A READING OF SHOWA AND MARCH FOR DEATH MANGAS

BETWEEN MEMORY AND HISTORY

Abstract

Mangas have been part of the daily lives of people around the world for a few decades. However, it is from the last two decades that a greater amount of research around them has been carried out in the academic field. In this way, the present work takes shape through the historical-mnemonic analysis of the four volumes of the Showa manga and the March to death manga, all authored by Shigeru Mizuki, a World War II survivor who became a manga artist. The intention of this analysis is, primarily, to think about the memory of the traumatic events of World War II based on the manga of this subject who is directly linked to the event. Therefore, we will start analyzing manga both as an object of memory and history, as a cultural-market object, considering that they will only gain space in certain places from a series of contexts posed by other issues previously. Thus, Mizuki's narratives move in a way that reinforces the need for detachment from belligerence not only on the part of the Japanese, but on the part of the readers as a whole, who have the power to prevent acts of barbarism that occurred during the Second World War.