During my visit to a Bostonian comic book store with Dee, I came across the impressive volume of manga entitled « A Drifting Life » by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. As I had never heard of the title or the author before (shame, shame on me!!), I might well have overlooked it altogether if the cover had not caught my eye - a young man drawing a manga page sitting on the grass. For an aspiring comic book creator wannabe that was enough to spark my interest. I am sure that other people will (or already have) done much better reviews of it elsewhere (this manga has won the 13th Tezuka Osamu's Cultural award this year alongside "Ooku: the inner chamber" by Fumi Yoshinaga), but here I would like to relate what particularly stroke cords in my aspiring artist heart.
The book follows the journey of a young boy, fan of Osamu Tezuka's works when Tesuka-sensei was still attending medical school, as he starts drawing postcard manga for contests in Manga Shonen magazine, as he gets his first beginner success, then creates his first short story and slowly becomes a professional mangaka in a still young publishing industry. Aside from the universal thrill of the beginning struggle to create something that will be recognized and noticed (yes! He felt that way too!) one of the most fascinating things to me was the realization that the book tells the story of one then several manga creators who want to draw and publish stories in an environment that has no solid publishing structure or market for them. Not very much unlike the situation of an aspiring original manga/comic-book creator in the US today. For me, it was as if I could magically glimpse the way creators battled their way through similar problems that beginner creators face today in the US, only some 50-60 years ago in Japan. Right away, several things were striking to me, the first being the productivity rate: I tried to summarize it here.
When Hiroshi (Tatsumi-sensei) starts drawing short stories as a not even high school student, he completes 4 short stories 96 pages worth total over winter/spring of 1951. Then he completes his first "full-length" story, "Happily adrift" over his summer vacation (1951) and moves on to another 80-pages story "The jolly film crew" and a 96 pages story "Manga television". In summer of 1952 he works on a sequel to "Happily adrift" - "Childeren's island" which will then be picked up by a publisher. In the meantime, Hiroshi also wins a house-wife manga contest in which he participated under his sister's name. I could go on and on but I think this is enough to translate the awe I felt while reading this: a drive so powerful combined with an amazing persistence in a boy who barely started high school... Later in the book, when Hiroshi with several other creators have organized the "Gekiga workshop", another creator lists the amount of work he has to turn in during that month (without any assistants): "18pages-short story for "Shadow" magazine, 20p ss for "City", 19p ss for "Labyrinth", 27p ss for "Hot Blooded Boys" and 18p ss for a "City" supplement" - are you counting? Well, I did the math too - it comes to 102 pages in 1 month... >__<
I do not really understand how this is possible, or rather, I do, when I read that those young men had almost no life left outside of what they created and had oftentimes no time to create what they really wanted, but this still amazes and humbles me immensely.
Aside from the productivity point, another theme really resonated with me: from early on, Hiroshi started searching for a different way to express the stories he really wanted to tell - "a manga that isn't manga". Being very much influenced by the cinema, he strived to re-create the film-like feeling and simultaneous time perception on his pages. Only to come up against initial criticism: "you don't need all those pages to tell this story" - says his brother. I could not help but smile when thinking about how manga is described today - a high paced story-telling that leaves a lot of room for atmosphere creation - exactly what Hiroshi was trying to achieve. Nowadays though, a story with too full panels and not enough breathing space would be easily criticized as non-manga. Everything comes in circles afterall.. ^__^
Finally, the young creators encountered another problem: their short stories anthology was criticized for being not suitable for children due to its theme and violence. Indeed, it was presented in stores as "manga" - or "irresponsible pictures" together with books for kids and that was not the audience they were creating for. This dilemma ultimately led to the creation of the term "gekiga" - "dramatic pictures" in an attempt to differentiate their work from the then known traditional "manga". Somehow, this immediately made me think about the discussions that have surrounded the term OEL (Original English Language) manga and the usage of term "manga" for works created by non-japanese creators but inspired by the manga style. Ultimately, after reading the journey of the Japanese creators, I felt that in that regard the important thing for the artist is to be able to convey the identity of their work - what they aspire to - to the reader. For Japanese mangaka of the 50ties it was to say that they now used the comic-book format to tell different stories in a different way from before; for non-japanese creators inspired by manga today, it can be that they tell their own stories in a manga-influenced way thus calling it "manga", and for others, just telling their stories trying to develop their own, particular style in a "graphic-novel" format.
There would be so much more to say about this book but given the length of this post I will spare you and say just this: if you get a chance, read this manga about manga creators and their lives, and if you are a creator yourself, it is certainly one more reason to do so.
