Have you ever seen Picture A? Probably, most people have seen this picture in the textbook of history. This picture expresses Japan and China which are going to get Korea, and Russia which plans to seize it, in the Sino-Japanese War age. This picture was drawn by Georges Ferdinand Bigot who is famous as cartoonist, illustrator and artist.
Georges Ferdinand Bigot was born in Paris in 1860. His father was a government official and his mother was a painter. Under the influence of his mother, he began to draw a picture when he was very young. He entered École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in 1872 and studied pictures. However, he quit school in 1876 in order to help the family budget. Then, he began work of the illustration. He went to the salon many times, and he got the knowledge about Japanese arts there. He encountered Ukiyoe [Editor's note: woodblock prints] for the first time in Paris Exposition in 1878, and he got interested in them. In this time, he was already well known to many people in France. However, his thought about Japan was strong so he came to Japan in 1882, when he was 21 years old.
In order to know the life of Japanese people, he did not live in a foreign settlement but he lived in the town in which Japanese people live. Moreover, he went to the licensed quarter (遊郭) often in order to know Japanese society. Based on them, he drew and put many caricatures about Japanese politics in the caricature magazine "TÔBAÉ" which was first published in 1887. After that, his work became stable, and he got married to a Japanese woman in 1894. However, after Japan won the Sino-Japanese War, he started to worry about his livelihood because the photograph developed from that time and work of news painter decreased sharply. Moreover, he held distrust for Japanese administration of justice and police. Therefore, he divorced and returned to France in 1899. He remarried French woman immediately after the homecoming and he died because of a stroke in 1927, when he was 67 years old.
He drew the social trend of Japan of those days which Japanese people did not get interested in because it was too natural for Japanese people to make their subject matter. Therefore, his works has become valuable Japanese data now. The picture which he drew about the Sino-Japanese War often appears in the school history textbook which we used. In his work, there are many picture which are put into two or more segments of frames (コマ) and have a story, like Picture B. Someone said, "He brought the style of the long segment comics of Europe to Japan."
He had dissatisfaction with the Japanese government and there were depictions which can be thought to be government criticism in TÔBAÉ. However, I think that he liked Japanese tradition and culture because it is said that he made the Japanese garden at the house in France and looked at it every day. It may be a reason why he was criticizing Europeanism of Japan strongly, although he loved Japanese culture.
 |
| Picture A - Sino-Japanese War |
 |
| Picture B - Sample of Japanese comic style |
References
France no huushi gaka, Georges Bigot ga mita nihonjin [The Japanese which is a French caricaturist Georges Bigot looked at.] (2013, September 9). Yuunayun Retrieved 2013, Jan 6 from http://matome.naver.jp/odai/2137904355726810601
Georges Bigot (2010, October 13). Hongo mura dayori Retrieved 2013, Jan 6 from http://blog.bunsei.co.jp/2010/10/13/%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A7%E3%83%AB%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A5%E3%83%BB%E3%83%93%E3%82%B4%E3%83%BC/
Georges Bigot (2013, May 1). LAMBIEK Retrieved 2013, Jan 6 from http://www.lambiek.net/artists/b/bigot_georges.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment