Eco-Intermediality and the Artful Recluse’s Hut: Mizuki Shigeru’s Manga Hōjōki
Eco-Intermediality and the Artful Recluse’s Hut: Mizuki Shigeru’s Manga Hōjōki

Summary/Abstract: This article proposes eco-intermediality as a cross fertilization between what has been the hitherto predominantly thematic orientation of ecocriticism and the more form-oriented concerns of intermediality studies. To explore the transformative potential of this eco-intermedial conceptual framework, I focus on the 2013 manga adaptation of Hōjōki by the Japanese visual artist Mizuki Shigeru. Hōjōki (1212)is a medieval essay written by the Japanese poet-monk Kamo no Chōmei and bearing witness to a string of environmental disasters that overtook Kyoto at around the end of the twelfth century. The combination of a poignant environmental theme with a long history of translations and adaptations makes this work particularly amenable to an eco-intermedial approach. My main argument is that the post-Fukushima adaptation by Mizuki is a game-changer in such history, inasmuch as the artist brings his unique environmental imaginary and the distinctive formal affordances of manga to bear on Chōmei’ s text, so as to convey the sense of a world where objects and phenomena are endowed with agency and thus outside full human control. The ultimate aim of the present article is to highlight the far-reaching ecological implications of the intermedial textures that Mizuki creates in his manga Hōjōki to express an environmental imaginary hinged on material agency and empathy.

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