AIU Faculty Profile

In order to help our prospective international students understand educational offerings and who teaches what courses at AIU, we wish to start a series of introductions on our website about our faculty members.

Profile 01: Darren Ashmore (Anthropology)

The one chosen to kick off the new project is Dr. Darren Ashmore. Dr. Ashmore obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Sheffield in the U.K. and is currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at AIU. His areas of specialization are: Japanese Traditional Performing Arts, Film Studies, and Cultural Anthropology, among others. Of all courses offered at AIU, the one entitled "Manga Mania" attracts many international students. As you know, manga refers to Japanese cartoons, comics, and anime. Let us explore the “Manga World” through Dr. Ashmore’s perspective.

 

Authentic Japan Depicted in Anime

Here’s an interesting course, Manga Mania, which always seems to surprise people. Needless to say, my students are NOT just sitting in class and watching cartoons, though some always seem to think they should.

Anime and Manga have infiltrated almost every section of the Western pop-culture marketplace in the last decade or so. However, what might surprise people coming to Japan, is that this Western boom in youth culture is not quite the same in Japan. While the West has its own ancient old-type anime, in Japan, you will find an industry which answers to no Gallup polls. One will discover everything from manga written for fishing fools and cooking champs to computer gamesters.

When Tezuka Osamu gave birth to the modern anime industry, I doubt if he fully understood the unexpected ways in which this hybrid art, beaten together from American animation/movies, European satirical cartoons, and traditional Japanese story-telling, would evolve.

Anime crossed the world earlier than people imagine, thanks to the desire of American TV stations to fill up expanding schedules with cheap ‘baby-sitting’ material. Those early shows (such as butchered episodes of ‘Tetsuwan Atom’ / ‘Astro Boy’ and ‘Jungle Taitei’ / ‘Lion Ki’…. ahem….. I mean ‘Jungle Emperor’) planted seeds in the mind of the first generation of fans which bore fruit in the 1970s and created a demand which saw series such as Gatchaman (God bless Sandy Frank) and Esteban and Macross brought out of the Mother Country and broadcast to the world. The rest, as they say, is history.

And the history of anime/manga is why AIU offers this course, Manga Mania, with me presiding over it like an egotistical Totoro (a Totoro who possesses a very unhealthy passion for painfully expensive models). While some would argue that this subject, or popular culture in general, has no place in a dignified academic establishment such as AIU, I would strongly disagree.

To debate the issue on a more professional level, anime and manga have been a very important part of Japan’s own popular culture map – from the time of the kamishibai artists who could be seen trundling about the countryside, to the latest episodes of Gundam 00. Millions upon millions of manga are printed each year, and countless fans – of all ages and types – religiously watch, download, and record their favorite programs each week. Even without the massive international market, to ignore the impact of this world of wonder on Japan is to cut oneself off from an important vehicle for understanding the culture as a whole.

I do not advocate the notion of studying Japanese culture exclusively through such material. However, I have seen far too many people eschew the wonders of this world simply because they do not fit into what they see as the ‘true’ vision of culture into which they have bought.

When the anime fan disdains kabuki or the classics of Japanese literature, they are dynamiting the foundations of their own favored cultural property and making a mock of everything which they hold dear. Manga owes its existence as much to the works of people like Ihara Saikaku, Ebenezer Landells and Hokusai as to Tezuka Osamu, Walt Disney and Hayao Miyazaki - and anime would not exist without the work of Frank Capra, Akira Kurosawa, the Fleischer Brothers, or Republic Films, to name but a few heavily influential sources.

Certainly, this course considers anime/manga and allied culture as a set of artistic phenomena, but it also takes the material as part of an ongoing series of social and cultural waves within (and without) Japanese history and provides yet another perspective on this remarkable country.

Japan will never have looked so real after someone has looked at it through a pair of anime-eyes the size of a dinner plate, nor so vast after the person has stood atop the shoulder of the MS-06(S) Zaku (Hail Zeon!) and looked beyond the horizon.

 

Message for Prospective Students

It took me a good deal of time to get over the fact that I was teaching the intricacies of Japanese Puppet Theatre to Japanese students in Japan in English. Now, three years down the line, it encourages me to see our Japanese students nattering away to their Japanese friends in English, as if it has become something of a true lingua-franca.

True. All courses at AIU are taught in English. However, before the international students out there start to think that AIU is little more than an annex of their own home institution, and will deny them a chance to use Japanese, I must stress that is so far from the truth that even the Hubble cannot get a clear view of it.

Akita is a living land. Not an isolated back-water, but as clear a reflection of what Japan truly is as one might find anywhere else. Life might move a little slower than in the big cities, but that only allows one the time to look around, get to know the folks and really see what Japan is like.

We, none of us, knows enough of the world that we can afford to remain aloof from the wonders we have not yet seen. Here we serve two important roles in that regard: to shape the next generation of Japanese students by allowing them to explore the world on their own terms, and to shape the world’s understanding of Japan by drawing in inquisitive students from all corners of it.

Here is AIU’s hand. In it lies your future. Take it.

 

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