TANAKA Shinpei is not an illustrator

	Back
TANAKA Shinpei is not an illustrator
HAZAMA Yasuhiro
Some people who look at TANAKA Shinpei's works would have a question if they were illustrations. I guess they just expect stereo typed answers, so they interpret our works easily as illustrations or as cartoons. I always give them an answer, 'Our works are not illustrations but pictures.' Simply because we who make them don't regard them as illustrations. In short they are nothing but something resembling illustrations. They resemble illustrations by their appearance, but they are quite different to illustrations in thought which supports them. One more word, when we say 'illustrations' we usually use the word limitedly as pictures for commercial purposes such as graphical designs , inserts in the newspapers or in the magazines. But original meaning of 'illustrations' would be much wider. The word derives from the word 'to illuminate'. Like as a mapmaker who draws the images that he has never seen with his own eyes, I will draw the images on a surface using my imaginations. That is the very function of illustration that artistic painters would not monopolize. So, while we use the word 'illustration' as its wider meaning, I personally think that a picture is one kind of illustrations. I will consider this matter further from another viewpoint. Traditional Japanese pictures were drawn mainly with merged techniques with the Japanese original style and Chinese style before Western style technique was introduced into Japan. I think that modern Japanese cartoon (MANGA) is hardly different from Japanese hanging roll (KAKEJIKU) that was drawn by bonzes 500 years ago. Only the objects they drew differs in each age. The peculiarity of Japanese traditional technique is symbolizing objects. For example, the training way of the KANOU School, the famous Japanese artistic style, is completely different from the training way of Western artistic style educated in universities. The objects drawn in Japanese style art have little real shapes like photographs. We can find the similar techniques to symbolize everything in MANGA. In this viewpoint, I can say that the heart of Japanese tradition is legitimately succeeded to MANGA rather than to what is called traditional Japanese paintings. In this way, we can hardly distinguish between the paintings and illustrations. But I think that they can be distinguished by the way written in the 2nd paragraph of this text. Saying in other words we can distinguish them by its purpose; whether it is only to meet the demands of another person or not . I don't say one is great and the other is not. Both have each purpose that is completely different from the other. It seems to me those who want simple-minded answers like that all the pictorial representations but traditional paintings are illustrations would fail to notice the very important essence of art.
in 2007