Mangas

Over four decades ago, Yoshihiro Tatsumi expanded the horizons of comics storytelling by using the visual language of manga to tell gritty, literary stories about the private lives of everyday people. He has been called "the grandfather of Japanese alternative comics" and has influenced generations of cartoonists around the world. Now the visionary creator of "The Push Man and Other Stories" and "Good-bye" has turned his incisive, unflinching gaze upon himself. Over ten years in the making, "A Drifting Life" is Tatsumis' most ambitious, personal, and heart felt work: an autobiographical bildungsroman in comics form. Using his life long obsession with comics as a frame work, Tatsumi weaves a complex story that encompasses family dynamics, Japanese culture and history, first love, the intricacies of the manga industry, and most importantly, what it means to be an artist. Alternately humorous, enlightening, and haunting, this is the masterful summation of a fascinating life and a historic career.

Created in the late 1950s, BLACK BLIZZARD is Yoshihiro Tatsumi's remarkable first full-length graphic novel and one of the first published examples of Gekiga. With BLACK BLIZZARD, Tatsumi explores the dark underbelly of his working-class heroes that five decades later will make him one of the most well known Japanese cartoonists in North America. Susumu Yamaji, a 24-year-old pianist, is arrested for murder and ends up handcuffed to a career criminal on the train that will take them to prison. An avalanche derails the train and the criminal takes the opportunity to escape, dragging a reluctant Susumu with him into the blizzard raging outside. They flee into the mountains to an abandoned ranger station, where they take shelter from the storm. As they sit around the fire they built, Susumu relates how love drove him to become a murderer.

In Fallen Words, Yoshihiro Tatsumi takes up the oral tradition of rakugo and breathes new life into it by shifting the format from spoken word to manga. Each of the eight stories in the collection is lifted from the Edo-era Japanese storytelling form. As Tatsumi notes in the afterword, the world of rakugo, filled with mystery, emotion, revenge, hope, and, of course, love, overlaps perfectly with the world of Gekiga that he has spent the better part of his life developing.These slice-of-life stories resonate with modern readers thanks to their comedic elements and familiarity with human idiosyncrasies. In one, a father finds his son too bookish and arranges for two workers to take the young man to a brothel on the pretext of visiting a new shrine. In another particularly beloved rakugo tale, a married man falls in love with a prostitute. When his wife finds out, she is enraged and sets a curse on the other woman. The prostitute responds by cursing the wife, and the two escalate in a spiral of voodoo doll cursing. Soon both are dead, but even death can’t extinguish their jealousy.Tatsumi’s love of wordplay shines through in the telling of these whimsical stories, and yet he still offers timeless insight into human nature.

From the mangaka who told his life story in A Drifting Life, and gave you Abandon the Old in Tokyo and The Push Man and Other Stories, comes this collection of gekiga of the 1970s which have never before been translated into English.Personally selected for publication exclusively by Landmark Books by Tatsumi, the stories strip away the gloss of the Japanese Economic Miracle to reveal the stresses, desires and angst of the millions of young people who flocked to the cities where life was not what it was promised to be.Compared to Tatsumi’s earlier stories, this collection paints a much more pessimistic world. The stories run on a different beat. The banality of modern life and its values bleed through.

A lone man travels the country, projecting pornographic films for private individuals while attempting to maintain a normal home life. A medical student lives a secret life as a sperm donor, and finds his world turned upside down when his donations are rejected by the fertility clinic. A young couple's marriage is irrevocably affected when a sewer rat takes up residence in their home. The lives of two men become intertwined when one hires the other to observe his sexual escapades through a telescope. An auto mechanic's obsession with a female TV personality turns fatal after a chance meeting between the two.The volume consists of the short stories: Pirahna, Projectionist, Black Smoke, The Burden, Test Tube, Pimp, The Push Man, Sewer, Telescope, The Killer, Traffic Accident, Make-Up, Disinfection, Who Are You?, Bedridden, My Hitler

Over four decades ago, Yoshihiro Tastsumi expanded the horizons of comics storytelling by using the visual language of manga to tell gritty, literary short stories about the private lives of everyday people. He has been called "the grandfather of Japanese alternative comics" and has influenced generations of cartoonists, but, until now, the majority of his works has remained unavailable outside of Japan. By turns poetic, comical, and deeply unsettling, Abandon the Old in Tokyo is a collection of unforgettable short stories from the modern master.- Drawn & Quarterly"Starkly beautiful... revelatory... fearless."- The Village Voice"Marvelously evocative... Tatsumis's stories flow with dreamlike ambiguity"- Publishers Weekly"With both fascination and empathy, Tatsumi explores the lives of people on society's bottom rung and exposes a world of lost souls, unattainable dreams, and unexpected redemption."- Bookforum