First manga ever — Who invented?

“Manga” is a term used to refer to comics or comics of Japanese origin. It is a popular entertainment medium that has spread all over the Internet thanks to digitization.

There are many pages for reading manga and catalogs for all ages and tastes: children, teenagers, adults, action, romance, mysticism, psychology, etc.

But where does the story of the manga begin? Or even better, what was the very first manga?

Today we will go to the past. We will find the beginnings of an industry that, although considered accepted today, was not always well received, especially in the West, where consumers were on the border of different social groups.

Manga history

Chōjugiga, a drawing style of anthropomorphic animals starring performing politico-social satire and criticism, is the first survival of manga in history.

And although many consider this to be the “primitive origin of manga”, the style, storytelling and art used are not comparable to modern ones.

Between 1790 and 1910, with the arrival of Western immigrants, and with them their culture, graphic art took on certain features of American comics, which were a very popular media.

The most influential artists during this interim period (1800-1900) were: George Bigot, Kanagaki Robun and Charles Wirgman.

In the decades that followed, manga evolved and dabbled in different genres.

The “early” manga magazines were well received by the Japanese and continued to be published, although it was not part of a strong industry.

It was from the post-war era, after the surrender of Japan to the Allies, when numerous artists, taking advantage of the social context that the country was going through, and with a strong economic crisis that devastated the cities, manga blossomed as entertainment and magazines gained relevance within the economic engine.

At the time, manga was very cheap and the target audience was low-income people.

First manga ever

There is no exact and reliable information about the first manga in history. Among the works that rely on the Western style, but do not abandon the features of Japanese graphics, it is difficult to name a manga with modern artistic characteristics, such as vignettes, characters playing certain roles, a story divided into chapters, etc.

For some historians and a large part of the manga and anime community, the modern manga that most closely resembles current ones is the 1902 work known as Tagosaku to Mokube no Tokyo Kenbutsu by cartoonist Rakuten Kitazawa.

Rakuten Kitazawa, considered the first modern mangaka in history, is the pseudonym of Yasuji Kitazawa, an artist from Saitama Prefecture in Omiya, born in 1876.

He had an art education from an early age and began to draw traditional Japanese paintings. As he got older, he also became interested in Western art and comics, combining both styles and sharing the results with publishers and libraries of the day.

Tagosaku to Mokube no Tokyo Kenbutsu, or simply Mokube, is considered the first manga in history in terms of form and artistic character.

It consists of four vignettes per page and typescripts to accompany the characters.

Mokube tells the story of two peasants who travel to the city of Tokyo, where we see how their knowledge and rural behavior clash with the culture of the big city, making mistakes and feeling isolated from the rest of the population.