It’s quite an interesting month for manga and I wish I wasn’t so busy to miss this merry month of manga in Manila. Part of the Manga Realities exhibit is actually a lecture from a professor from Kyoto Seika University, Jacqueline Berndt. As some of you know, Kyoto Seika’s the only university in the world that has a faculty of manga, hence it’s interesting to hear from the perspective of people who have dedicated their lives to manga. Now, on to the details of the talk!


The Japan Foundation, Manila (JFM) in continuing its mission to promote international cultural and arts exchanges between the Philippines and Japan, is bringing to Manila Prof. Jacqueline Berndt for a two (2) day lecture on Manga. The lectures will be held on 9 September (Friday), 4:00 pm at the Ayala Museum in Makati and on 10 September (Saturday), 9:30 am at the Ateneo Art Gallery, Ateneo de Manila University in Loyola Heights, Quezon City.

Jacqueline Berndt received her Ph.D. in Aesthetics from the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. She has been teaching art theory and media studies in Japan after receiving her doctorate. In 2009, she became Professor of Comics/Manga Theory at the Faculty of Manga, Kyoto Seika University. At present, she is the Director School of Manga Studies, KSU as well as the Deputy Director of the KSU’s International Manga Research Center which is located at the International Manga Museum in Kyoto, Japan. Her research interests include aesthetics of comics/manga, art discourse in modern Japan and animation studies. She has published the first comprehensive monograph on manga in German, Phänomen Manga. Comic-Kultur in Japan (Berlin 1995, Spanish transl. 1996), co-edited Reading Manga: Local and Global Perceptions of Japanese Comics (Leipzig 2006), and edited the bilingual volume Comics Worlds and the World of Comics (Kyoto 2010).

The lectures are in cooperation with the Ayala Museum and the Japanese Studies Program of the Ateneo de Manila University. The lecture at Ayala Museum, “Manga and Art: Alleged Traditions, Museum Galleries and Appropriative Artists” tackles the legitimization of manga as an art form. Prof. Berndt’s lecture will focus on three aspects: 1) the ir/relevance of traditional Japanese painting for contemporary manga; 2) manga museums compared to recent manga exhibitions in Japanese art museums; and 3) the unilateral interest in manga by contemporary artists such as Murakami Takashi and Aida Makoto. The lecture is part of the “Manga Realities: Exploring the Art of Japanese Comics Today” traveling exhibit which is on view at the Ayala Museum from 16 August to 2 October.

The lecture at the Ateneo Art Gallery, “Manga beyond subculture”
discusses the rekindling question about manga’s role in the Japanese society. It takes the A-bomb manga “Barefoot Gen” which started in
1973 in the Weekly Shonen Jump and was introduced into Japanese school libraries in the early 1980s as its point of departure and examines its impact on public consciousness.

For inquiries and reservations for the Sept. 9 lecture, please contact the Ayala Museum at telephone numbers 757.7117 to 21 or email: museum_inquiry@ayalamusuem.org. For the Sept. 10 lecture, please contact the Japanese Studies Program at telephone numbers 426.6001 loc. 5248 or 426.4326.

If you’re gonna ask whose manga are those on the cover… well… =3=)~~ *whistles*