[lbo-talk] Kapital: manga version

[Joanna]

>
>
> When Karl Marx alerted economists to the "the knell of capitalist 
> private property" he probably didn't imagine the phrase cropping-up as 
> a speech bubble in a comic strip for Japanese commuters.
>
> But across the world's second biggest economy, bookstores from 
> Hiroshima to Hokkaido are preparing for what they expect to be the 
> publishing phenomenon of the year: Das Kapital -- the manga version.
>
> The comic, which goes on sale early next month, plays into a growing 
> fascination among Japan's hard-working labour force with socialist 
> literature and joins a collection of increasingly fierce literary 
> critiques of the global capitalist system.
>
> In recent decades, while Japan Inc was still delivering collective 
> prosperity to the nation, public criticism of companies has been 
> muted. Unions were weak and acquiescent. But now, as the country sinks 
> into its second recession in seven year, the sackings begin and the 
> gap widens between rich and poor, a growing number of Japanese believe 
> the problem lies with capitalism itself.
>
> The ambitious comic rendering of Das Kapital is designed to parcel the 
> complex economic theories of Marx's hefty original in a format which 
> Japanese adore digesting their information from; it will also be 
> compressed into a size that can be slipped discretely into a Chanel 
> evening bag, or slid into the top drawer of a desk when the bosses are 
> looking. A sneak preview given to The Times reveals that Marx's 
> central themes are relayed in the comic via a cast of suitably 
> down-trodden workers.
>
> Japanese publishers have historically used cartoons to explain thorny 
> diplomatic relations with China, advanced wine-tasting and even the 
> spread of bird flu: the manga version of Das Kapital takes on even the 
> toughest concepts thrown up in the original, from "commodity 
> fetishism" to the precise process by which "the expropriators are 
> expropriated".
>
> The comic is expected to sell tens of thousands of copies in its first 
> weeks on sale, but is up against stiff competition: _anti-capitalist 
> books are the hottest sellers in capitalist Japan at the moment,_ and 
> it will take something extraordinary to beat the sales of _Hideki 
> Mitani's "Greedy Capitalism and the Self Destructiveness of Wall 
> Street._"
>
> A former Goldman Sachs high-flyer, Mr Mitani now vigorously deplores 
> the destruction of Japanese business values on the altar of 
> Anglo-Saxon capitalism and describes Wall Street itself as one of 
> Dante's circles of hell. Phrases like "unbridled mammonism" and 
> "uncontrolled greed" abound in his work. Japanese readers, meanwhile, 
> are lapping it up, and the book has become the fastest-selling 
> non-fiction title for many years.
>
> The dramatic shift to the left in Japanese literary tastes has even 
> revived domestic socialist tracts of the 1930s: one of the strongest 
> selling books of the year, at nearly half a million copies, is 
> Kanikosen - a savagely bleak, novel depicting violence, exploitation 
> and revolution aboard a crabmeat canning ship. [Hmmm - Japanese 'Death 
> Ship?]
>
> The book has somehow pinched a nerve in 21st Century Japan. When 
> Kanikosen was reprinted earlier this year, Tokyo's largest bookshop 
> put a poster at the front of the store reading: "Revival of the book 
> that describes the cruel labour environment of the past: an 
> environment similar to that of the current working poor in 2008."
>
> Daisuke Asao, a senior officer in the National Confederation of Trades 
> Unions, said of Japan's resurgent interest in socialist literature: 
> "the situation of those labourers in the book is very similar to 
> modern temporary workers: the unpredictable contracts, the working 
> under heavy supervision, violence from supervisors, the widespread 
> sexual harassment and the pressure against unionisation are all things 
> that modern Japanese recognise every day."
>
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/japan/article5175853.ece