SUNDAY MORNING POST MAY 17, 2009 Books 15

In his autobiography, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, the pioneer of a dark form of manga, reflects on a life outside the lines, writes Dwight Garner Drawn apart

nderground comics took If success came quickly, or “manga that concerns itself with root in the US in the 1960s confidence did not. Tatsumi’s family punch lines”. and ripened with the was poor. His father was barely As A Drifting Life progresses it counterculture; artists employed. His mother and three becomes clear that Tatsumi is not such as Robert Crumb, siblings made do as well as they content merely to tell his own story UKim Deitch and Art Spiegelman could. Drawing manga was the or just the story of gekiga. He charts discarded the old funny-page author’s ticket to ride. Japan’s small cultural milestones in formats and themes like so many Once he finished with school, the wake of the war. This book corn husks. In Japan, however, there Tatsumi began toiling in the begins with a panel depicting had already been a comics exploitative field of “rental manga”. Emperor Hirohito’s surrender but revolution and the man in its These books were grab-bag soon moves on to topics such as vanguard was Yoshihiro Tatsumi. collections that printed the work of Japan’s first domestically Tatsumi, born in 1935, came of several artists; readers borrowed manufactured washing machine, its age alongside Japan’s postwar them from shops like video tapes. Miss Universe contestants, maritime obsession with manga. Most manga Publishing houses cranked out disasters and taste for Coca-Cola. It takes place in a bright, alternate rental manga, sometimes cramming is ground-level pop history. universe where it seems as if any writers and illustrators into The charge against graphic problem might be resolved with communal apartments for weeks. novels or memoirs is that they’re a a cute-off: batting eyelashes at Tatsumi does not deny the bastard form that guarantees that 10 paces. a bolder form of manga he called publishing house Drawn and pleasures of this kind of quick-and- both the art and the writing will be Tatsumi began drawing manga gekiga – darker, more realistic, often Quarterly in an annual series of dirty work. His comics were being second-rate. There is a speck of truth as a child in Osaka, but he quickly violent. The name stuck. And he books edited by cartoonist Photo: Xxx devoured by a wide and eager there, to the extent that the rebelled against the form’s aesthetic became one of the most important Adrian Tomine. Now comes the big audience and he was honing his relationship between illustration limitations. Manga was aimed visual artists in Japan. kahuna: Tatsumi’s outsize craft. “For this 19-year-old boy and prose, in long-form comics, is largely at children and its emotional Tatsumi’s work, long unavailable autobiography, A Drifting Life. with no guarantees for his future,” symbiotic: you wouldn’t necessarily and intellectual palette was in English, has begun to be It is a book that manages to be, all he writes, “the only place where he want to pry one from the other. circumscribed. Along with a cohort translated and issued by Canadian at once, an insider’s history of felt alive was in the realm of A book such as A Drifting Life is of young writers and illustrators, manga, a mordant cultural tour of imagination.” There was “no easy to pick apart on a drawing-by- Tatsumi introduced in the late 1950s post-Hiroshima Japan and a scrappy freedom in reality”, he continues, drawing or line-by-line basis. Don’t portrait of a struggling artist. It is a but “any kind of transformation was make that mistake. big, fat, greasy tub of salty popcorn possible in the imaginary world”. Its pleasures are cumulative: the for anyone interested in the theory All along, however, Tatsumi was book has a rolling, rumbling and practice of Japanese comics. also dreaming of something better: grandeur. It is as if someone had Manga is fundamentally a young experimental work, “manga that taken a Haruki Murakami novel and person’s game. Tatsumi is 73 and isn’t manga”. He became obsessed drawn, beautifully and A Drifting Life took him 10 years to with movies, both American and comprehensively, in its margins. write. But no strain of composition Japanese, and took note of their The New York Times shows in the book’s 855 pages, stylised visuals and their cool which chronicle his career from realism. He wanted to produce A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, 1945 to 1960, the period of its narrative comics instead of “manga Drawn and Quarterly Publications, greatest ferment. with wild characters jumping about” HK$240 Review of the week

FICTION together by the author, a battlefield of the great engineer’s enormous and forensic archaeologist who has iron-clad ship, The Great Eastern, The Minutes of clearly done a great deal of research. which stalls and kills several the Lazarus Club The protagonist, surgeon George workers. He is present as Darwin by Tony Pollard Phillips, plunges into the secret muses on his theories and shares his Michael Joseph world of the Lazarus Club with an somewhat ludicrous views on his HK$234 introduction from the cigar- own supposed ailments; and he flaunting Brunel, offering to rescue delves into Bazalgette’s sewers as Nick Ryan him from the irascible clutches of a they are being constructed. power-hungry hospital boss, Sir He even forms a relationship Benjamin Brodie. Brunel displays an with the heroine of the Crimea, intense interest in what Phillips can Florence Nightingale – between tell him about the workings of the manly visits to a brothel, of course. The League of Extraordinary heart and attends all his dissections But The Minutes of the Lazarus Gentlemen meets Sherlock Holmes: and lectures. Club would not be a thriller without that concept will give you some Invited by Brunel to talk to a some form of skullduggery: Phillips, indication of where Tony Pollard’s select group of scientists and visits to “his club” and nocturnal The many faces of Charles Darwin. Illustration: Wilson Tsang “gaslight” drama enters the crowded forward thinkers, Phillips meets associations aside, is slowly drawn thriller market. most of the significant players in the into a morass of suspicion, murder of a foreign power on his tail. Phillips consideration of the intellect, Set in the 1850s, The Minutes of Industrial Revolution. It is at the and intrigue seemingly emanating – begins the novel as an innocent it innovations and vision of the men the Lazarus Club is a hefty tome Lazarus Club that these great actors to his horror – from his new seems and has to travel that path of introduced. The search for the serial sporting a cast including Isambard of history discuss revolutionary associates. Horribly mutilated many heroes, from suspicion to killer and the threats on Phillips’ life Kingdom Brunel, renowned technological and social concepts: it corpses are dragged from the near-death, to thwart the evil at the are entertaining, but the length of engineer of the Victorian age; is also a gentleman’s world, full of Thames, for which an increasingly heart of his new-found friendships. the novel makes the book a little naturalist Charles Darwin; Michael port, claret but invention and suspicious police inspector begins The real strength of The Minutes clunky and slow. Faraday, physicist and chemist; progress too. to question him; there is the of the Lazarus Club lies in the Nevertheless, there is plenty to inventor Charles Babbage and Drawn deep into Brunel’s life in development of a new secret detailed description of life in enjoy in this debut, from the Joseph Bazalgette, creator of particular, Phillips is right there at weapon; sabotage of Brunel’s ship; London – and England in general – virtuous and brave to the ruthless, London’s sewer system, all brought pivotal moments, such as the launch and the almost obligatory evil agents in the late 1850s and in the seemingly unstoppable villains.