Tezuka Osamu is widely recognized as Japan?s foremost manga artist. Tezuka's thirteen-volume series, The Phoenix (Hi no tori), published through the 1980s, ranges across space and time as it grapples with the nature of national identity, humanity?s place in the natural world, and the human drive to community, nation, empire and war. This paper will address one of the longer narratives in the Phoenix series, The Sun (vol.10-12), to analyse Tezuka?s vision of the growth and origins of the nation of Japan.
Tezuka represents the nation of Yamato using potent symbols of the sun, the rising sun, the blood ties of clan and tribe, as well as the indestructible phoenix itself, to emphasise the continuity and destiny of the Japanese Empire. On the other hand, narrative developments and a contrasting set of images undercut this seemingly positive image. Pitted against rival clans, the Yamato tribe suffers the terrible cost of war, and by giving in to greed and rage they suffer not only physical destruction but the lasting psychological cost of revenge. The traditional symbols and myths of the Japanese Empire are thus undercut by a narrative focus on conflict and consequences.
The greatest manga artist of postwar Japan, Tezuka's vision of the original Japanese Empire draws our attention to the disjunction between ideal and real, symbol and signified. This sense of disjunction, refracted through the tension between text and image in the manga medium, creates a new way of reading the nation and empire that goes beyond the possibilities of the narrative texts that we call literature.