Agenda

Ryan Holmberg, Freelance comics historian and translator; PhD Yale University; Senior Lecturer, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Introduced by Vincenzo Morgese, Student Association GESSHIN, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

One of the regulars of the legendary alternative manga monthly Garo in the magazine’s heyday of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Susumu Katsumata (1943-2007) has the curious distinction of having risen within the world of political cartooning and literary comics while studying toward a graduate degree in nuclear physics in Tokyo.
While best known for his stories about life and myth in the Japanese countryside, Katsumata also drew frequently about political and social issues since the mid 1960s, including numerous satirical strips about nuclear arms and the influence of big science within Japanese universities. After the anti-nuclear power movement gelled in Japan in the late 70s, Katsumata began illustrating critical science books about the history and dangers of nuclear power. He also drew frequent humor strips on related topics, as well as moving stories about the “nuclear gypsies” who maintained Japan’s nuclear plants under oppressive work conditions.

This talk will survey Katsumata’s work on the subject of nuclear power, which is the largest, most diverse, and most trenchant such oeuvre in Japanese visual art prior to the 2011 meltdowns in Fukushima. The talk supports two publications, a recently published collection of Katsumata’s manga titled Fukushima Devil Fish (Breakdown Press) and a forthcoming history of antinuclear thought, protest, and cartooning in Japan around Katsumata’s career, titled No Nukes for Dinner: How One Japanese Cartoonist and His Country Learned to Distrust the Atom (Publisher TBD)

Registrations open at this link until 8pm, 10 March 2022
You will receive a participation link the day before the event

Organized by Vincenzo Morgese, Student Association GESSHIN. Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
For more information
Instagram: gesshin_cafoscari 
Facebook: Gesshin – Associazione studentesca Università Ca’ Foscari 
Youtube: GESSHIN Ca' Foscari University
E-mail: gesshin@unive.it