NOURS Magazine - Kyozo Hayashi

 

Well there I was, rooting around on Archive.org, as I am wont to do, and I came across a collection of Japanese gamer mags put out by NAMCO in the 1990s. I can't read a word of it, but am immediately seized by awe at the covers. 

At first I was, "How?" Was it an early use of computer graphics? Seemed too smooth. Are they amazingly deceptive trompe-l'oeil paintings? Is it done with paper cut outs? Then my mind begged, "Who?"

After some internet sleuthing, utilizing the only clue I had – the signature "Kyozo" under the little umbrella mark on the lower righthand corner of a few of the covers – the only hint I was able to glean that pointed to an answer was a couple of copies of the above-pictured book for sale on eBay. Kyozo Hayashi is an artist and designer who seemingly specializes in working with clay figures for his work. 

I absolutely love the meshing of Art Deco and Pop Art in Kyozo's aesthetic. At some point the art direction seems to have been revised to fit a more "normal" newsstand gamer mag aesthetic, with Manga-style art or pictures of the characters from the games the magazine was reviewing that month. It makes sense from a marketing standpoint, but man, these covers are works of art!

If you want to go spelunking in the cave of NOURS digital back issues, the gateway to your cavern is here.

As for Kyozo Hayashi himself, he was born in 1939 and graduated from the Industrial Art department of the Nagoya Municipal Polytechnic High School. He began his clay illustration career around 1967, and received multiple awards for his design work and had a number of traveling art shows in the late 1980s. He appears to have an Instagram account, where he primarily showcases digital illustration these days. 

Frankenstein's Monster Meets Manga

Cultures cross-pollinate all of the time, and while some channels of transmission are more (or less) reputable  and/or harmful than others, it can only benefit all people everywhere to be exposed to things outside of their tiny spheres of influence. Though context is important. Despite any anti-American sentiment other cultures may hold, or xenophobic tendencies seem to be rearing their disgusting head here in the U.S., the exchange and assimilation of various cultures' pop ephemera can show how our interests are more aligned across cultural and geographic boundaries, than alien. Such things have been stigmatized in recent years with the constantly argued and blurred demarcation of cultural appropriation and exoticizing over cultural fascination and celebration, but this isn't a political blog and 100 different people may have 100 different definitions of any of those aforementioned concepts.

An example I present to thee...the appearance of the Americanized Frankenstein's Monster in Japanese manga. Seems pretty trivial, I know. You may point out that the Frankenstein's Monster isn't American at all, but English, since it stems from the 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. True. I guess you could argue that The Monster is potentially German, since the titular Frankenstein is in fact Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the medical student who builds and animates the creature, does so at the University of Ingolstadt. Its birthplace, so to speak. On the other hand, I suppose, if Victor Frankenstein made life, and that life is The Monster, and therefore is considered his progeny, I guess it could be argued that The Monster is Swiss, since Victor Frankenstein's family is Genevan. But Victor himself was born in Naples, which would undoubtedly make him an Italian citizen, which might make The Monster Italian? The phrase "it could be argued" gets bandied about a lot here, because that's all it is, meandering rhetoric. 

No, we're talking specifically about the repurposing of the Frankenstein image created by Jack Pierce for James Whale's 1931 Universal film Frankenstein. It is by and large the default visual shorthand for the Frankenstein Monster and has been since the picture's release. Below are some examples from my personal manga collection.

First off we have some excerpts from Tetsujin 28-go, initially created in 1956. The volume these images are presented from are from a tankobon reprint released in 1970. Herein we see Tetsujin 28-go square off against a very familiar-looking green-pigmented monster.

The cover to the first volume of Sunday Comics' Tetsujin 28 Go   
(aka Iron Man 28, aka Gigantor in the U.S.) by Mitsutera Yokoyama.

                              

Below are some samples of the Frankenstein story from Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy, originally serialized in Shonen magazine between November 1952 and April 1953 per the Tezuka In English website. This english version is from the Dark Horse Comics Astro Boy Omnibus 7 collection released in 2017.

 I'm sure there are other examples, the Junji Ito adaptation for one. If anyone has any other examples, please feel free to let me know. I'd be interested in seeing them.