The British Museum and Prof. Munakata

Extract from: newscientist.com

by Cian O’Luanaigh

(Image: copyright Hoshino Yukinobu and the British Museum)

Missing artefacts, a 200-year-old conspiracy, and a mysterious airship over London. Oh, and someone’s nicked Stonehenge...

Folklore and ethnology expert Professor Munakata Tadakusa certainly has his work cut out in Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure, the latest collection of comics from acclaimed manga artist Hoshino Yukinobu. Invited to give a talk at London's British Museum, he soon finds himself investigating a plot to steal museum artefacts and return them to their “rightful” owners.

Hoshino’s cloaked detective has been solving crimes for over two decades in one of Japan’s leading manga magazines - the fortnightly Big Comic. Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure is the sleuth’s first visit to the UK, the result of a collaboration between Hoshino and the British Museum, which in 2009 invited the artist to create a manga based on its collections.

(Image: copyright Hoshino Yukinobu and the British Museum)

At times simplistic, at times wonderfully melodramatic (a dying curator whispers “Donate my collection…I will…become a part of the British Museum…”), Hoshino’s action-driven plot explores relations between Japanese and British researchers, the question of who really “owns” archaeological remains, and the debate about returning artefacts to their countries of origin.

In true manga style, Hoshino’s simplified character designs are set against hyper-realistic museum artefacts and intricately depicted landmarks, transporting me to London and allowing me to indulge my inner geek by mentally ticking off the artefacts I recognized from the Museum.

The original Japanese manga was published in 10 episodes over five months in Big Comic, allowing readers to digest clues, build tension in increments, and savor those well-placed cliffhangers at the end of each installment. Collecting these into one book warped the pace; story threads seemed hastily woven and the secondary characters lacked depth. Motives are secondary to action: a fatal sniper shot towards the end, for example, reeks of deus ex machina.

(Image: copyright Hoshino Yukinobu and the British Museum)

That said, the collection includes interesting extra content, including an interview with Hoshino on his research for the book - from visits to British archaeological sites to the minutiae of UK police uniforms. There is also an enlightening note on Japanese illustrative styles from graphic historian Timothy Clark. Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure is no great detective story, but it is an entertaining mix of archaeology and adventure. And in one scene an airship tries to drop Stonehenge on St Paul’s cathedral, which is definitely worth a look.

Adventures in archaeology

From Mike Pitts – Digging Deeper - thinking about archaeology

The new British Archaeology features Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure, a wonderful manga-style story that the BM is publishing in October. It’s written and drawn by Hoshino Yukinobu, and was originally serialised in comic form in Japan last year by Shogakukan Inc. Now it has been translated into English and brought together into a single book, and exclusive extracts in the magazine include drawings of Stonehenge, Woodhenge and some Japanese megaliths – revealing which of the two most publicised Stonehenge theories is adopted by the fictional archaeologist-cum-ethnographer (look for the magazine!).

The adventure combines artwork and narrative that remind me of my old favourites Look & Learn, Eagle and Tintin (though without the latter’s humour), with a glorioulsy high-minded approach to culture and history. We are frequently reminded that Munakata’s roots are Asian. On being told his planned trip to Wiltshire has been postponed because of police roadblocks, he comments, “They warned me to expect anything in England”. He discovers tagged tea bags, and English apples (“delicious”). But Munakata takes a strong view against repatriation. He praises the BM’s history of collecting, and fostering public access. “I am one of many Japanese scholars”, he says, “who have benefited from that generosity”. Museums are spaces where, “symbolically, fundamental truths can be displayed for all people in the world”. Wonderful! I had a little piece about this in yesterday’s Guardian.

The rest of the magazine is about real archaeology – iron age metalled roads, a newly identified dark age power base in Scotland, Jim Leary and Dave Field on the association between neolithic monuments and water, a new gold lunula find from Scotland (the first in over a century), and so on. There are some very interesting readers’ letters, Mick Aston writes about his old friend the late Philip Rahtz, and I interviewed the archaeologist and Times correspondent Norman Hammond.