Barefoot Gen, Vol. 5: The Never-Ending War

By Keiji Nakazawa
Last Gasp, 266 pp.
Rating: Teen (13+)

In a week when Cromartie High School and Yotsuba&! are all but put on hiatus, it’s hard to imagine anything more depressing. Think off-the-hook comics depressing. I don’t mean Akira, Adolf or Abandon the Old in Tokyo depressing either. Think full-blown, real human tragedy, punches-you-in-the-gut depressing. I’m not talking about Art Spiegelman’s excellent comic Maus, which autobiographically covers the holocaust; but rather something on the same level—Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen. Barefoot Gen is the (mostly) autobiographical account of a young boy Gen and his mother and brother who survive the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

After a long hiatus, Last Gasp has resumed publication of this remarkable ten-volume series. Even if you don’t want to read the first four volumes (you should), volume five starts with a handy recap that sets the tone and brings you up to speed. Gen is reunited with Ryuta and his gang and sees the hardships faced by children even worse off than him. Though Gen has an incredibly hard life and has lost most of his family in the bombing, Ryuta and his friends are orphans, forced to steal and beg to make ends meet. In desperation, Ryuta and his gang get involved with the mafia who frequently use bomb orphans as sacrificial pawns in their turf warfare. The cruelty and coldness of the Japanese public and American soldiers and scientists is heart-wrenching in the face of the overwhelming tragedy of the atomic bombing.

The political ramifications of Barefoot Gen only grow stronger in volume five, and grow darkest and most salient with the episodes involving American scientists working for the ABCC (Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission) who coerce Japanese doctors and coroners into taking advantage of their countrymen. The American scientists were sent to Japan with the orders to study, but not cure, 80,000 Japanese affected by the radiation poisoning caused by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The ABCC entices the Japanese doctors with opportunities for disaster zone profiteering, and gives them monetary rewards for sending them radiation patients, even though the doctors know it will do nothing for them.

Barefoot Gen’s art, though nothing to write home about, is certainly compelling, terrifying, and convincingly human. It has a bit of the cartoony feel of Tezuka’s work, and the action and expression of some of Kazuo Uemezu’s (to a much lesser degree, thank god).

There is no excuse to not be reading Keiji Nakazawa’s masterpiece Barefoot Gen right now. Despite its dark mood, Barefoot Gen is ultimately a story of triumph and personal strength overcoming the most sickening adversity, and Barefoot Gen’s fantastic combination of medium-transcending humanitarian messages, authentic characters, and riveting plot make it an essential comic for any reader. I can’t recommend it enough.

Volume five of Barefoot Gen is available now.

Over at Shuchaku East, precocious blogger Chloe Ferguson is celebrating her blog’s one-year anniversary with a terrific contest. One lucky winner will receive a copy of Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, a beautiful manga that made many blogger’s Best of 2007 lists (including our Best Manga list). To enter, send Chloe your name and address by Thursday, January 10th at midnight (EST). The winner will be chosen at random from the entries.

Want to know more about Town of Evening Calm? David Welsh has compiled links to and quotes from reviews around the blogsphere, from Otaku USA to Jog the Blog. Though David has been generous in sharing the spotlight with other reviewers in his efforts to promote this wonderful book, I’m going to let him have the last word on why you ought to read Town of Evening Calm:

The incalculable individual cost of the bombing of Hiroshima has been handled in drama and documentary, and one can’t argue that the act of examining that kind of horror is automatically a virtuous or courageous act. The critical element is any given work’s ability to move its audience.

To personalize a tragedy of this magnitude is to risk trivializing the event or populating it with characters more philosophically functional than emotionally specific. Kouno avoids these failings entirely. There’s richness and realness to her cast and generosity to her storytelling that lets readers inhabit the world instead of simply observing or commenting on it. It’s a perfect blend of the painfully real and the creatively effective.

So, you should buy this book, because it’s good in every way that matters. Reading it will give you genuine pleasure, and that pleasure will only be enhanced by the worthiness of the subject matter and Kouno’s intelligence and sensitivity in dramatizing it.

And if you don’t win that copy that Chloe is giving away at Shuchaku East, you shouldn’t have trouble tracking it down at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Last Gasp, the publisher.

I had typed and discarded about a dozen different opening gambits for our year-end feature when Ken Haley sent me his “best of” list, complete with a snappy intro that put mine to shame. So I’m going to turn the floor over to Ken here to get our article off on the right foot:

It’s that time of the year again. The nights are long, the temperatures low, and the snow banks high. So clearly it must be time to roll out the year-end wrap ups, where we look back at 2007 and admire the bountiful new manga series that have grabbed our hearts, minds, throats and, with my penchant for horror series, torn them out in an overly elaborate two-page spread that would put Hiroaki Samura to shame.

Here are our votes for the best (and worst) manga of 2007.

Best Manga of 2007: Erin’s Picks

TEKKONKINKREET: BLACK AND WHITE (Taiyo Matsumoto, Viz)
Tekkonkinkreet’s artwork looks like an underground comic and its plot is like a Hollywood film. I knew I’d never be the same after watching A Clockwork Orange, and Tekkonkinkreet gave me the same feeling. I watched the Tekkon movie first, then researched director Michael Arias for an article - this is practically the only manga Arias has ever read, but it affected him so much he spent over ten years adapting a movie. I haven’t re-read much manga, but I know I’ll re-read Tekkon again and again. As soon as I put the book down I set out to collect everything else by Matsumoto.

Click here to read Erin’s review; click here to preview pages at the Overlooked Manga Festival.

SWAN, Vols. 9-11 (Kiyoko Ariyoshi, CMX)
Swan is rapidly becoming one of my favorite series of all time. It’s an obvious choice for libraries, since there’s nothing objectionable in it - it’s about ballet, after all! I can picture the unsuspecting teenage Naruto fan picking up Swan and then having her mind totally blown by the hardcore 1970’s shojo within. Swan is so girly it goes all the way around the circle and into the realm of manliness. If Dark Horse had a ballet title, it would Swan. The paneling is an experiment from the ’70’s and the SD moments are a throwback to Phil Foglio’s Buck Godot comics. Swan is like some kind of life-preserver of seventies awesomeness thrown into the present by CMX.

Click here to view preview pages at the Overlooked Manga Festival.

GENSHIKEN, Vols. 8-9 (Kio Shimoku, Del Rey)
American fans are blissfully unaware of the strange coincidence that makes Genshiken a huge hit here; in Japan, colleges usually have separate anime, manga, and gaming clubs. Genshiken rolls all three together, which happily makes the college club resemble most American anime clubs, where fans of anime are by de facto fans of manga and video games from Japan. The last half of the Genshiken series turns the club over to girls as the series explores cosplay and yaoi. Ogiue starts off as an insane psychopath but is slowly characterized until she is everyone’s favorite character in the final volume. I wanted to hug her at the end of each chapter.

Click here for Erin’s review of volume nine.

FLOWER OF LIFE, Vols. 1-3 (Fumi Yoshinaga, DMP)
Either this year has been HUGE for Fumi Yoshinaga in the U.S., or I have coincidentally read a bunch of her works in 2007. I had a hard time getting into Antique Bakery and took a break between volumes two and three, but with Flower of Life I read each new volume immediately and with fannish rigor. I keep recommending it to people, including guys, but I have a hard time convincing them there’s no yaoi involved. Two of the characters are otaku, so as with Genshiken, I’m showing favoritism towards otaku-centric titles. I can’t explain what the title means, except as a reference to the protagonist, who struggled with cancer but enters high school healthy and filled with the enthusiasm of youth… This is a title about happiness.

Click here for Erin’s review of volume one; click here for her review of volume two; click here to preview pages at the Overlooked Manga Festival.

IRON WOK JAN, Vols. 13-27 (Shinji Saijyo, DrMaster)
Frequently overlooked, Iron Wok Jan is as crazy as manga can get. We need to import more food manga like Oishinbo the Gourmet (it’s only over a hundred volumes long!). I started watching the Iron Chef because of the crazy foods and ingredients I’d never heard of, and I love comics as a medium because they pull off insane logic leaps that wouldn’t work in film or prose. I love the foreignness of manga - manga doesn’t have the boundaries of domestic comics. Iron Wok Jan combines all three loves - the love of crazy Asian food, crazy-as-hell comic logic, and the anything-goes factor of manga weirdness.

Click here for Erin’s review of volume 26; click here to preview pages at the Overlooked Manga Festival.

Best Manga of 2007: Ken’s Picks

MPD PSYCHO, Vols. 1-3 (Eiji Otsuka and Sho-U Tajima, Dark Horse)
For me, this was easily the most anticipated release of 2007. Eiji Otsuka and Sho-U Tajima have created a wonderfully dark world full of serial killers, bizarre conspiracies, eyeball tattoos and more. Each volume adds a new layers and twists to the over all story, causing it to become increasingly complex as the series progresses. You’ll need a score card to keep track of all of Detective Amamiya’s personalities alone! Tajima’s art work is slick, stylish, and he doesn’t flinch when it comes to depicting the nastier aspects of the subject matter.

Click here for Ken’s review of volume three.

TANPENSHU, Vols. 1-2 (Hiroki Endo, Dark Horse)
This two volume series from Hiroki Endo helped reignite my interest in Eden: It’s An Endless World. Short tales of broken people trying to make sense of their worlds, trapped by birth or circumstance is situations they despise. While no one is going to mistake this anthology as the feel-good read of the year, I don’t think anyone could possibly deny the quality of both Endo’s writing and artwork.

PARASYTE, Vols. 1-2 (Hitosi Iwaaki, Del Rey)
It’s John Carpenters The Thing crossed with a buddy flick! What’s not to love about that? The plain jane artwork belies the hand of a master at work. What the series may lack in flash, it more than makes up for in substance. The characters are fleshed out wonderfully and Hitoshi Iwaaki blends humor, action, and philosophical pondering’s in a wonderfully entertaining way. It might not exactly be a new series, but I for one am extremely grateful for the new editions from Del Rey.

Click here for Ken’s review of volumes one and two.

GON, Vols. 1-2 (Masashi Tanaka, CMX)
A golden oldie being re-released for the first time in its original format. The series follows the adventures of a little orange dinosaur wandering the wilds of prehistoric earth. The short, silent tales are often cute and humorous, and the character of Gon comes across loud and clear despite absence of dialogue or sound effect. Masashi Tanaka’s art work is detailed and lush to a degree rarely seen in the world of manga. Sometimes the bully, sometimes the good guy, Gon and his adventures never fail to entertain. Whether he’s riding a lion while chasing after his prey, or hunting in the mouth of a shark, Gon is a series that’s bound to please.

Click here for Ken’s review of volume one.

Best Manga of 2007: Kate’s Picks

TOWN OF EVENING CALM, COUNTRY OF CHERRY BLOSSOMS (Fumiyo Kouno, Last Gasp)
If Barefoot Gen shows readers what it was like to live through the Hiroshima bombing and its horrific aftermath, Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms shows readers what it was like to live with the memories of that day ten, twenty, and forty years later. Fumiyo Kouno’s book is divided into two stories. The first, “Town of Evening Calm,” is set in 1955, and focuses on one young woman’s attempt to preserve the remnants of her family, while the second, “Country of Cherry Blossoms,” is set in the 1990s, and focuses on the strained relationship between a survivor and his adult daughter. Both stories are simply but beautifully illustrated, avoiding the kind of visual tropes (big eyes, tiny noses, super-cute deformations) that many Western readers find jarring when reading Serious Manga. A haunting, uplifting book that will remind you how powerful sequential art can be.

Click here to read Kate’s review.

TO TERRA, Vols. 1-3 (Keiko Takemiya, Vertical, Inc.)
If Richard Wagner wrote operas set in deep space instead of Valhalla, he might have composed something akin to Keiko Takemiya’s To Terra. Set in the distant future, the story focuses on a race of telepathic mutants who have been exiled from their homeworld. Under the leadership of the powerful and charismatic Jomy Marcus Shin, the Mu embark on a grueling voyage back to Terra to be reunited with their human creators. Their principle foe: an evil supercomputer named Mother, who makes HAL look like a pansy. Takemiya’s richly detailed artwork and deft manipulation of panels make To Terra an almost cinematic experience; many pages will remind you of iconic scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars. But don’t be fooled by those blinking computers and blazing starships: To Terra is an unabashedly Romantic saga about two übermensch locked in a struggle of cosmic proportions. No doubt Richard would approve.

Click here to read Kate’s review of volume three.

LOVE*COM, Vols. 1-3 (Aya Nakahara, Viz)
Ladies, please complete the following brief questionnaire: (a) Have you ever worn flats to avoid towering over your gentleman friend? (b) Do you slouch to avoid appearing “too tall”? (c) Do you wish that you were two or three inches shorter? If you’ve answered “yes” to two or more of these questions, have I got the manga for you: Love*Com, a delightful comedy about a very tall girl and very short boy who’d make a terrific couple… if they didn’t feel so self-conscious about the size difference. With great artwork, memorable characters, and plotlines grounded in reality, Love*Com may just be the best new shojo title of 2007.

Click here to read Kate’s review of volume one; click here to read her review of volume two.

TRANSLUCENT, Vols. 1-2 (Kazuhiro Okamoto, Dark Horse)
Shizuka, the heroine of Translucent, has a medical condition that many of us can identify with (even if we’ve never actually suffered from it): whenever she feels anxious, sad, lonely, or premenstrual, she becomes invisible to others. Her condition is the perfect metaphor for how most of us felt in high school, as we vacillated between wanting to be noticed by a cute guy, the varsity coach, or a campus V.I.P. and wishing we could simply disappear, escaping unwanted scrutiny from bullies, teachers, and parents. The slightly awkward character designs suit the characters’ ages and personalities, giving this series a refreshingly naturalistic look. Sometimes humorous, sometimes bittersweet, this lovely coming-of-age story is a shoo-in for YALSA’s 2007 List of Great Graphic Novels for Teens—even if, as some commentators have pointed out, the story was originally written for grown men who like to read about high school girls.

Click here to read Kate’s review of volume two.

FLOWER OF LIFE, Vols. 1-3 (Fumi Yoshinga, DMP)
Fumi Yoshinaga’s geek-centric comedy focuses on a group of teens who invite their new classmate to join the manga club. Not much actually happens in Flower of Life; most chapters consist of passionate conversations between club members about—what else?—manga. Yoshinaga has a wonderful time poking fun at otakudom (including her usual bailiwick, boy’s love) while respecting the intensity and sincerity of her characters’ feelings. The result is both moving and laugh-out-loud funny. You’ve never seen a cultural festival storyline quite like the one in volume two… trust me on this one.

Worst Manga of 2007: Erin’s Pick

PRINCESS PRINCESS, Vols. 2-5 (Mikiyo Tsuda, DMP)
I gave Princess Princess a chance. I read three volumes of the manga and watched an episode of the anime, and even an episode of the live action series. Princess Princess is just as bad in any medium. The anime was a low-budget, corner-cutting affair (more so than regular anime), and so was the live action show (mostly shot in a single white room). The manga made Jason Thompson’s bottom ten (at #6), and deservedly so. Although the cross-dressing premise promises hijinks will ensue, hijinks are totally absent, replaced by long blocks of uninteresting text as the characters discuss their angsty feelings.

Click here for Erin’s review of volumes one and two; click here for Jason Thompson’s review at the Overlooked Manga Festival.

Worst Manga of 2007: Kate’s Pick

POP JAPAN TRAVEL: ESSENTIAL OTAKU GUIDE (Makoto Nakajima, DMP)
A better title for this ill-conceived project might have been Gaijin Do the Stupidest Things. Although the artwork is crisply executed, the characters are a veritable catalog of ugly American stereotypes. My guess is that the manga-ka had no idea that his creation might rub Americans the wrong way. DMP’s editorial staff, however, really fell down on the job: they should have worked harder to ensure that the story and characters steered clear of racist caricature, especially if their goal was to promote DMP’s Pop Japan Tours.

Click here for Kate’s review.

Pistol packin’ mamas. Chibis gone wild. Vampire knights and vampire-slaying princesses. Yes, it’s time for another batch of Manga Minis! This month’s column examines the first volumes of four brand-new series—Canon, Hoshin Engi, Platina, and Princess Resurrection—as well as the second volume of Vampire Knight and Junko Mizuno: Pure Trance.

Canon, Vol. 1

By Chika Shiomi
CMX, 200 pp.
Rating: 16+

The eponymous heroine of Canon is a smart, tough-talking vigilante who’s saving the world, one vampire at a time. For most of her life, she was a somewhat sickly but otherwise unremarkable human—that is, until a nosferatu decided to make Lunchables of her high school class. Canon, the sole survivor of the attack, was transformed into a vampire whose blood has an amazing property: it can restore other victims to their former human selves. She’s determined to rescue as many human-vampire converts as she can, prowling the streets of Tokyo in search of others like her. She’s also resolved to find and kill Rod, the vampire who murdered her friends. (Uh, Rod? Was Vlad taken?) She’s aided by two vampires with agendas of their own: Fuui, a talking crow who’s always scavenging for blood, and Sakaki, a handsome rogue who also loathes Rod.

Though I enjoyed Canon, I had two reservations about this volume. First, Shiomi’s action sequences are sometimes hard to parse. There were several close-up panels that left me utterly mystified: just what the heck was I looking at? Second, Fuui is more of creaky plot device than a character. As several other reviewers have observed, Fuui’s primary function seems to be intoning expository dialogue. To some extent, such passages are unavoidable in a series with a complicated mythology, but Shiomi doesn’t integrate them gracefully. That said, I have a feeling that future volumes will be more enjoyable now that Shiomi has laid the foundation for her story. I’ll be tuning in, if for no other reason than to catch a glimpse of Rod.

Volume one of Canon is available now; volume two will be released in July.

Hoshin Engi, Vol. 1

By Ryu Fujisaki
Viz, 202 pp.
Rating: 13+

In the Hoshin Engi universe, real Chinese emperors co-exist side by side with a group of demi-gods called Sennin, who normally reside on a higher plane of existence than humans. The story begins when Dakki, a female Sennin, uses her power to usurp the Chinese throne. She then embarks on a campaign of wanton destruction and self-aggrandizement that rivals only the modern-day antics of Kim Jong Il. Taikobo, a young shepherd, is one of Dakki’s many victims, losing his entire family in a raid on his village. To avenge his family, Taikobo becomes an apprentice of Genshi Tenson, a Sennin elder. But Taikobo lacks the discipline to attain demi-god status. Frustrated by Taikobo’s slacker antics, Genshi devises a novel training regimen for his underachieving pupil: kit Taikobo out with a fancy ride and a cool weapon, then dispatch him to the human world to round up 345 dangerous demons.

Though the set-up has great potential, I found Ryu Fujisaki’s storytelling uninspired. Taikobo is a generic shonen hero—all action and no reflection—while his sidekick/vehicle Reiju Supushan is a classic fuss-budget foil who questions the wisdom of Taikobo’s decisions. The first two chapters are a slow read, as Fujisaki tries to cram as much exposition into those early pages as possible. Once he’s dispensed with the basics—names, realms, spells, and such—the story quickly falls into a predictable pattern: Taikobo engages a demon, feigns oafishness, then gains the upper hand. No doubt Hoshin Engi would make a terrific RPG or anime, but I didn’t find it a compelling read.

Volume 1 of Hoshin Engi will be available in June.

Junko Mizuno: Pure Trance

By Junko Mizuno
Last Gasp, 192 pp.
Rating: Mature

Junko Mizuno’s first published work could best be summarized as a post-apocalyptic meditation on celebrity, pornography, and eating disorders. In the brave new world of Pure Trance, humans get all their nutritional needs from a multivitamin pill called—you guessed it—Pure Trance. Pure Trance has some nasty side effects, however, causing addiction, binging and purging, and other forms of self-destructive behavior. There’s not much plot or genuine social commentary here; instead, Mizuno uses her futuristic set-up as a pretext for cute illustrations of women doing ghastly things—hey, look at this picture of girls whipping each other and puking! Though Last Gasp has done a superb job of packaging Mizuno’s work, Pure Trance is better suited to the hardcore fan than the first-time reader. For novices, I’d recommend her subversive retelling of Hansel and Gretel instead. It’s a better showcase for her storytelling style, as her taboo-busting cutesiness brings the more perverse elements of this famous fairy tale to the surface.

Junko Mizuno: Pure Trance is available now.

Platina, Vol. 1

By Yeon Joo Kim
Central Park Media, 177 pp.
Rating: 13+

As best I can tell, the plot for Platina goes something like this: Auna is a former aristocrat whose family suffered a disastrous reversal of fortune. As a result, Auna has been reduced to scrubbing floors at Princess Vellotte’s palace. For reasons unknown, Vellotte entrusts Auna with Jinen, an adorable little fox with a very big secret: he’s actually a handsome human thief who, thanks to a curse from the princess, transforms into a kitsune for twelve hours each day. No matter what form he takes, however, Jinen has a knack for getting into trouble. In the short period of time that Auna has custody of him, they endure kidnapping attempts, shoot-outs, and a stint in jail. What makes Platina a fun—if sometimes confusing—read is Yeon Joo Kim’s decision to dispense with the fourth wall, allowing her characters to poke fun at her, discuss events from previous chapters, crack wise about comic clichés, and speculate about how the story will unfold. With so many digressions and meta-jokes interrupting the narrative flow, events don’t always have a logical connection, but Platina’s kitchen-sink humor and stylish visuals compensate for its shortcomings.

Volume one of Platina is available now.

Princess Resurrection, Vol. 1

By Yatsunori Mitsunaga
Del Rey, 224 pp.
Rating: 16+

Meet Princess Hime. She’s equal parts Cinderella and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, dispatching werewolves, vampires, zombies, and creatures from the Black Lagoon while clad in a tiara and crinoline. Her entourage includes Flandre, a cute robot with Hulk-like strength; Hiro, a nebbish that Hime resurrected after an unfortunate traffic accident; Hiro’s older sister, Sawawa, a none-too-bright maid; and Riza Wildman, a brash werewolf girl who favors mid-riff baring tank tops and rides a motorcycle. Together this improbable team fights armies of the undead, transforming a variety of objects—SUVs, chainsaws, cardio paddles—into lethal weapons with MacGuyver-esque ingenuity.

Whether or not you warm to Princess Resurrection will depend on how funny you find the principal joke, as the plot and characters are wafer-thin. I enjoyed the Disney-does-Dawn-of-the-Dead premise, but found one of the series’ running gags less amusing. In his recent review at Comic World News, David Welsh coined a memorable phrase for this weird and distasteful bit of fanservice: mood boobs. He explains, “You can tell when the sister [Sawawa] is preoccupied, as her giant breasts don’t jiggle as vigorously.” So if mood boobs don’t distract you from comically gruesome goings-on, you’ll probably enjoy this smartly illustrated series.

Volume one of Princess Resurrection is available now; volume two will be published in August. To read a short excerpt of volume one, click here.

Vampire Knight, Vol. 2

By Matsuri Hino
Viz, 208 pp.
Rating: 13+

When I reviewed the first volume of Vampire Knight back in January, I expressed some reservations about the series’ generic characters and warmed-over vampire lore. A surprising number of fans posted polite but firm rebuttals, informing me that the story improved in subsequent chapters. Impressed by their depth of commitment, I decided to give the series a second look.

On the plus side, Matsuri Hino seems to have found her footing with the material. She adopts a more appropriate tone for her story, dispensing with the shojo slapstick of the early chapters in favor of supernatural suspense. She also fleshes out the vampires’ backstory, explaining why they have enrolled at Cross Academy, delineating a hierarchy within the vampire world, and introducing a new character, Yagari Toga, a vampire hunter who packs heat, talks tough, and has history with Kaname and Zero. On the minus side, I couldn’t distinguish the male vampires from one another, as most of them look like members of Duran Duran (at least to this child of the 1980s). And I still found Yuki a less-than-compelling character. Not all heroines need to administer karate chops to be powerful—or empowered, for that matter—but Yuki seems incapable of tying her shoelaces, let alone subduing vampires. Unless she engages in some serious slayage in volume three, I’m probably going to focus my energies elsewhere.

Volume two of Vampire Knight is available now; volume three is scheduled for publication in October. To read a short excerpt from volume one, click here.

Scanlation group Kotonoha reports that Fumiyo Kouno’s award-winning Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms is being adapted for the big screen. A live-action version will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May and will arrive in Japanese theaters in July. For details about cast and crew, click here. The folks at Kotohona have also posted excerpts from and links to reviews of the English-language adaptation of Town of Evening Calm. If you’ve been curious about this manga, or are simply in search of a thought-provoking book, I encourage you to explore the links at Kotonoha; Town of Evening Calm deserves a big, appreciative audience.

BTW, Kotonoha has been “scanlating” some great-looking series, including Kei Toume’s The Hour of the Mice, Usumaru Furuya’s The Music of Marie, and Satoshi Kon’s Kaikisen: Return to the Sea. Click here to view their list of titles-in-translation.

Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms

By Fumiyo Kouno
Last Gasp, 108 pp.
No rating

In The Idea of History, author R. G. Collingwood argues that nineteenth-century historians viewed their task in a different spirit than their predecessors. While previous generations of scholars treated history as a simple chain of events, the Romantics wanted to recreate the past through their writings. The Romantic historian, Collingwood explained, “entered sympathetically into the actions which he described; unlike the scientist who studied nature, he did not stand over the facts as mere objects for cognition; on the contrary, he threw himself into them and felt them imaginatively as experiences of his own.”

I found myself revisiting The Idea of History as I read Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, a project that might well have resonated with Collingwood’s pioneering nineteenth-century historians. Fumiyo Kouno’s slim volume contains two interrelated stories examining the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing. Neither has an obvious dramatic arc; both are slice-of-life stories that afford readers a unique opportunity to imagine the fears, hopes, and sorrows of the hibakusha. In her introduction to Town of Evening Calm, Kouno explains her approach to the subject in terms that are strikingly similar to Collingwood’s:

Although I was born and raised in Hiroshima, I am neither a hibakusha survivor of the atomic bomb, nor am I a second generation hibakusha. I don’t have any relatives who can talk about their experience. For me, the atomic bomb is a tragedy that occurred in the tragic past. At the same time, it was a circumstance that existed in the background of ‘other people’s households.’ I always thought all I needed to know about the bomb was that it was a terrifying thing that happened once upon a time, and a subject best avoided. After living in Tokyo for a while, however, I came to realize that people outside of Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t really know all that much about the ravages of the atomic bomb. Unlike me, they weren’t avoiding the subject—they never had the opportunity to learn about it even if they wanted to… I hadn’t experienced the war or the bomb first-hand, but I could still draw on the words of a different time and place to reflect on peace and express my thoughts.

The first story, “Town of Evening Calm,” focuses on Minami, a young seamstress living in Hiroshima ten years after the atomic blast. Superficially, the city seems to be healing: its downtown is bustling with activity, as is the dressmaker’s shop where Minami works. Yet subtle signs of the devastation remain, from the ramshackle houses of the residential district to the scarcity of everday goods. (In a particularly effective scene, we see Minami walk home barefoot so as to preserve her only pair of shoes.) Minami herself bears psychic wounds from the day, as is evident in her brusque dismissal of Uchikoshi, a co-worker who clumsily courts her with baseball shoptalk and promises of marriage. Minami refuses to leave her ailing mother’s side, as their family has been effectively reduced from five to two. (Minami’s father and sister perished in the blast, while her brother elected to live in Tokyo with relatives rather than return to Hiroshima.) Underneath her bravado, we see a fearful, guilt-ridden young woman who wonders when she will succumb to the long-term effects of the radiation, and who cannot escape her horrifying memories of August 6, 1945.

The second story, “Country of Cherry Blossoms,” takes place nearly twenty years later in Tokyo. We first meet Nanami, a baseball-addled tomboy, as an eleven-year-old girl. Through a few telling details–Nanami’s dirty baseball uniform, Nanami’s interactions with classmates–we see that Nanami suffers accutely from her mother’s absence. (Her mother, a hibakusha, succumbed to cancer.) Lacking a female role model, she latches onto Toko, a classmate who epitomizes girly grace. Kouno depicts a few ordinary moments from this odd pair’s childhood: a playground discussion of a homework assignment, a baseball game, a trip to the hospital where Nagio–Nanami’s younger brother–is hospitalized with severe asthma.

We then jump forward seventeen years. Nanami and Toko are estranged; Nagio, now healthy, is training to be a doctor; and Asahi, their elderly father, has been behaving oddly. Fearful that Asahi may be losing his faculties, Nanami tails him through the streets of Tokyo, where she bumps into Toko. Their initial conversation is awkward and forced; seeing Toko dredges up some of Nanami’s most painful childhood memories. Toko, undeterred by Nanami’s rudeness, furnishes Nanami with a disguise, and the two set off for Hiroshima, where Nanami’s father seems intent on completing a mysterious errand. Running parallel to the story of Nanami and Toko’s reunion is the story of how Nanami’s parents met. As we watch their courtship unfold, we realize that Asahi is the link between the first and second stories; he is Minami’s “lost” brother, the one who was living with relatives when the Americans bombed Hiroshima, and the one who chose to remain in Tokyo rather than return to the devastated Hiroshima.

Kouno’s refusal to impose an obvious dramatic structure on either story, her deft manipulation of time, and her emphasis on small, everyday moments, inoculate Town of Evening Calm against sentimentality and mawkishness. The artwork is clean and simple, with enough background detail to bring the streets of Hiroshima to vivid life. Kouno’s character designs have a slightly rough, clumsy quality to them; the adults’ large heads and large feet seem to belong to bigger bodies. Yet these awkward proportions don’t detract from the beauty of the work; if anything, the illustrations make Kouno’s characters seem more vulnerable, more imperfect, more fragile—in short, more human and more believable. And that honest vulnerability, in turn, makes it possible for readers from all walks of life to enter sympathetically into Kouno’s haunting yet life-affirming story.