 | Japanese comic book artist who is widely credited with starting the gekiga (劇画) style of alternative adult comics in Japan, having first used the term in 1957. Many other artists have picked up and used the term gekiga (meaning "dramatic pictures"), rather than the more common term manga (meaning "whimsical pictures"). As with the advent of graphic novels over and above comic books in the West, artists like Tatsumi wanted to write about adult themes and make serious social commentary through the use of a panel based pictorial narrative. Usually drawn in a more realistic style than the often exaggerated style of manga comic books. |
I first came across Tatsumi's work in the late 80s, with the publication of an anthology of some of his early work, Good-Bye And Other Stories (1988). The stories of the foibles of ordinary citizens living in the big cities of postwar Japan fascinated and enthralled me. Cramped living, the hustle and bustle of daily life on the streets, and how one person trapped in this "new" Japan can so easily get lost. How beneath the surface of saving-face and correct customs of behaviour, there was a quite corruption of the traditional way of life. How men who had been through the war in particular felt emasculated, out of place in an ever changing cityscape, lonely, emotionally detached and desperate for love and affection. It was these insightful works of Tatsumi that started my life-long interest in Japan, and in particular the hectic streets of growing Asian metropolises like Tokyo. The heart-wrenching stories life's daily grind were it turned out wonderfully rendered snippets of reality, as I would later discover for myself when I was fortunate enough to spend many years living South Korea and had the opportunity to visit Japan.
| A Drifting Life (劇画漂流) is an autobiographical work of Tatsumi's, published in 2009. The book chronicles his life from 1945 to 1960 when he began submitting and publishing his style of adult themed comic books. In 2011 an animated drama was produced, based on A Drifting Life, as well as being interspersed with some of his short stories. These include Good-Bye and Just A Man, which also appear in the 1988 anthology. Good-Bye is a heartbreakingly depressing story of an occupied and beaten Japan. Centred around a prostitute, and her dysfunctional relationship with her father scheming. How she in shunned by her community for going with American soldiers, sinking in alcoholism, in a fit of drunken madness she breaks the ultimate taboo with her father. Sending him on his way to disappear into the busy streets as just another man, with a final "Good-bye... Good-bye..." |  |
