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Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This dissertation traces the origins of contemporary Japanese comics back to the introduction of translated American comic strips to Japan in the 1920s and 1930s. Identifying the model employed by modern comics as that of Thierry Smolderen’s audiovisual stage, it examines the creation of said model at the hands of Rudolph Dirks and Frederick Burr Opper in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal 1898-1900 as a shift from extradiegetic narration to what I term “transdiegetic” content in graphic narrative. ❧ The dissertation details the introduction to Japan of this audiovisual stage via George McManus’s Bringing Up Father and the many other comic strip translations in its wake. These translations inspired a new generation of Japanese graphic artists, such as Asō Yutaka, Yokoyama Ryūichi, Tagawa Suihō, and Tezuka Osamu, replacing the manga manbun or picture story model heretofore dominant in Japan with the audiovisual stage model. ❧ The American roots of modern Japanese manga are vastly underestimated in existing manga historiography, in part because the bulk of the research upon which this dissertation is based is original and not yet widely known. This dissertation is hence an attempt to revise current narratives about the origins of Japanese comics by shedding light on modern manga’s forgotten connection to early American newspaper comic strips.