Comics in Thailand and Indonesia

Fusanosuke Natsume

Thai comic books can be categorised into traditional Thai comics, sold at stands for 5 baht, and comics of Japanese origin targeted at children of the new middle class. The latter are sold at bookstores and convenience stores in large cities. "Boy's Love" type comics are now popular among schoolgirls, and this has been reported by television as a "bad Japanese influence".

A professor at Chulalongkorn University showed interest in my work and arranged a meeting for me with Thai people who are interested in comics. At that occasion, I was interviewed by the staff of Comics Quest, a comics information magazine. They had met at a Japanese language school after graduating from college and started the magazine in June this year with a circulation of 10,000 copies. Comics Quest sells for 45 baht, nine times the price of popular Thai comics and is even more expensive than comics of Japanese origin, which sell for 35 baht.

The magazine features a top-ten ranking of comics sales, based on their own survey of bookstores around Bangkok. As it turns out, high ranking comics are all of Japanese origin. The top three are Detective Conan, GTO and BERSERK.

In short, Japanese-origin comic books are supported by the rich middle class and are distributed as part of the fashion culture of young people. Indeed, new wave Thai comics are also fashionable. Similar to the Heibon Punch in Japan in the 1960s, comics are a part of fashion or merchandise information.

I also did some investigations at Siam Square, a fashionable area like Roppongi or Aoyama around the Chulalongkorn University. In this area, comics of Japanese origin have captured the youth market. Some of the new-wave Thai comics for youth, which show heavy Japanese influence, use this local as their setting.

In Thailand, eighty per cent of sales of published books is in Bangkok. This is probably reflected in comics sales as well. Like Japan in the 1960s, there is a huge gap in income between rural areas and large cities, as a result of rapid economic growth.

Upon reading this, most Japanese may take Thai comics very lightly, saying ÅgOh, still at that level?Åh That would be a big mistake. Although I cannot go into details, some of the Thai comics are sent by e-mail and effectively processed by Macintosh. This is a convenient system for translating Japanese comics into Thai.

A concern shared by information magazine staff was that they were dependent on reprint of information obtained from the Internet without permission, but they were conducting market research more actively than the publishing companies. If you could support and help them grow, it may contribute to market development. I hope that both the Japanese side and Thai publishers may consider the matter from a long-term strategic standpoint, rather than going strictly by the rules and rejecting merely for protection of rights.

In Jakarta, there is a magazine, Animonster, providing information on comics and animation. The editors are young people in Bandung. The magazine prints information obtained from Japan via the Internet. They would like to ask for permission but don’t know how to contact the Japanese publisher. This is the same problem shared by comics information magazines in Thailand.

They have a strong curiosity for Japanese mass culture as a whole and sometimes carry historical articles, too. They are more enthusiastic about cultural exchange than publishing companies. They also carry valuable historical articles on Indonesian comic books.

Indonesian comic books were rental comic books distributed through a rental library called Taman Bacaan. They carried serial stories and had about 50 pages per issue in B6 size. Ten issues were collected together and published in book form. These comic books first appeared in the 1950s but were adversely affected by American comics and disappeared in the 1980s.

What I found interesting were the stories told by Mr. Agus, a Javanese friend of mine who runs a cottage in Bali. He has been a big fan of the Indonesian version of rental comics since childhood, and is quite a collector of them. The way he spoke so joyfully of comics, proudly displaying his collection, is similar to Japanese rental book fans. He told me that when he was a child, he befriended a rental library owner who let him read new books before they were wrapped with vinyl (as in Japan, rental books are wrapped to avoid damage).

He also talked about how he used to make a reservation for comics he wanted with a rental library and, since the address of the publisher was unknown, he would place an order with a wholesale dealer-bookstore in the town. After rental libraries folded, he hunted for old books piled under the shelves at old bookstores. This is similar to how we used to go to rental libraries and look for secondhand books in Japan.

It is interesting that many of the heroes in Indonesian comics have strange appearances; a hero who is a blind swordsman; a hero who is dumb when awake but tough in his sleep; a boy (resembling the rental book version of Kitaro) learning martial arts, who is ugly but not a villain. These characters remind me of Japanese rental comic books. The comics also had erotic scenes close to rape or violent scenes. Readers were adolescents or older, not children. This was similar to rental comics in Japan!

Rental comic books are still popular in Korea, but perished in Japan in the 1960s and in Indonesia in the 1980s. What accounts for this difference?

If comparative research is conducted on this point, comics may be studied in terms of eastern Asian culture and the enigma of the development of Japanese comics may be revealed, indicating how the revolution in expression in the 1960s rental comics led the way to the subsequent shift of Japanese comics toward young people and its diversification.

*The author is an API Fellow, 2001-2002, from Japan and a well-known comics columnist. He went to Thailand and Indonesia for the research under the API Fellowships< http://ww.ikmas.ukm.my/api>..The above is a composite and re-write of two articles which originally appeared in the Mainichi Shimbun of July 27 and August 3, 2001, after he completed his research trips to two countries.

Introduction of Manga: Short Comics from Modern Japan

Fusanosuke Natsume

*This paper was published in the exhibition catalogue of “Manga: Short Comics from Modern Japan supported by A Japan Foundation Touring Exhibition in 2001.

The difficulties of a manga exhibition

An exhibition of manga was held at the Maison de la Culture du Japon in Paris in October 1999. I was requested by its sponsors, The Japan Foundation, to draw up a basic plan for the exhibition, which subsequently opened in Rotterdam in January 2000. It proved to be a marked success, and we received many requests for it to be presented elsewhere. Such is the background to this new touring exhibition, which, apart from minor changes, is essentially the same as the previous exhibition in Paris and Rotterdam.

I am very happy to see how well received this exhibition has been in Europe, so much so that it is now being taken on tour to several countries. I hope most sincerely that the exhibition will stimulate a deeper appreciation of Japanese manga. However, I would like visitors to be aware of how difficult it is to appreciate the enormous range and variety of Japanese manga through an exhibition of limited scope such as this.

Several exhibitions of manga have been held in Japan over the past decade, although most, unfortunately, have not been particularly successful. The main reason for their failure has been that most such exhibitions have done little more than display the original comic drawings on panels in the manner of paintings in an exhibition.

Most manga take the form of extremely long stories serialised in bulky weekly or monthly comic magazines. In such manga, the emphasis is on the interest of the story rather than perfection on the individual pictorial level. Total annual publishing sales in Japan amount to 2.6 trillion yen; manga account for as much as two-fifths of the number of publications going to press. This commercial success is underpinned by several factors: the artistic maturity of adult manga in circulation since the 1960s and the exploitation of this particular market (adult manga currently account for around half the total manga market), and the extensive use of a mixed media strategy in which manga are combined with other media such as animation, computer games, TV, films, and merchandise inspired by manga characters.

This means that the most popular manga appear in the form of long serials. Almost all the most well-known manga feature extended stories. A display consisting of no more than a few panels is quite clearly unable to convey the complex human relationships and the intricacies of plot that characterise a long story. There are manga magazines catering for readers belonging to a wide range of age groups from infants to young boys and girls, adolescent boys and girls, the middle-aged, and mothers. There are also many different magazines catering for readers with varying tastes and interests. Needless to say, it is quite impossible to represent the whole range of Japanese manga on the walls of an art gallery.

But there is one other problem that has struck me. I attended a small-scale exhibition of outstanding examples of French comics held in Tokyo in 1998, and I felt on that occasion that the interest of the individual pieces was identical to that of paintings in a fine art exhibition. French comics place importance on perfection of finish in the manner of modern painting, and the superb coloration seems to allude to the tradition of European painting.

In contrast, the emphasis in Japanese manga is on the interest of the story, and the pictures have a symbolic significance intended to facilitate reading of the story. If the pictures were too well structured or too dense, this would if anything detract from the interest of the story. Needless to say, this is bound up with Japanese cultural traditions bearing on pictures and writing, but the essential point is that manga are concerned more with reading stories than with appreciating pictures.

In addition, in the case of manga, the printed item is the final product, and the original picture is no more than one stage in the creative process. Original pictures may have been revised in various ways, and they do not generally have a quality that would enable them to withstand viewing as completed pictures in their own right. For these reasons, manga exhibitions held in Japan inevitably end up as tedious affairs from which the intrinsic interest of the genre has wholly vanished.

The aims of this exhibition

Nevertheless, there is in the long run no alternative but to gain an idea of the whole through a restricted display of items. This was clear to me from the outset when I was first asked to compile such an exhibition. The following were several of the main points that guided me in this respect:

1. Focus on short works

Since the story is paramount, Japanese manga are not conducive to appreciation in the context of an art gallery exhibition. I decided therefore to focus on short works whose overall narratives could be appreciated at an exhibition, the aim being to ensure that each work could be appreciated as a whole. Of course, this means that it has not been possible to exhibit many of the most renowned works and that only a limited number of manga artists can be featured.

2. Screen panels

Reading a manga is a highly personal matter, entailing the act of the reader in turning over the pages of the book and his involvement in the story as he concentrates his vision on the page. Use of flat wall panels in public spaces makes it impossible to create the psychological density of this act of reading. I wondered therefore if a similar effect could not be obtained through the use of folding screens, which would give the impression of an open book depending on the angle at which they were set. We experimented with this type of display at the exhibitions in Paris and Rotterdam. But, unfortunately, logistics made it impossible to realise this type of display in subsequent touring exhibitions, and flat panels were used instead.

3. Reading from right to left

In contrast to cartoons in the Western world, Japanese manga are read from right to left. Genres of the traditional Japanese visual arts such as pictures on folding screens and picture scrolls are similarly sequenced from right to left in the manner of the Japanese writing system. Manga are no exception to this rule. Western viewers may well experience the sense of apparent discontinuity and disorientation that Japanese people feel when they attempt to read Western comic books, but since the basic structure of manga as manifest in the sequence of the frames and the direction of the characters is restricted to a right to left orientation, manga cannot be understood if read in the opposite direction.

4. Avoidance of originals

Learning from the failure of previous manga exhibitions, we have followed the principle of avoiding the use of original works. Instead, the exhibition features high-quality copies because printed copies are a major feature of the manga idiom.

5. Coloration

In order to make the idiom more immediately accessible to European viewers, we have selected works making extensive use of colour. Japanese manga generally tend to be in black and white, with colour being used only in special circumstances. Black and white linear expression is common in the Japanese traditional visual arts, and this applies equally to manga. In contrast to Western painting, these idioms are rooted in symbolic pictorial expression based on the use of line. In most cases, the use of colour in manga does not create a sense of perspective or three-dimensionality; it tends rather to emphasise flat patterns in the manner of ukiyoe prints.

With these criteria used to select the works to be displayed, the focus of the exhibition came to be placed on modern, short manga centring on works dating from the 1980s. As mentioned earlier, short works do not occupy the mainstream of Japanese manga. But since such manga are generally aimed at a more sophisticated readership, they should provide access to various aspects of contemporary Japanese culture.

History

Japanese manga bear a close relationship to the traditional Japanese visual arts. In both the picture scrolls (emakimono) which flourished during the 12th century, and in the kibyoshi illustrated stories popular during the Edo Period (1603-1868), there is a close interaction between pictures and words, to the extent that reading can be considered a visual art form.

Originally transmitted to Japan from China, the emakimono was a visual art combining pictures and writing that required the reader or viewer to ‘scroll’ through the work. In Japan, this genre was a vehicle for astonishingly dynamic stories. In his work Animation during the 12^th century: Cinematic and animation elements in picture scrolls of the National Treasure class (Tokuma Shoten, 1999), the celebrated animation artist Takahata Isao¹ shows how the artistic structure of emakimono gives rise to sophisticated visual effects. This structure makes it possible to realise the difference between parallel tracking and panning which is a feature of animation, and creates the complex temporal mode of expression of a single-frame cartoon in which different moments in time are incorporated into the same image (Fig. 1). A long passage of time can thus be expressed in a veiled manner.

Figure 1b: Scenes from an emakimono picture scroll. Pages 84 to 86 of the work by Takahata, Isao Animation during the 12th Century: Cinematic and Animation Elements in Picture Scrolls of the National Treasure Class (Tokuma Shoten, 1999)

Figure 1b:The manga-style frame compos1tion based on the scene of Figure 1a

But the important point in this context is the alternating combination of narration in the form of pictures and words, which creates an effect similar to that of the major works from the age of the silent movie. The technique of bringing pictures and written characters into close contact and alternating between them was brought to a high level of development to weave together a narrative.

In the case of the kibyoshi books of the Edo Period, the combination of pictures realised by means of woodblock printing and written characters enjoyed popularity among the common people (Fig. 2). As well as establishing a mass readership through the medium of printing, the kibyoshi genre made possible a mode of expression incorporating pictures and writing through the use of sophisticated hand-carved woodblock skills. The genre was underpinned by the townspeople in the big cities. Japanese craftsmen thus created stories in which pictures alternated with written characters, thereby giving the literate masses the opportunity to enjoy the act of reading.

Figure 2: Pages 54 and 55 of Edo no Gesaku ehon (Popular pictorial novels of Edo), Vol. 4, edited by M., Koike et al, containing Jushi Keisei haranouchi (the True Feelings of 14 Courtesans) by Shiba Zenko.

The process of modernisation that began with the Meiji Restoration in 1868 resulted in the addition of the new medium of the newspaper, produced using modern printing methods, to the list of mediums available to the traditional visual arts. At the same time, the methods of European painting, along with modern European satirical cartoons, entered Japan and gradually took the place of traditional methods of expression. Multi-frame comics and newspaper cartoons, which emerged in the United States at around the same time as the cinema, were eventually introduced and stimulated the creation of the modern Japanese manga around 1920. This occurred almost concurrently with the emergence within the process of Japan’s industrialisation of that modern townsman, the company employee, and the start of the gradual maturation of new forms of mass culture.

The mode of expression of the manga, whereby pictures and writing are combined in a complex manner within a multi-frame structure, clearly developed under Western influence. But Japanese artists gradually incorporated into these imported manga forms their own traditional tastes and inclinations, especially by exploring narrative possibilities through alternation of pictures and words. The most systematically coherent of these explorations was conducted by Tezuka Osamu, who appeared on the scene shortly after the Second World War.

In 1953, Tezuka created a manga version of Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. The desire to recreate a modern psychological drama such as Dostoevsky’s through the medium of manga led Tezuka to effect a radical transformation in the expressive language employed by manga. One example is the scene in which the hero Raskolnikov is prompted by the prostitute Sonya to seek repentance by kissing the ground. Haunted by anxiety, Raskolnikov descends the staircase. The tall rectangular frame in which Tezuka shows him coming down the stairs vividly depicts the mental state of this character, immersed profoundly in his inner torment. The scene in which he immerses himself in the crowd portrays in pictorial form the anxiety he feels relative to the crowd itself. The vivid representation of the crowd seems somehow to allude to the manner of depicting large groups in emakimono scrolls (Fig. 3).

Figure 3: Crime and Punishment, pages 131 to 133 of the Complete Works of Tezuka, Osamu (Kodansha, 1977)

Tezuka’s achievement constituted a revolution in the expressive language of manga, which had previously been considered unsuited to complex narrative modes. At the same time, Tezuka suggested possibilities for narratives that would prove of interest even to adults. Many adventurous manga appeared during the 1960s to explore these possibilities further. Such manga proved especially popular among the post-war generation of baby-boomers, as a result of which manga developed to embrace a wide range of readers from adolescents to young adults.

Forms of expression

The important role played by sex and violence in the revolution in the expressive language of manga during the 1960s and 70s is no doubt ascribable to the universality of these themes among adolescents and young adults. In the process of growth, adolescence is a period when each individual readjusts his or her personality, a stage in our development when we confront our sexuality and attempt to break down the walls of our childhood Elysium through violently destructive impulse.

Nevertheless, sex and violence are no more than two of the diverse topics treated by manga. To judge from reports in the mass media outside Japan, inflammatory portrayal of sex and violence is often considered to be the defining characteristic of Japanese manga. But I feel personally feel that the distinctive feature is rather the restrained psychological expression and the representation of daily time that appear in the interludes between the more spectacular and unrestrained scenes.

In his book Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud succeeds in presenting a theory of comics employing the comic as his medium, and in doing so makes a number of interesting points. He classifies the relationship between successive frames in terms of 1) motion to motion; 2) action to action; 3) subject to subject; 4) scene to scene, 5) aspect to aspect; and 6) non-sequitur. Almost all comics in the West are connected in the form of types 2), 3) and 4), although of these by far the largest proportion is occupied by type 2). In contrast, types 1) and 5) are much more common in Japanese manga as typified by Tezuka Osamu than in Western comics (Fig. 4). For instance, frame linkage of type 1) may involve the stepwise movement of someone turning round as if in slow motion. In the case of type 5), we may move to the scene before an event is about to occur. For instance, the scene may move from a house to a particular part of the house (Fig. 5).²

Figure 4: Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Pages 74, 75 and 80 (1993)

Figure 5: Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Frame fro the middle column of page 78 of Hinotori (Phoenix) and frame from the uppr column of page 79, by Mizuki.

McCloud explains this difference in technique as being primarily due to the fact that the enormous number of pages in Japanese manga entails the use of a correspondingly large number of frames. But he suggests that underlying this tendency is the tradition of placing important on the apparently functionless concept of ma—the concept of appropriate timing or spacing in the Japanese arts. But anyone familiar with the films of Ozu Yasujiro will surely be aware of the value that can be attached to everyday, routine occurrences by gently focusing on ordinary scenes, and it is this focus that is a feature of Japanese culture. I hope that viewers will be able to sense this same tendency in this exhibition of manga.

I feel that it is precisely this everyday, psychologically introspective approach that constitutes one of the main attractions of Japanese manga as well as being one of the genre’s main features. In order to create scenes that make a real impression in the context of a long, continuous narrative, a detailed, everyday portrayal of psychology is essential. Assuming that the fascination of manga lies in this unique sense of ma incorporated into a superficially restrained mode of expression, this exhibition of short manga will surely convey this feature in full measure.

Natsume Fusanosuke
26 April 2000

Notes

1. Takahata Isao (born 1935). Animation film director and producer. Graduated from the Department of French at the University of Tokyo. His work as a director has included the TV series Arupusu no shojo Haiji (Heidi, The Alpine Girl), Haha o tazunete sanzenri (3,000 Leagues to Visit Mother), Akage no An (Anne of Green Gables) and the theatre animation films Hotaru no haka (The Tomb of the Fireflies), Omoide poroporo (Memories are Never Forgotten) and Heisei tanuki gassen ponpoko (Pompoko). His work as a producer has included Kaze no tani no Naushika (Nausicaä) and Tenku no shiro Rapyuta (Raputa, the Castle in the Open Sky) (both directed by Miyazaki Hayao).

2. An American student who visited Japan in 1999 conducted a similar follow-up survey on comics in Japan and the United States in connection with this graph. He concluded that the differences pointed out by McCloud were not in fact evident, a result that he explained as being attributable to the possibility that differences had disappeared as a consequence of McCloud’s book having subsequently influenced comics in the United States. But it is clear that a further detailed follow-up study is required in connection with this classification and the graph.

Fig. 1: Pages 84 to 86 of the work by Takahata Isao Animation during the 12^th century: Cinematic and animation elements in picture scrolls of the National Treasure class (Tokuma Shoten, 1999). Scenes from an emakimono picture scroll and their manga-style frame composition. http://www.ntv.co.jp/ghibli/shuppan/books/data/12c.html

Fig. 2: Pages 54 and 55 of Edo no gesaku ehon (Popular pictorial novels of Edo), Vol. 4, Jushi keisei haranouchi (The True Feelings of 14 Courtesans) by Shiba Zenko. http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/books/4390110403/glance/249-2679080-3265125

Fig. 3: Crime and Punishment, pages 131 to 133 of The Complete Works of Tezuka Osamu (Kodansha, 1977). http://www.phoenix.to/mt/10.html

4. Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, pages 74, 75 and 80 (1993). http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/006097625X/249-2679080-3265125

5. Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, frame from the middle column of page 78 and frame from the upper column of page 79 of Hinotori (Firebird). http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/006097625X/249-2679080-3265125

Cross-cultural Analysis of Artistic Development: Drawing by Japanese and U.S. Children

Masami Toku
California State University, Chico
April, 2000

*This paper was published in Visual Arts Research (Vol. 27, No.1, Issue 53) in 2001 by the University of Illinois at Urbana-champaign.

Abstract

In the field of children’s artistic development, there are some questionable assumptions. One is the universality of children’s drawing pattern in their early years regardless of their culture or gender, which means no matter where children are born, their patterns of artistic development does not differ in the early stages of so-called primitive art. Characteristic and universal patterns, such as representational graphic pattern, spatial patterns, and so on, emerge with their cognitive development and physical growth at an early age (See, for example, Arnhein, 1969, 1974, Golomb, 1992, Goodnow, 1977, Kellogg, 1969, Lowenfeld, V. and Brittain, W.L. 1970). Piaget analyzes the universality of children’s artistic development based on cognitive development. According to Piaget, the universal patterns that exist in children’s drawings shift from stage to stage in all cultures and countries (Hardiman and Zernich, 1988, Piaget, 1952). For example, spatial and figural orientations develop from simple to complicated schema qualitatively and quantitatively regardless of cultural differences.

Although artistic development in the early stages indicates a universal pattern in their drawings, children show another important characteristic in their drawings: cultural specificity when they reach certain ages. This means that the universal tendency of artistic development is limited to the early years from toddler to about five or six years of age before cultural and educational influences appear. Children have a tendency to be influenced by the cultures and societies surrounding them and the influences emerge in their drawings (See, for example, Alland, 1983, Gardner, 1980, 1990, Harris, 1971, Kindler & Darras, 1997, Wilson & Wilson, 1982,). The influence of culture and technology emerges in children’s drawings, especially in elementary school. As a result, this leads them to produce new and different characteristics in their drawing patterns depending upon the cultural and technological context.

Because of this fact, some questions remain. One, do universal patterns exist in children’s drawings and do these patterns shift from stage to stage, qualitatively and quantitatively in all cultural contexts as in Piaget’s theory? Two, which is predominant in children’s artistic development: universality or cultural specificity? Three, if the patterns in children’s drawings are due to culture and society, what do the differences reveal?

In this study, I focused on spatial development, and examined the relationship between national origin (U.S. and Japanese) and spatial similarities and differences found in children’s drawings. The challenge is to find the mechanism of the relationship between universality and cultural specificity and how and why it appears in their drawings.

Method

Samples
In Spring, 1993, a total of 425 drawings were collected from U.S. children in first to sixth grades and Japanese children in second, fourth, and six grades. For the U.S. data, 1250 drawings were collected in two different districts in the State of Illinois: 425 drawings from suburban Chicago schools, and 825 drawings in Champaign. However, to compare with Japanese students equally in the same age groups, 767 drawings were selected from 2nd, 4th, and 6th grade students of the two areas: 376 drawings from suburban Chicago schools, and 391 drawings from Urbana-Champaign schools. For the Japanese data, 175 drawings were collected from Japanese Saturday School in suburban Chicago. This Japanese Saturday School offers the Japanese national curriculum for Japanese children who temporarily live in the U.S. due to their parents’ employment. Most Japanese students who are in the Saturday school attend American schools Monday through Friday.

Procedures
“Me and my friends playing in the school yard” was offered as the drawing subject to each student in the classrooms. Students imagined the playground scene with peers playing together and they transformed the image into drawings in a limited time (30 minutes). This was an imaginative drawing; not an observation drawing which looked at the scene directly. This drawing task was implemented by classroom teachers or art teachers strictly based on the common instruction. The apparatus and procedure is shown below. (For Japanese students, classroom teachers implemented this procedure in Japanese.)

Subject-matter: Me and my friends playing in the schoolyard Materials:
• Drawing papers 12” x 18”
• Crayons (eight colors: red, yellow, orange, blue, green, purple, brown, & black)
• Pencils and erasers

(Read the following)
Instructions to the students:

All of you play with friends in the schoolyard before school or after school or at recess. I would like you to think now about the kind of things you do in the schoolyard. I would like you to make a crayon drawing of you and your friends playing in the schoolyard. You will have 30 minutes to complete your drawing. Do you have any questions? (If questions are asked, do not provide additional information about the theme, simply repeat the instructions and get the students into the act of drawings as soon as possible.) [Distribute materials]

Note to the Teacher:
1. After distributing materials, have each student print name, age, grade level, and male or female on the upper right hand corner of the backside of the drawing paper.
2. Remind students to work independently. Again, advise students that they have 30 minutes to complete their drawings.
3. Ask students to begin. After approximately 30 minutes have expired collect the drawings.

Measures
Collected drawings were categorized into a scale of spatial order by three staff members including myself under Dr. George W. Hardiman at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. At that time, the priority of analyzing data was to find a standard of categorization in spatial order to classify children’s drawings objectively. As a standard, the fourteen categories of spatial treatment formed by Elliot W. Eisner in 1967 in his research, “A Comparison of the Developmental Drawing: Characteristics of Culturally Advantaged and Culturally Disadvantaged Children” was used (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Eisner’s 14 Categories of Spatial Treatment in Children’s Drawings

Previously, many researchers such as Lowenfeld and others created developmental patterns in spatial representation, but only Eisner created enough spatial categories to analyze children’s drawings. His scale was constructed for classifying children’s drawings with respect to spatial syntax in a developmental schema of spatial treatment from a simple to complicated manner qualitatively. It was originally developed based on the relationship between figures and baseline, and the existence of occlusion in the spatial treatment. For this reason, Eisner’s 14 spatial categories are often used to judge spatial order and artistic development objectively. For example, children tend to draw figures without any spatial relationship due to the lack of concept of space and depth. In this stage, figures are drawn as floating figures and objects (Eisner’s category one). With age, children use the bottom line of the drawing paper as a ground line and all figures and objects are drawn standing on the bottom line of the paper (category two). Then children start to draw a baseline on the paper instead of using the bottom of the paper as the ground base (category 4). Finally they use the technique of overlapping with figures, objects, and even with the ground to show space and depth on a two-dimensional surface (category 13). Eisner also created category 14 for unclassifiable drawings. Generally, those drawings are assumed to be advanced technique drawings in spatial treatment.

Due to Eisner’s assumption in his research, his visual-verbal categories were selected as my study’s standard. Although these categories were developed to compare the drawing performance of culturally advantaged and culturally disadvantaged children, which was different from my study, it proved useful. Eisner says in his article;

“One major assumption of the study was not only that the various morphemes found in each category were present in children’s drawings, but that the categories were ordered hierarchically. That is, the scale was not viewed merely as a scheme for classifying drawings but as a progression of category ordered according to development (Eisner, 1967, pp13).”

Hypotheses
Secondly, the statistical method (Chi-square) was used to analyze the spatial similarities and differences of children’s artistic development found in the drawings under the following five comparisons (hypotheses).
1. U.S. students in suburban Chicago vs. students in Champaign in 2nd, 4th, and 6th grades 2. U.S. students in both suburban Chicago and Champaign vs. Japanese students in suburban Chicago in 2nd, 4th, and 6th grades
3. U.S. students in both suburban Chicago and Champaign vs. Japanese students in suburban Chicago in 2nd grade
4. U.S. students in both suburban Chicago and Champaign vs. Japanese students in suburban Chicago in 4th grade
5. U.S. students in both suburban Chicago and Champaign vs. Japanese students in suburban Chicago in 6th grade

Results

First, based on Eisner’s constructed categories, the relationship of nationality and artistic development, specifically spatial development was examined. Second, the universality of spatial treatment and cultural specificity in their drawings were observed. We examined differences in the scale or the transition pattern from one category to another between U.S. and Japanese students, and the reasons for this. In addition to the spatial treatment, other findings in figural orientation and color were also discussed. Finally, the mechanism of relationship between universality and cultural specificity was observed.

Findings in Spatial Treatment
Using the Chi-square (= .05 & .01), it was found that all hypotheses were overturned due to the significant differences of spatial representation of children of different nationalities (See Table 1 & 2, Figure 3).

Table 1: Comparison of the Development of Spatial Treatment in Drawing between US and Japanese Children (Frequencies falling in each of Eisner’s 14 categories)

Note. Total N = 942
C1 through C14: Eisner’s 14 Categories
TF: Total frequencies in each row
G.: Grades
J1: Japanese students in Chicago
A1: American (US) students in Chicago
A2: American (US) students in Urbana-Champaign

Table 2: Differences of Spatial Treatment between US and Japanese Children (based on Eisner’s 14 Categories)

Note
J1: Japanese students in Chicago
A1: American (US) students in Chicago
A2: American (US students in Urbana-Champaign

In comparison 1, the relationship between U.S. students in suburban Chicago and Champaign in 2nd, 4th, and 6th grades was significant, although the difference between them was not as great as that difference in the relationship between different nationalities between Japan and the U.S. (See Figure 2). There were some differences in the scale or the transition pattern from one category to another between two districts of American students. Students in suburban Chicago seemed to transfer from one category to another faster than those in Champaign. Also, the rate of category fourteen for Chicago (7.7%) was higher than that of Champaign (2%) as a whole (2nd, 4th, and 6th grades). This indicated that even in the same country there is some difference in the process of children’s artistic development depending on the social and education level.

Figure 2: Development of Spatial Treatment between U.S. children

In comparing 2 to 5, the relationship between U.S. students (including both suburban Chicago and Champaign) and native Japanese students in suburban Chicago in each grade, 2nd, 4th, and 6th, significant differences were shown in the process of their spatial treatment, In addition, there are some interesting findings from the data in the rate of each category (See Figure 4, 5, & 6).

Figure 3: Development of Spatial Treatment between U.S. & Japanese Children

Figure 4: Development of Spatial Treatment between U.S. & Japanese Children (2nd G.)

Figure 5: . Development of Spatial Treatment between U.S. & Japanese Children (4th G.)

Figure 6: Development of Spatial Treatment Between U.S. & Japanese Children (6th G.)

First, there are almost no Japanese students in the low categories, 1 and 2, even 2nd grade students, unlike U.S. students in both Chicago and Urbana-Champaign. This means that Japanese students already have some knowledge of spatial treatment when they start elementary school, at age six or seven. Conversely, about ten percent of U.S. students in 4th and 6th grades are still in the first category where figures are presented “floating” in the space of the drawing. In addition, the transition speed from the lower categories to the higher categories is seemingly faster in Japanese students than in either group of U.S. students. In the 4th grade, more than sixty percent of Japanese students are already in categories11 to 14, figures presented overlapping in horizontal space, although less than twenty percent of both groups of U.S. students are in those categories.

Another finding is that there are many unclassifiable drawings from Japanese students, which are classified as number fourteen of Eisner’s categories. In spite of the fact that most U.S. students (more than ninety percent) can be classified in the categories, about fifty percent of Japanese students in 6th grade are not suited to Eisner’s categories. This result indicates that the transition from one category to another is not universal and not consistent. The reason will be discussed below.

Other Findings in Pictorial Representation
As a predictable characteristic, there is a strong influence of cartoon characters throughout Japanese children’s drawings in figures, movement, and others.

Figural Orientation
The point common to both female and male children is that their figure drawings are far from realistic; they just try to draw ideal faces and bodies and borrow from comic books (Japanese manga) in their drawings. The results of my research indicated the influence of cartoons as well. Included in these figures are only the more obvious influences. More subtle or questionable influences were not counted. Regardless of gender, the percentage increases from 21.5 for 2nd grade to 35.7 for 4th to 33.3 % for 6th grade. The increased rate with age is believed to be because of their advancing skills with age. Without proper skills and technique, they cannot draw such ideal figures borrowed from comics even though they try to. Therefore, with age, the influence from cartoons in their drawings seems to increase. In addition, regardless of age, the percentage of manga’s influences in girls’ drawings is higher than that of boys’ drawings.

A more interesting result might be the difference between female and male children in their figure drawings. Because of the different types of comic books for girls and boys, they imitate figures differently. For example, in the case of girls, there is the idealization of figures in their drawings, which have large-eyes, invisible noses with just a line or dot, and skinny bodies that have narrow and long legs. Similarly, figures in boys’ drawings are still drawn with idealized face and body, but in another way, we can see more exaggerated movement and muscular bodies there. Sometimes, figures and facial expressions in boys’ drawings are more exaggerated and cartoonized (e.g. funny faces and baby-like shrunken bodies) than girl’s figures in an idealized manner. Wilson (1998) classified Japanese children’s figurative drawings into 7 types corresponding to different characters in Japanese comic books (manga), such as doll, robot, monster, and so on. According to his research, more than 70 % of 6th graders showed some kinds of cartoon influences in figures.

Table 3: Figural Influences of Manga (Japanese Comic Books) in Japanese Children’s Drawings

Note
Data was analyzed based on Japanese students in Chicago Saturday School
N: Number of students
TN: Total number of students

Color
Since children were not offered enough colors, there are no specific characteristic uses of color in their drawings. The eight colors (red, yellow, orange, blue, green, purple, brown, and black) seem to be limited colors to draw nature. Even so, there is one interesting result in their drawings: a different use of color on figures’ clothes depending on gender. When children draw a single figure and the figure is a female, they tend to color the clothes with warm colors such as red, yellow, and orange. Contrary to this, if the figure is a male, the clothes seem to be colored by cool colors such as blue, green, and purple. On the other hand, when children draw many figures at the same time, the tendency is divided into three cases.

In the case of only female figures, the figures’ clothes are colored with both warm and cool colors because of their sense of color balance. In the case that only male figures are drawn, warm and cool color mixes are used as in the case of female figures. When female and male figures are drawn at the same time, an interesting tendency emerges. At that time, children tend to color the females’ clothes with warm colors and males’ clothes with cool colors. This is due to Japanese culture because Japanese have a tendency to dress female children in warm colors and male children in cool colors. Children may learn this unconsciously.

Furthermore, it was very interesting that children never blended more than two colors in clothes or anything else. Rather they seemed to prefer coloring with single colors regardless of cool or warm colors.

Discussion

Spatial Treatment
According to the results of the statistical method Chi-square, all five hypotheses were overturned. The differences between U.S. and Japanese children in the process of spatial treatment was significant, as it was with both groups of U.S. children. “Art” is a required subject in Japan under the nation-wide curriculum from grades 1st to 9th, which means all Japanese students have to study “art” in their elementary and middle schools based on a nation-wide art curriculum.

Another reason for the differences between U.S. and Japanese students is the national differences in kindergarten. In Japan, kindergarten teachers are well trained as music and art experts. A lot of time is spent teaching art and music in the classroom. As a result, many children are exposed to art education and socialization with peers before going to the compulsory educational system (See, for example, Peak, 1991, Tobin, Wu, & Davidson, 1989). Due to the differences in the educational systems in the U.S. and Japan, one assumption is that Japanese children will progress faster than U.S. children will in each category of development. At the same time, these results show that art educational programs help to contribute to the progression of children’s artistic development. When children struggle to transfer three-dimensional space onto a two-dimensional flat surface, they may be able to find the solution through art education and socialization in the classroom.

Another reason may be the difference of language. Psychologists, Harold W. Stevenson and James W. Stigler mention in their book, The Learning Gap (1992), that the Japanese and Chinese languages are more systematic than English especially in “counting.” Therefore, Japanese and Chinese are apt to learn mathematics more quickly and easily than U.S. children in cognitive development. Although they use the language differences to explain the difference in the development of mathematics skill related to cognitive development, the effect of systematic language might also be used to explain the difference of artistic development between U.S. and Japanese children (Pickard, 1996). Vygotsky also says that language development helps in the development of cognition and perception (“Mind in Society,” 1978). In early childhood education, Japanese children already have an opportunity to develop their language skills through peer dialogue in the classroom. This language development might also help their artistic development.

Finally, Eisner’s categories were originally developed based on the relationship between figures and baseline, and the existence of occlusion in spatial treatment. He classified spatial treatment into thirteen progressive categories and then created a fourteenth category for unclassifiable drawings, which could not fit in the other thirteen categories. While we found many unclassifiable drawings in Japanese students, most U.S. students’ drawings were classified among the thirteen categories. Unclassifiable drawings from Japanese children were further divided into three types, an exaggerated view, a bird’s-eye view, and multi-perspective view. How should we interpret these results? The main reason for the Japanese children’s unclassifiable drawings is apparently cultural and social influences.

The cultural and social influences strongly appear in the exaggerated and perspective views. It is well known that Japanese culture is strongly influenced by the “cartoon,” so-called “manga” in Japanese. However, the influence of cartoons in comic books dominates Japanese society, especially children’s society more than most people think. Sometimes educational books also use cartoons, and these books effectively support education. Unlike in the U.S., in Japanese society cartoons are not just used in comic books. One of the characteristics of Japanese cartoons is the depiction of the background, where the negative shapes including architecture and landscapes are depicted in aerial and linear perspectives. Also, another characteristic of expression in cartoons is the exaggeration method, in which one part of the body or place in the composition is exaggerated by excluding other parts. Likewise, it is easy to imagine that most Japanese children are influenced by these techniques in creating space in the limited composition through cartoons. In addition, there is a flood of graphic and artistic advertisement throughout Japan, since Japan does not have a control system to regulate advertisements in public space, unlike the U.S. As a result, people are unconsciously surrounded and visually influenced by graphic advertisement (Schodt, 1983).

The other unclassifiable drawing is the so-called “bird’s eye” drawing, which is a view that a bird looking straight down from sky would have. Because of the title of the drawing, “Me and my friends playing in the school yard,” children might have to create a new way to show the playground view with friends. One reason that Japanese children create drawings this way is the influence of technology, TV and computer games. It might suggest that children are watching sports on TV. As a result, they can easily see playground scenes with the bird’s eye view through the TV screen. However, another question arises. Why don’t U.S. children use the same method, although U.S. children are also exposed to the same technology? In the U.S. students’ drawings there are few bird’s-eye view depictions of space. Another possible reason why Japanese children often draw with bird’s-eye views is the influence of traditional Japanese methods of depicting space in painting. It is well known in art history that traditional Japanese artists used so-called “bird’s-eye views” in the seventeenth century. Is it possible for Japanese children to be influenced by the traditional method of creating space in their drawings? This answer to this is probably “No.” There is little possibility of children being exposed to such traditional methods today, even though children may have a chance to see paintings using the bird’s-eye view technique. Therefore, the traditional methods in Japan do not explain the phenomenon of Japanese children’s creativity. Then what is the cause of Japanese children’s creativity?

A possible reason is children’s aesthetic for spatial arrangement in the drawing. We have to recall that this subject “Me and my friends playing in the school yard” was not drawn through direct observation, rather it was drawn from memory and depicted in the classroom with limited time (about 30 minutes). When the subject was given, children recalled the playground scene with friends from their memory and created the spatial scene in the drawing. Nancy R. Smith mentions in “Experience & Art (1993)” that “children do not try to create space in the 2-D surface, rather they use 2-D space to represent their presentation.” Furthermore, Claire Golomb states in her book on the child’s creation of a pictorial world (1992) that the balance of spatial arrangement differs in each culture depending on the concept of the aesthetic that each culture has. For Japanese children, the figures arranged equidistant in the square space with bird’s-eye view might be an expressive method to show the playground and their sensitivity for the aesthetic balance of spatial arrangement, which might be stronger in Japanese children than U.S. children.

Figural orientation and the usage of colors
It is becoming an accepted idea that figurative orientation in Japanese children’s drawings is strongly influenced by manga (Schodt, 1983, Wilson, 1998). Why do Japanese children draw such a cartoon like figure? Why are the gender differences between boys and girls’ figurative orientation greater than that of American children’s drawings? In general, the activity of drawings for children is not simply to decode their memory or experience through expression, but it is also a mirror or their desires and expectations for the future. For Japanese children, the tendency, especially in figurative drawings, seems to be stronger than that of American children.

For example, in girls’ drawings, the depicted figures have the same characteristics, which are doll-like big eyes with stars in them, an almost invisible nose, and a model-like skinny body. The images come directly from girl’s manga since those images are repeatedly depicted in girl’s manga as ideal figures. It is no wonder that the images are unavoidably printed in girls’ minds and decoded when they draw. In boys’ drawings, there are two patterns of figural orientation; one is an ideal muscular figure and the other is a funny shrunken figure with big eyes. Why do boys draw in these ways which girls do not? Wilson (2000) gave one possible response to this question that boys may draw their own images as they believe others see them as well as ideal figures. Accordingly, girls do not want to examine the way they look. Rather they want to keep drawing the ideal figures to satisfy their desires for what they want to be. However, boys ironically draw such a funny baby-like shrunken body to show exaggerated perceptions of others although they also have a desire to be an ideal figure like girls do. Schodt (1983) analyze that it is evidence of a “revolution in the way Japanese people view ­ or wish to view themselves” (p.92).

Unlike the popularity of comic books, which decreased with the emergence of TV in the U.S. during 1960s, manga and TV in Japan interacted to inspire children’s curiosity, and developed from a simple moralizing drama of good vs. bad to a complicated human drama. Once a story manga became popular, the story became an animation series on TV. Serial stories in manga and animation successfully kept children’s attention and attracted their visual curiosity endlessly.

Conclusion

From this drawing experiment, “Me and my friends playing in the school yard,” some results emerge. One is that art educational programs contribute to children’s artistic development. The reason is not only the art education system itself in Japan as a required course during compulsory education from 1st through 9th grades, but also the socialization with peers in the classroom during the art class. Interaction with peers through dialogue in the art classroom inspires children’s visual thinking skills through the development from egocentric speech to social speech (Thompson, 1995). As a result, children’s artistic ability rapidly develops. For example, as my research shows, children can find solutions to create a three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional surface through socialization with peers, thorough such means as imitation and conversation, easier than working alone.

The tendencies of children’s drawings in spatial order and other pictorial presentations are not always qualitatively or quantitatively universal in linear progression from simplicity to complexity and also not consistent from category to category (Freeman, 1997). For example, in spatial treatment, Japanese children create new ways to show spatial complexity: exaggerated view, bird’s-eye view, and multi-perspective view. However, these are not visually complex, but intellectually complex. In figural orientation, Japanese children prefer abstract symbolic figures without the details to complicated realistic figures with the details.

Gestalt theory says that children tend to draw what they see rather than what they know (Eisner, 1967). On the contrary, there is another very famous theory that children tend to draw what they know rather than what they see (Goodenough, 1926). Which one is predominant? It may depend on subject. It may depend on cultural specificity. However, I would like to add to on these theories that children tend to draw based on attractiveness more than what they know or what they see. In other words, children tend to imitate the way in which nature and figures are drawn in cultural media rather than how they are seen through their own eyes.

Children, exposed to the cultural influences in their society, like what they see through cultural media such as TV, magazines, photography, and so on, rather than what they see their own eyes. An art teacher, Franz Cizek (1921), the father of the study of child art, believes that children are endowed with an inborn creativity and an intrinsic artistic timeclock . In other words, if children can keep their own pace in their own natural manner without any influence from culture and society, they will be able to maintain the creativity of child art until adulthood. Cizek believed that the influence of culture tends to disadvantage children’s normal artistic development (Wilson, 1988). However, the influence of culture is not always detrimental to children’s artistic development. Children seem as adept as their elders at absorbing influences and turning them to their own advantage. In other words, children first seem to imitate from other sources when they draw because of the desire to draw more realistic or idealized figures. Their attitude seems like simple imitation. However, finally, this imitation attitude leads to their own originality. Children never stop at just imitating from other sources. They turn the imitated ideas into their own ideas and develop them in original ways. The imitation attitude is helpful in inspiring their own originality and creativity.

As long as we live in our culture and society, it is impossible for us to cultural influences. Therefore, art educators have to admit the fact that culture is one of the ingredients of children’s artistic growth.

References

Alland, A. (1983). Playing with form: Children draw in six cultures. New York: Columbia University Press.
Arnheim, R. (1969). Visual Thinking. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Arnheim, R. (1974). Art and visual perception. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Eisner, E.W. (1967). A comparison of developmental drawing characteristics of culturally advantaged and culturally disadvantaged children. Project No. 3086 (US. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Education, Bureau of Research, September 1967.
Eisner, E.W. (1972). Educating artistic vision. (pp. 126 - 134). New York: The Macmillan Company.
Eisner, E.W. (1997). Education artistic vision. Reston, VA: The National Art Education Association.
Freedman, K. (1997). Artistic Development and Curriculum: Sociocultural Learning Considerations. Child Development in Art. (pp. 95 ­ 106). Reston, VA: The National Art Education Association.
Gardner, H. (1980). Artful scribbles: the significance of children’s drawings. New York: Basic Books.
Gardner, H. (1990). Art Education and Human Development. Los Angeles: The Getty Center for Education in the Arts.
Golomb, C. (1992). The child’s creation of a pictorial world. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Goodenough, L. (1926). Measurement of Intelligence by Drawings. Yonkers, NY: World Book.
Goodnow, J. (1977). Children Drawing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hardiman, G. W. & Zernich, T. (1988). Some considerations of Piaget’s cognitive ­ structuralist Theory and children’s artistic development. Discerning art: concepts and issues. (pp. 355 - 365).Champaign, IL: Stipes Publishing Company.
Harris, D. (1971). Children’s drawings as measures of intellectual maturity. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
Kellogg, R. (1969). Analyzing children’s art. Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield.
Kindler, A.M. & Darras, B. (1997). Map of Artistic Development. Child Development in Art. (pp. 17 ­ 44). Reston, VA: the National Art Education Association.
Lowenfeld, V. & Brittain, W.L. (1970). Creative and mental growth. (5th Ed). NY: Macmillan.
Peak, L. (1991). Learning to go to school in Japan: The transition from home to preschool life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children. New York: International Universities Press. Piaget, J. & Inhelder, B. (1956). The child’s conception of space. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Piaget, J. (1969). The mechanisms of perception. NY: basic Books.
Pickard, J. (1996, January). Chinese writing system and the cognitive character of morphographic reading and writing. Paper presented at the class of cross-cultural studies of literacy, Champaign, IL.
Schodt, F. L. (1983). The world of Japanese of comics. Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd.
Stevenson, H.W. and Stigler, J.W (1992). The Learning Gap. NY: Summit Books
Smith, N.R. (1993). Experience and art. (2nd Ed) New York: Teachers College Press.
Thompson, C.M. (1995). I make a mark: The significance of talk in young children’s artistic development. Early Childhood Research, Quarterly, 5, 215-232.
Tobin, J.J., Wu, D.Y.H., & Davidson, D.H. (1989). Preschool in three cultures: Japan, China, and United State. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Toku, M. (1997). Cross-cultural analysis of artistic development: drawings by Japanese children and US. Art Education, 18, 165-175. Tokyo: Art Education Association Press.
Toku, M (1998) Spatial Treatment in Children’s Drawings:why do Japanese children draw in particular ways? Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA.: M.I.T., Press.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wilson, B, & Wilson, M. (1982). Teaching children to draw: A guide for teachers and parents. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Pretice-Hall.
Wilson, B. (1988). The Artistic Tower of Babel: Inextricable Links between Culture and Graphic Development. Hardiman, G. W. & Zernich, T. (Eds.). Discerning art: concepts and issues. (pp. 488 - 506).Champaign, IL: Stipes Publishing Company.
Wilson B. (1998). Empire of Signs Revisited: Children’s manga and the changing Face of Japan. Private collection.

Children's Artistic and Aesthetic Development: The Influence of Pop-Culture in Children's Drawings

Masami Toku, Ed.D.
California State University, Chico

*This paper was presented at the 31st INSEA (International Society for Education through Art) convention in New York, Summer 2002.
Introduction

Prior to the end of the nineteenth century there were some questionable assumptions in the study of children's artistic development, such as universal and non-universal domains of children's artistic abilities. Primary among these is the assumption that young children's drawings evolve and change in predictable and universal ways regardless of their culture, that no matter where children are born, their pattern of artistic development does not differ in the early stages of artistic activity. Characteristic and universal patterns, such as representational graphic patterns, spatial patterns (how to create depth/space on two-dimensional surfaces), and so on, seem to emerge with cognitive development and physical growth at an early age (See, for example, Arnheim, 1969, 1974; Cox, 1992; Golomb, 1974; Goodman, 1978; Kellogg, 1969; Matthews, 1984). For example, regardless of ethnic and cultural differences, toddlers start to draw scribbles first and there is no referential meaning in drawings. Toddlers just enjoy playing with the drawing materials and discovering the emergence of lines. Then the scribble is developed to schematic patterns. Generally the first is a circle due to the limitation of children's motor skills. Right after that, the circle assumes a particular meaning as a person, animal, flower, or sun, even though the circles look like just circles to adults. With the development of children's motor skills and cognitive abilities, the patterns develop to show a concrete schema. Thus, seemingly there is a general direction in children's artistic development. According to Piaget (1952), the universal patterns that exist in children's drawings shift from stage to stage qualitatively equally in all cultures and countries, which means that there is a direction in children's artistic development.

Although children's drawings in their early stages indicate a universal pattern in artistic development, their drawings also show another important characteristic: the influence of culture and society. This means that the universal tendency of artistic development is generally limited to the early years from toddler to about five or six years of age before cultural and educational influences strongly appear. Children have a tendency to be influenced by their cultures and societies and the influences start to emerge in their drawings as a characteristic pattern (See, for example, Alland, 1983; Gardner, 1980; Harris, 1963; Wilson & Wilson, 1982). The influence of culture and technology emerges strongly in children's drawings especially in elementary school, leading them to produce new and different characteristics in their drawing patterns depending upon the cultural and technological context.

Because of this fact, some questions remain in the study of artistic development. One, what kinds of universal patterns do exist in children's drawings and do these patterns develop from one stage to the other regardless of socio-cultural contexts, as in Piaget's theory? Two, if the pattern in children's drawings is different depending on the particular culture and society, what do the differences reveal.

In this study, I focused on examining universality and non-universality (socio-cultural influences) in spatial treatment, which is how to create depth/space on two-dimensional surfaces, based on Japanese children's drawings in elementary schools. What kinds of patterns in spatial treatment do Japanese children show? Which is predominant: universality or socio-cultural influences in the developmental process of spatial treatment in Japanese children's drawings? If unique patterns appear, I would discuss reasons why Japanese children use particular ways to create space in drawings that U.S. children seldom use.

Spatial Treatment In Japanese Childrens' Drawings

Purposes

Based on the results of the pilot study implemented in 1993 (Toku, 1998), the focus of this study was to confirm the characteristics of spatial treatment observed in Japanese children's drawings. First, by collecting Japanese children's drawings from three regions of Japan from northern to southern areas in 1996, I attempted to determine whether there was a direction in children's artistic development, especially in spatial treatment in drawing: in short, whether children's artistic ability shifts from one stage to another as Piaget stated in his developmental stage theory. Secondly, in the pilot study, at least three unique patterns of spatial treatment appeared in Japanese children's drawings which American children seldom used. The main issue of this study was to determine whether these three unique patterns (including "exaggerated views," "bird's-eye views," and "multi-perspective views") were really common characteristics in Japanese children. Since these characteristics appeared in Japanese children's drawings regardless of the region in 1996, the kinds of socio-cultural influences that could have impacted their drawings were examined in 1997. Finally, in addition to the analysis of drawings, the relationship between children's preferences and their actual drawings was examined based on six questions in which children were asked to indicate their favorite picture and the one closest to the way they created space among seven different types of spatial pictures. This was done to find whether children's drawing reflected their preferences and knowledge of spatial representation.

This research was analyzed by two methodological approaches: 1) quantitative method with statistical techniques, and 2) qualitative method with observations and interviews.

Method

First, collected drawings were classified by expert judges according to Eisner's 14 spatial categories. In addition to Eisner's categories, new categories were developed to analyze spatial treatments in Japanese children's drawings that could not be classified according to the 14 Eisner categories. In addition, this method was used to compare age groups and locations. Secondly, the statistical method Chi-Square was used to judge the probability of spatial similarities and differences in children's drawings among the three areas in Japan.

To find what kinds of socio-cultural factors actually influence the characteristics which appear in spatial treatment in Japanese children's drawings, two tasks were administered: one was a drawing task (spatial presentation in drawings) and another was a judgment task (aesthetic and preference tasks) with the following hypotheses:

Hypotheses

1. There is a direction of development in spatial treatment in Japanese children's drawings regardless of area in Japan.
2. There is an artistic developmental stage theory which can describe a qualitatively equal shift from one category to another in spatial treatment.
3. The patterns of spatial presentation in children's drawings are the same regardless of social-cultural differences.

Sample

As Cole (1996) mentioned, cross-cultural research should collect enough data based on the same standard. I decided to collect drawings from three regions in Japan. Japan is a small country; however, there are diverse cultures in many districts. To find common characteristics in Japanese children's drawings and also not to reach easy conclusions, collecting data from several areas in Japan with different cultures was essential. Data was collected by the researcher in three locations in Japan:

1. Northern area (Morioka city): Morioka City is the capital city of Iwate prefecture and a typical middle sized city with a population of about 200,000. Morioka City is located in the northern part of Japan and has almost the same latitude as Chicago in the U.S. About 700 drawings for the drawing task and 350 questionnaire reports for the judgment task were collected from first through sixth grades in the elementary school attached to Iwate University.
2. Central area (Tokyo, the capital city): Tokyo is well known as the capital city of Japan and has one of the biggest populations in the world (about 12,000,000 people - almost four times the population of Chicago). About 700 drawings for the drawing task and 350 questionnaire reports for the judgment task were obtained from first through sixth grades in the elementary school attached to Ochanomizu Women's University.
3. Southern area (Naze City): Naze City, the smallest of the three cities with 50,000 people, is in the southern part of Japan. One characteristic of this city is that it is located in the center of a small island, Amami-Ooshima , which is situated between the Pacific Ocean and the East China Sea. Naze City has almost the same latitude as New Orleans in the U.S. About 500 drawings for the drawing task and 250 questionnaire reports for the judgment task were collected from first through sixth grades in Naze Municipal Naze elementary school, and about 700 drawings for the drawing task from first through sixth grades in Naze Municipal Amami elementary school.

Procedure

About 2,500 drawings by first through sixth grade students who studied under the Japanese national curriculum were collected from four elementary schools in three areas of Japan from May through July, before summer vacation in 1996: Morioka City (Northern area), Tokyo (Central area, capital city), and Naze City (Southern area) to confirm whether characteristics which appeared in drawings were really particular to Japanese children. The reason for this limited period to implement this experimentation was the educational calendar. In Japan, the academic year goes from April through March, unlike the U.S. where it goes from September through June. To look at especially the first grade student's drawings before they were influenced markedly by the nationwide art educational curriculum, the experiment needed to be implemented at the beginning of the school period, which is before summer vacation.

After discussing the details of the procedure with the researcher, this experiment was implemented under the same conditions (the same content of instruction, the limited time, the place, and materials) in each location. Drawings were collected either by the classroom teacher or the art teacher in each area depending on each school's situation. For example, in one school, the drawing task was implemented at the same time in all grades in each classroom by the chair person of the research through the school intercom. In another school, the task was done separately by the instruction of three first grade classroom teachers in each classroom and two art teachers (one is for the second through fourth graders and the other is for the fifth and six graders) in each art room. In another school, the task was separately implemented by each classroom teacher in each art class period. Familiar materials which were used in the pilot study in 1996, such as drawing paper (11" X 18"), eight different colored crayons, and pencils and erasers, were distributed. Students were instructed to draw, "My friends and me playing in the school yard," a theme investigated in earlier studies by Elliot Eisner (1967, 1972) and others (Golomb, 1983; Stansfield, 1979; Toku, 1997, 1998) . Students were asked to finish their drawings on the same subject within 30 minutes without any teacher support. Drawings collected by teachers in each school in Japan were handed to the researcher in July.

Collected drawings were first classified according to Eisner's 14 categories in September in the US. Eisner's categories were constructed to show children's creative techniques to express space in two dimensional surfaces. These categories emphasize the relationship between figures (morphemes) and ground lines, the ways in which figures are drawn on the ground line, and the concept of overlapping, the ways in which figures overlap with the ground line and other figures (See Figure 2).

Then the researcher constructed new categories based on Eisner's 14 categories to classify Japanese children's unique patterns of spatial treatment which could not be classified by Eisner's categories. As with Eisner's categories, Toku's twenty categories do not form a spatial scale to show developmental stages which always develop from one to another, but these categories show a developmental direction in the schematic categories. This means that children do not always develop from one to another category with age, although these categories show a developmental direction from simple to complex in spatial treatment. (See Figure 1).

The main difference between Eisner's and Toku's spatial categories is that Toku's categories include the concept of relative size and location, photographic and exaggerated views, bird's-eye views, and multi-perspective views, in addition to Eisner's categories, which were based on the relationship between figures and the ground line and the concept of overlapping. To classify Japanese children's unique ways of spatial treatment, Eisner's spatial concept was not sufficient and needed to be adapted to an advanced concept of spatial presentation. Also, Eisner described the first category as the floating figure in space; however, this category was replaced by the concept of mapping in Toku's categories. At the early stage, children tended to gather and draw all figures and things that they knew related to the playground drawing theme, "Me and my friend in playground." In their drawings, figures and things are mapped and drawn rather than floating in space. Thus, categories two through twelve follow Eisner's categories, but the first category and categories thirteen through twenty were developed by the researcher.
The basic style of verbal descriptions of spatial categories fundamentally follows Eisner's descriptions, and the content of each category is as follows:
I. Mapping

• Category 1: Morphemes "mapping," not standing on edge of paper.

II. Alignments without a ground line

• Category 2: Morphemes standing on bottom edge of paper.
• Category 3: Some morphemes standing on bottom edge of paper. Others floating in space.
• Category 4: Morphemes standing and aligned in space.

III. Alignments with a ground line

• Category 5: Some morphemes standing on bottom edge of paper, others floating above horizon line.
• Category 6: Some morphemes standing on bottom edge of paper, others standing on horizon line.

IV. Alignments on/above/overlap a ground line

• Category 7: Morphemes standing on horizon line.
• Category 8: Morphemes floating above horizon line.
• Category 9: Some morphemes standing on horizon line, others floating above horizon line.
• Category 10: Some morphemes standing on horizon line, others floating above horizon line.

V. More than two ground lines

• Category 11: Two or more horizon lines drawn, morphemes standing on horizon lines/ bottom-edge of paper.
• Category 12: Two or more horizon lines drawn, some morphemes standing on horizon lines, others overlapping horizon lines/ space.

VI. Open space

• Category 13: Morphemes (same size) spreading over space --- the concept of relative position.
• Category 14: Morphemes spreading over space, but getting smaller --- the concept of relative position & size.

VII. Photographic & exaggerated views

• Category 15: Morphemes spreading over space, but some are cut by the edge of paper --- photographic view.
• Category 16: Some morphemes are exaggerated drawn in space --- exaggerated view.

VIII. Bird's-eye views

• Category 17: Grid is drawn and morphemes are drawn from front and side view.
• Category 18: Grid is drawn and morphemes are drawn from top view.
• Category 19: Grid is drawn and morphemes are drawn from open view.

IX. Multi-perspective views

• Category 20: Unclassifiable drawing including the multi-perspective view, which is drawn from different views at the same time.

Previously, many researchers such as Lowenfeld and others created developmental patterns in spatial representation, but only Eisner created enough spatial categories to analyze children's drawings. His scale was constructed for classifying children's drawings with respect to spatial syntax in a developmental schema of spatial treatment from a simple to complicated manner qualitatively. It was originally developed based on the relationship between figures and baseline, and the existence of occlusion in the spatial treatment. For this reason, Eisner's 14 spatial categories are often used to judge spatial order and artistic development objectively. For example, children tend to draw figures without any spatial relationship due to the lack of concept of space and depth. In this stage, figures are drawn as floating figures and objects (Eisner's category one). With age, children use the bottom line of the drawing paper as a ground line and all figures and objects are drawn standing on the bottom line of the paper (category two). Then children start to draw a baseline on the paper instead of using the bottom of the paper as the ground base (category 4). Finally they use the technique of overlapping with figures, objects, and even with the ground to show space and depth on a two-dimensional surface (category 13). Eisner also created category 14 for unclassifiable drawings. Generally, those drawings are assumed to be advanced technique drawings in spatial treatment.

Due to Eisner's assumption in his research, his visual-verbal categories were selected as my study's standard. Although these categories were developed to compare the drawing performance of culturally advantaged and culturally disadvantaged children, which was different from my study, it proved useful. Eisner says in his article;

"One major assumption of the study was not only that the various morphemes found in each category were present in children's drawings, but that the categories were ordered hierarchically. That is, the scale was not viewed merely as a scheme for classifying drawings but as a progression of category ordered according to development (Eisner, 1967, pp13)."

Hypotheses

Secondly, the statistical method (Chi-square) was used to analyze the spatial similarities and differences of children's artistic development found in the drawings under the following five comparisons (hypotheses).

1. U.S. students in suburban Chicago vs. students in Champaign in 2nd, 4th, and 6th grades
2. U.S. students in both suburban Chicago and Champaign vs. Japanese students in suburban Chicago in 2nd, 4th, and 6th grades
3. U.S. students in both suburban Chicago and Champaign vs. Japanese students in suburban Chicago in 2nd grade
4. U.S. students in both suburban Chicago and Champaign vs. Japanese students in suburban Chicago in 4th grade
5. U.S. students in both suburban Chicago and Champaign vs. Japanese students in suburban Chicago in 6th grade

Results

First, based on Eisner's constructed categories, the relationship of nationality and artistic development, specifically spatial development was examined. Second, the universality of spatial treatment and cultural specificity in their drawings were observed. We examined differences in the scale or the transition pattern from one category to another between U.S. and Japanese students, and the reasons for this. In addition to the spatial treatment, other findings in figural orientation and color were also discussed. Finally, the mechanism of relationship between universality and cultural specificity was observed.

Findings in Spatial Treatment


Using the Chi-square (= .05 & .01), it was found that all hypotheses were overturned due to the significant differences of spatial representation of children of different nationalities (See Table 1 & 2, Figure 3).
After classifying children's drawings by Eisner's categories, new spatial categories were developed to classify Japanese children's creative techniques which could not be classified into Eisner's categories. As a result, 20 spatial categories were constructed: categories 1 through 12 incorporated almost the same concepts as Eisner's, which were based on the relationships between figures and the ground line. Category 5 however was removed from the original Eisner's categories due to the fact that Japanese children failed to use this method of spatial treatment in their drawings. Categories 13 through 20 were added to classify Japanese children's characteristics in spatial drawings based on the concept of relative position and size and the multi-perspective views from different directions in space. As imagined, more than 35 percent of Japanese children's drawings from first through six grades, regardless of region in Japan, were classified into the new spatial categories of 13 through 20. The rate expanded with their age.

Japanese children showed a tendency to often use complicated techniques of creating space considering their ages. More than 35 % of drawings of Japanese children from 1st through 6th grades at 4 schools in 3 regions in Japan were classified into categories 13 through 20, which were constructed to classify the unique patterns in Japanese children's spatial presentations. This number of 35 % was equal to those which were not classified into Eisner's spatial categories.

According to the distribution in each category, we can find a tendency of Japanese children's spatial treatment in their drawings. After using a ground line to create space on the two dimensional surface, children start to express the space without the ground line. By spreading figures over the whole surface of the drawing paper, children create space with the concept of relative position, in which figures standing on the bottom of the paper are closer and figures drawn in the top are farther; however, figures are still drawn the same size without the concept of relative size at this stage. Then children start to use more advanced techniques to create space, like the concept of relative size where figures are drawn progressively smaller with distance. After finding the concept of relative size to create space, children have a tendency to use a special technique, called "photographic view." The characteristic of this technique is that some figures are consciously drawn as "cut-off" bodies in the drawing. For example, a body is drawn cut off in the center by the left edge of the drawing paper or cut off in half horizontally by the bottom edge of the paper. As a result of using this technique, the space is assumed to continue beyond the edge of paper without limitation. At this stage, children find that the paper is just a small square to express space and they no longer try to contain space inside the paper; they just use the paper as a part of the larger natural space. Also, these two spatial techniques of relative size and photographic view are often used at the same time in the same drawings. Not all, but some, children develop another technique of creating space in their drawings, the "exaggerated view." This is the most impressive and advanced technique to create space since this technique demands not only the knowledge of space, but also considerable artistic skills. However, results of the drawing task suggest that the tendency did not appear in younger students' drawings (first and second graders). This may be due to lack of skill rather than lack of knowledge of the concept of space: Children might not know how to draw, experiencing what Feldman (1980) calls a "performance problem." They may tend to use alignment techniques until their skill level matches their knowledge and their preferences for space.

Contrary to the tendency to develop spatial treatment by spreading figures to the exaggerated view, there is another tendency in the process of creating space on the two dimensional surface, which is called "bird's-eye view." Mostly, there is a grid to express a playground in the drawing in this spatial pattern, but there are three patterns depending on the angle of looking at the square line: side, top, and open view. The reason for drawing the square grid line may well be due to the environment and the system of Japanese schools. In Japan, schools are built with three or four floors surrounded by a big playground. Also, there is at least 5 minutes recess time between each class and students use that short time to play on the playground. As a result, students have frequent chances to look down at the playground from their classrooms. The pattern was produced from an ordinary scene from their school life. The side view is the most popular pattern and figures are spread equally in the square. The top view is the rarest of these three patterns with the square line in the drawing, but there were two to three cases in each school. This pattern is the most advanced pattern among the three since this is drawn as a top view looking straight down from the top. Figures are drawn with the head, arms, and feet without drawing the body itself. The third pattern of open view is very common in younger students such as first and second graders. Lowenfeld and Brittain (1970) also mention this tendency as one of the common solutions when younger children create space; they call this view of "folding over." As the result of younger children's struggle to create space, they create this pattern due to their lack of motor skills and the knowledge of how to reproduce the actual space on two-dimensional surfaces. However, with age, the tendency to use this pattern decreases.

The choice of this technique of bird's-eye view seems to depend on the location and circumstance of the school that students attend. According to the data based on the Toku's 20 categories, on the one hand, more than 25 % of students in Naze elementary school, which has five floors and has a nice view looking down on a big playground, chose this technique to express their playground scene. On the other hand, only about 7 % of students in the elementary school attached to Iwate University, which has two floors, chose this pattern to draw their play scene.
Discussion

There are some socio-cultural factors in Japanese children's creative techniques in the spatial presentation in their drawings that are seldom found in other cultural groups of children. Why and how Japanese children start to create such unique ways to express space on two-dimensional surfaces is the subject of this discussion. Based on findings of this study, there are 3 possibilities factors of socio-cultural influences in Japanese children's drawings: 1) educational system factors, 2) traditional aesthetic factors, and 3) popular cultural (pop-culture) factors. The Educational system factor is the effect of the Japanese national curriculum, which provides structured art educational curricula during compulsory education periods from 1st to 9th grades. Aesthetic and traditional factors form the cultural aesthetic which Japanese traditional art must. It can be restated that the peculiar cultural aesthetic tends to appear in art. In fact, Golomb (1992) states that the balance of spatial arrangement differs in each culture depending on the concept of the aesthetic that each culture holds. However, she does not mention why and how each culture has a different aesthetic. The factor of pop-culture is the influence of Japanese popular culture of comic books, which appeared in the entire sociey in Japan. Particular characteristics which appeared in children's drawings were sometimes influenced by a single socio-cultural factor, but other times influenced by the interaction of a number of factors. Which factor dominated children's artistic ability totally depended on each child's background.

In this discussion, I would like to focus on the influence of popular culture in children's creativity. It is well known that Japanese comic books (called "Manga" in Japanese and pronounced "Mahngah") have had a strong status as a part of Japanese culture for at least three decades, more than in any other country (Schilling, 1997; Schodt, 1983; Yang, 1997). Due to the popularity of Manga all over Japanese society, it is also well known that the influence strongly dominates children's artistic creativity, appearing throughout their drawings (Gardner, 1980; Toku, 2002; Wilson, 1997, 1999).

Before starting to discuss how and why the influence of Japanese comic books appears in children's graphic presentation, it may be necessary to clarify the process through which Japanese comic books (Manga) became an essential part of Japanese culture. In the U.S., the popularity of the American comic book has declined dramatically since the 1950s due to overregulation and competition from television. American comic books have a cumulative monthly circulation of 300,000, but there are no weekly comic books any more. On the contrary, Manga are popular and the influence will not stop soon in Japan. For example, over 5 billion books and magazines were produced in Japan in 1984, making it one of the most print-saturated nations in world. About 27% of these publications (about 1.4 billion) were comics, Manga, in magazine and book form. In the 1990s, it is said that the proportion of Manga among all publications is almost 50% in Japan. Manga are read not only by children but also by adults in Japan. Most Manga are divided into boys' comics ("shoonen manga") and girls' comics ("shoojo manga") and each comic has a kind of gender characteristic in the cartoon and the story itself that the other does not have. Both boys' and girls' comics are published weekly and monthly and each comic includes more than 10 stories by different cartoonists (authors); as a result, the typical volume exceeds 350 pages and sometimes reaches 600 pages, unlike comic books in the U.S. (where each generally has 10 to 20 pages with one story) (Schodt, 1983, p. 12).

However, manga could not have become an integral part of Japanese culture unless there had been a genuine need. To be sure, younger children read comics for the same reason children everywhere do - they are immediately accessible when still learning to read, and fun. But for older children, teenagers and adults, manga are faster and easier to read than novels, more portable than television sets, and provide an important source of entertainment and relaxation in a highly disciplined society. Also, it should not be forgotten that the educational system is set up in response to the highly competitive society in Japan. Because of such a competitive society, children are not allowed to have their own free time and they are forced to study for a grueling cycle of exams that determines their scholastic and vocational futures. Only reading manga can give children their own free time and can release them from such a tough reality since manga allows children into their imaginative world. Likewise, the reason manga has become an integral part of Japanese culture is in response to Japanese needs. The needs of Japanese for manga seems to be stronger than other cultures due to the above reasons.

Finally, how does the influence of manga appear in children's graphic presentation in their drawings? As mentioned earlier, there are some gender differences in children's drawings since there are girls' and boys' comics books in Japan and the characteristics differ in each comics.

On the one hand, it must be easy to find the influence of manga in pictures that children draw. In boys' pictures, there are cartoonistic and humorous figures out of proportion with real human figures, with a short bodies and exaggerated facial expressions or ideal figures with muscular bodies. In girls' pictures, the characteristics of figures are more obvious than in figures drawn by boys. The proportions of the human figure are of course, ignored and depicted as ideal, slender bodies with long, skinny arms and legs, and big eyes, and sometime the nose is depicted as a dot in the center of the face. No one will be at a loss to find the influence of manga in figures depicted in children's drawings (Schodt, 1983).

On the other hand, most people tend to overlook the influence of manga in spatial presentation in children's drawings. Although Japanese manga have many characteristics that other comic books do not have in other countries, one of the characteristics is the detail and the complexity of the background. Not only figures but also the background of the story is often carefully depicted with the techniques of linear-perspective view. Also, figures are often drastically cut off by the edge of picture frame and exaggerated in the picture space without any depiction of background. Such dramatic techniques used in manga seem to have strong impact on children's visual thinking. As a result, the influence appears in children's drawings to satisfy children's aesthetic in spatial presentation. Thus, the influence of manga appears not only in figures but also in spatial treatment in children's drawings.

Summary

Why do children start to show certain socio-cultural characteristics in their graphic presentation at a certain age ? Why do children show a universality in their graphic presentation in their drawings regardless of socio-cultural differences? Some researchers say that we already start to be influenced by a particular culture right after we are born through parents, brothers and sisters, since people themselves are assumed to be a part of culture. We cannot be alone and we cannot be free from culture as long as we are born into society.

Regardless of the culture, the development of perception is never qualitatively different from either person to person or culture to culture, although the development might be quantitatively different from person to person. Physical growth is also qualitatively equal regardless of cultural differences. As a result, because children's artistic abilities are supported by cognitive development and the development of motor skills, children's artistic development in graphic presentation basically shows a universal direction from simple to complex, at early ages before going to school (approximately 2 - 6 years old).

For example, it is well known that all infants start to draw from a scribble; however, the scribble does not have any referential meaning and it is just a pleasure that infants accidentally find through playful activity with their hands. Then, the scribble changes to make a certain graphic shape, which is a circle, because of the limitation of their motor skills, which is a matter of physical construction (Arnheim, 1954, 1974). For younger children, creating geometric shapes of squares and triangles is an incredibly difficult task since they cannot control straight lines well. By using circles, children express everything that they want to. Even though the circles that children draw look like just a circle which does not have any meaning, each circle has a particular meaning for children: mother, father, dog, cat, sun, flower, and so on (Arnheim, 1954, 1974). Likewise, such a universal tendency in graphic presentation develops from the simple to more complex patterns with cognitive and physical development until children start to be exposed to strong socio-cultural factors, approximately before elementary school (Golomb, 1992).

Depending on the interpretation of the definition and the realm of social-cultural factors, many researchers would argue for earlier peer influences and the possibility of social-cultural influences appearing in children's early artworks. This would suggest that there is no universal tendency in children's artistic development even before in elementary school. However, I would also argue for the possibility of strong social-cultural influences appearing early in children's drawings since elementary school is the first society where children are socialized systematically, but these influences are probably not felt earlier. Even though younger children could possibly be exposed to social-cultural factors before starting compulsory education, the chance is lower than those of elementary children. There are still some universal patterns which exist in young children's graphic representation before elementary school.

In spatial presentation in children's drawings, there is also a universal tendency in certain periods until their works of art start to be dominated by particular socio-cultural factors by which children are surrounded. First, children seemingly do not have any concept of space when they draw; as a result, figures are often just floating in their drawings. In other words, it is difficult to see the concept of space in children's drawings since figures are often randomly floating in their drawings without systematically standing on something. Secondly, children start to use the bottom edge of the paper as a ground line and all figures are depicted standing on the line. Next, children invent a horizon line in the drawing to solve the problem of creating space in it and all figures and others are still standing on the line. With the emergence of the horizon line in children's drawings, their creativity rapidly develops and they start to express the three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional surface. When children find the effect of overlapping by themselves or from peers, artistic ability naturally reaches a certain peak. Whether children can find other effective factors to create a realistic three dimensional world on two dimensional surfaces, such as relative position, size, density, and linear perspectives depends on children's backgrounds. Depending on whether children are exposed to particular strong socio-cultural factors, the manner of spatial treatment in their drawings will differ. If children are not influenced by any factors in a culture, their ability will not develop naturally. However, when children have many chances to be influenced by socio-cultural factors, the influence will appear in their drawings and it will lead to unique ways of spatial presentation that other cultures seldom show.

In conclusion, on the one hand, regardless of socio-cultural differences, human beings develop their artistic ability from simple to complex graphic presentation, reflecting their cognitive development (cognitive and perceptual abilities) and physical growth (motor skills). This means that there is a universality in the pattern of graphic presentation during a certain period regardless of cultural differences, although the universal stage theory does not exist in children's artistic development.

On the other hand, children start to show cultural characteristics in their drawings at a certain time period since they are exposed to strong factors in each culture, although we may not be able to precisely define the main factors. This indicates that children's artistic development in graphic presentation is not always a linear development, but often shows a circular development. Although children generally show a pattern from simple to complex in their graphic representation with age, some children show another tendency to create a new technique in their presentation after reaching the period of complexity, which may be called advanced simplicity. In the daring simple composition, we will see advanced techniques and higher cognition, which is different from the simplicity of composition in the early period due to the lack of children's skills and their performance problems.

As a result, children's graphic presentation develops differently from person to person. Furthermore, children who are strongly influenced by particular socio-cultural factors start to show their original creativity in their graphic presentation, and characteristics become the particular socio-cultural differences which may be called cultural originalities. In this study, Japanese children's drawings of "Me and my friends playing in the school yard" show the children's unique ways of creating space although they also started to draw and create space in their drawings with the same kinds of techniques at their early ages as U.S. children do. In a certain period of their growth, Japanese children started to show their own creative ways in spatial presentation due to strong socio-cultural influences. There are mainly four socio-cultural factors: 1) the educational factor, 2) the environmental factor, 3) the traditional aesthetic factor, and 4) the popular culture factor. In addition, these factors are sometimes combined and influence children's artistic ability.

Bruner (1996) says that development is undoubtedly not free from culture. Nevertheless, Cole (1996) argues that there is no theory which explains how a particular culture affects cognitive development in a particular direction. This may be true since it is very difficult to define what socio-cultural factor causes a particular direction in children's cognitive development. A conclusion cannot easily be reached because the process of cultural development is not simple at all. However, it is also true that it is relatively easy to find some socio-cultural characteristics which appear in children's artistic development in a particular culture. The problem is that we cannot determine what the main socio-cultural influences that cause such characteristics are.

References

• Akiyama, T. (1990). Japanese Painting. New York: Rizzoli International Publication, Inc.
• Alland, A. (1983). Playing with form: Children draw in six cultures. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Arnheim, R. (1954). Art and visual perception. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Arnheim, R. (1969). Visual Thinking. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline, 69 - 83. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: The Belknap press of Harvard University Press.
• Cox, M. (1992). Children's drawings. New York: Penguin Group.
• Eisner, E.W. (1967). A comparison of developmental drawing characteristics of culturally advantaged and culturally disadvantaged children. Project No. 3086 (US. Dept. of Health,
• Education, and Welfare, Office of Education, Bureau of Research, September 1967.)
• Eisner, E.W. (1972). Educating artistic vision. (pp. 126 - 134). New York: The Macmillan Company.
• Feldman, D. H. (1980). Beyond universals in cognitive development. NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
• Gardner, H. (1980). Artful scribbles: the significance of children's drawings. New York: Basic Books.
• Golomb, C. (1974). Young children's sculpture and drawing: A study in representational development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Golomb, C. (1983). Children's graphic planning strategies and early principles of spatial organization in drawing. Studies in Art Education, 24 (2), 87 - 100.
• Golomb, C. (1992). The child's creation of a pictorial world. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Goodman, J. (1978). Children drawing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Harris, D. (1971). Children's drawings as measures of intellectual maturity. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
• Kellogg, R. (1969). Analyzing children's art. Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield.
• Kindler, A.M. & Darras, B. (1997). Map of artistic development. In A.M. KIndler (Ed),
• Child development in art. (pp. 17 - 44). Reston, VA: the National Art Education Association.
• Lowenfeld, V. & Brittain, W.L. (1970). Creative and mental growth. (5th ed). NY: Macmillan.
• Luria, A.R. (1976). Cognitive development: its cultural and social foundations. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
• Matthews, J. (1984). Children drawing: Are young children really scribbling? Early Child Development and Care, 18, 1 - 9.
• Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children. New York: International
• Universities Press. Pickard, J. (1996, January). Chinese writing system and the cognitive character of morphographic reading and writing. Paper presented at the class of cross-cultural studies of literacy, Champaign, IL
• Schilling, M. (1997). The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture. New York: Weatherhill, Inc.
• Schodt, F.L. (1983). The World of Japanese Comics. New York: Kodansha America, Inc.
• Stansfield, E.J. (1979). A comparison of spatial relationships in the drawings of advantaged and disadvantaged elementary school children in Mississippi. Review of Research in Visual Arts Education, 10, 2, 79 - 83.
• Toku, M. (1997). Cross-cultural analysis of artistic development: drawings by US & Japanese children. Art Education, 18, 165 - 175. Tokyo: Art Education Association Press.
• Toku, M. (1998). Spatial treatment in children's drawings: Why do Japanese children draw in particular ways? Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
• Toku, M. (2001). What is Manga?: The Influence of Pop Culture in Adolescent Art. 11-17. In the March issue of the Journal of the National Art Education Association. Reston, VA: the National Art Education Association.
• Toku, M. (2002). Cross-cultural Analysis of Artistic Development: Drawing by Japanese and U.S. Children. 46-59. Visual Arts Research, 27, No.1. the Board of the University Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Wilson, B. (1988). The artistic tower of babel: in extricable links between culture and graphic development. Hardman, J. & Zernich, T. (Ed.), Discerning art: concepts and issues. Champaign, IL: Stipes Publishing Company.
• Wilson, B. (1997). Child art, multiple interpretation, and conflicts of interist. In
• A.M.Kindler (Ed). Child development in art. (pp.81-94). Reston, VA: National Art Education Association.
• Wilson, B. (1999). Becoming Japanees: Manga, children's drawings, and the constrction of national character. In Visual Arts Research. 25, No.2. (pp. 48-60-)
• Wilson, B. & Wilson, M. (1982). Teaching children to draw: a guide for parents and teachers.
• Yang, J., Can, D., and Hong, T. (1997). Eastern Standard Time: A guide to Asian influence on American culture from astro boy to zen buddhism. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.