of a Japan that never ceases to enthrall us.

Giuliano Piasapia

Major of Milan

The bond that ties Japan and the city of Milan together is one that dates back in time and is still strong today, not only thanks to our twinning with the city of Osaka, but also to the genuine interest the people of Milan always had for Japanese culture in all its expressions.

Today, this bond is strengthened, as Milan inaugurates its first Festival dedicated to the art of Manga: a most important collaboration that takes its place in the forefront of the many projects related to the 2015 Expo, and offers the people of Milan a remarkable exhibition.
This exhibition project offers a multitude of different perspectives on the art of Manga, granting everyone the unique opportunity of observing its development from its first and oldest forms and following its process of popularization and its subsequent worldwide diffusion.
Milan greets with enthusiasm the Milano Manga Festival offering two locations among the most prestigious in the landscape of Milan’ s culture – the Rotonda di Via Besana and WOW Spazio Fumetto – to showcase the history of this art, that finds itself in the centre of a crossroad that connects the culture of a people, the ability of drawing to spark the imagination and the very life of a thousand-year old society.

Filippo Del Corno

Councillor for Culture – City of Milan

It is a great pleasure to attend an exhibition that celebrates the first 200 years since the first printing of the Hokusai Manga here in Milan, the same city that, in the past, hosted many exhibitions on Japanese culture in the Edo and pre-modern period. This is an important opportunity to understand Japan, its people and its culture. To everyone who made this exhibition possible, I give my most heartfelt thanks.

During the 19th Century, the ukiyo-e masters, faced with a plummeting of the interest towards classic themes such as actors, beautiful women and landscapes, turned to the production of giga and fūshi-ga, satirical and caricature illustrations. These illustrations were printed in large-sized, full-colored prints, very often comprised of two or even three consecutive panels, a luxury that caricatures and satirical illustrations elsewhere in the world could not afford. The gigabon, caricatures of which one example is the Hokusai Manga, used a type of binding called watoji and were printed in small-sized booklets to allow people to carry them with ease, keeping them in the sleeves of their kimono. With the coming of the modern era, Manga began to be used by daily newspapers and magazines. In this period we can see the emergence of specialized magazines, such as “Tokyo Puck” , directed by Kitazawa Rakuten. The exhibition displays a 1910 issue of this magazine which boasts the largest 8-panel Manga ever printed in Japan, with 2 pages per panel: The road to wealth.

I always like to think about how in the 20th Century we had but one professional Manga artist, or mangaka, while by the end of the 40s we would have counted more than 200. This change was prompted by dramatic changes in the way Manga were drawn, changes brought about by the enormous success of the 10-volume work by Tagawa Suihō: Norakuro: we had entered an age in which drawing Manga required possessing a unique, comic-oriented sensibility. The most prominent figures of this time were Tezuka Osamu and Hasegawa Machiko. Following the end of World War II, Manga started being published in small booklets called akahon manga. In the Exhibition you will find a selection of about fifty of these booklets.

As of today, over 6000 people in Japan work in the field of Manga, a field which boasts printing volume of over 500 million copies a year for magazines and 450 million copies for Manga in booklet form. We can get a sense of the immensity of this work output in the section dedicated to contemporary Manga.

Prof. Isao Shimizu

Curator of the Exhibition