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xterminal's review
4.0
Yoshihiro Tatsumi, A Drifting Life (Drawn and Quarterly, 2009)
Despite my loathing of memoirs, every once in a while one comes along I can't not read. And while Yoshihiro Tatsumi's monstrous A Drifting Life is not, in the strictest sense, a memoir, by all accounts this “autobiographical fiction” is truer to Tatsumi's early years in the comics industry than are most memoirs. At over 850 pages, it's also Tatsumi's most ambitious work. Despite the usual scope of Tatsumi's material, it's also in many ways his most dreary.
As we open, it's the 1950s in Japan. The war is over, but economic distress is still everywhere, and Japan's youth feel rootless. Among them is Hiroshi Katsumi, a student who has no real idea what he wants to do with his life (hence the title). He, his brother, and his friends find release in drawing four-panel gag manga to send in for contests; things get interesting when both Hiroshi and his brother start winning. The normal brotherly rivalry between the two develops into something fierce, but there's no mistaking Hiroshi as the real talent in the family; soon he's off to work in a stable of mangaka working for rental companies, but still, Hiroshi is disaffected. He wants to do something new with the genre, and a cadre of his stablemates feel the same disaffectedness. Then, one day, during one of their endless discussions on the subject, one of them mentions the term gekiga...
This is not Tatsumi for beginners. Not just because of its length, but because this is very different from Tatsumi's usual work. I see comparisons to Bukowski in many reviews of the Tatsumi work so far published in English, and those comparisons are warranted in the short works. Not so here; Tatsumi's approach is more “pure Japanese” than that. Much of the first half of the book is about Hiroshi's hero worship of Osamu Tezuka, and there is a very Tezuka feel about the whole thing (though filtered through Tatsumi's own rootlessness and existential crises; one could never mistake this for Ode to Kirihito). Yet still, it is unmistakably Tatsumi in the same way that, for example, Thomas Wolfe is unmistakably Thomas Wolfe despite the constant echoes of Dylan Thomas and Marcel Proust. Start with the shorter work and come to this once you have developed a taste for Tatsumi's broad style and blacker-than-black humor. But you will want to get here eventually. Tatsumi has no real match in western graphic novels, though given the depth and gravity of his subject matter, I want to compare him to Alan Moore, but without stuff blowing up. In any case, comparisons are meaningless. You want to read Yoshihiro Tatsumi. ****
Despite my loathing of memoirs, every once in a while one comes along I can't not read. And while Yoshihiro Tatsumi's monstrous A Drifting Life is not, in the strictest sense, a memoir, by all accounts this “autobiographical fiction” is truer to Tatsumi's early years in the comics industry than are most memoirs. At over 850 pages, it's also Tatsumi's most ambitious work. Despite the usual scope of Tatsumi's material, it's also in many ways his most dreary.
As we open, it's the 1950s in Japan. The war is over, but economic distress is still everywhere, and Japan's youth feel rootless. Among them is Hiroshi Katsumi, a student who has no real idea what he wants to do with his life (hence the title). He, his brother, and his friends find release in drawing four-panel gag manga to send in for contests; things get interesting when both Hiroshi and his brother start winning. The normal brotherly rivalry between the two develops into something fierce, but there's no mistaking Hiroshi as the real talent in the family; soon he's off to work in a stable of mangaka working for rental companies, but still, Hiroshi is disaffected. He wants to do something new with the genre, and a cadre of his stablemates feel the same disaffectedness. Then, one day, during one of their endless discussions on the subject, one of them mentions the term gekiga...
This is not Tatsumi for beginners. Not just because of its length, but because this is very different from Tatsumi's usual work. I see comparisons to Bukowski in many reviews of the Tatsumi work so far published in English, and those comparisons are warranted in the short works. Not so here; Tatsumi's approach is more “pure Japanese” than that. Much of the first half of the book is about Hiroshi's hero worship of Osamu Tezuka, and there is a very Tezuka feel about the whole thing (though filtered through Tatsumi's own rootlessness and existential crises; one could never mistake this for Ode to Kirihito). Yet still, it is unmistakably Tatsumi in the same way that, for example, Thomas Wolfe is unmistakably Thomas Wolfe despite the constant echoes of Dylan Thomas and Marcel Proust. Start with the shorter work and come to this once you have developed a taste for Tatsumi's broad style and blacker-than-black humor. But you will want to get here eventually. Tatsumi has no real match in western graphic novels, though given the depth and gravity of his subject matter, I want to compare him to Alan Moore, but without stuff blowing up. In any case, comparisons are meaningless. You want to read Yoshihiro Tatsumi. ****
pivic's review
4.0
Stylistically, there is not much to be said: this is a work by a master. Both the drawing and the text dance and merge so well together, over time, that this, more-than-800-pages, leaps out at the reader and makes for an interesting read, no matter if you're "into" comics, graphic novels or manga (and, indeed, gegika) or not.
Tatsumi writes of his life as a young manga lover. He reads, discovers, and at the same time experiences life, love and family troubles, mainly through his ill brother.
While this is a far cry from modern graphic novels, Tatsumi uses space - both in text and in drawings - to great advantage, which I always feel is one of the hallmarks of a master at her or his trade. His tale is one of marvel: at the manga world, at reading, at creating, at becoming forced to deal with the business side of his passion for manga, while growing up. His family's problems and fortés spring at the reader, and he, our protagonist, finds love, in some ways.
I found the ending to be the most non-likeable part of this book. While it's explosive in one way, it's still left the reader hanging, and I wonder: is there more?
Tatsumi writes of his life as a young manga lover. He reads, discovers, and at the same time experiences life, love and family troubles, mainly through his ill brother.
While this is a far cry from modern graphic novels, Tatsumi uses space - both in text and in drawings - to great advantage, which I always feel is one of the hallmarks of a master at her or his trade. His tale is one of marvel: at the manga world, at reading, at creating, at becoming forced to deal with the business side of his passion for manga, while growing up. His family's problems and fortés spring at the reader, and he, our protagonist, finds love, in some ways.
I found the ending to be the most non-likeable part of this book. While it's explosive in one way, it's still left the reader hanging, and I wonder: is there more?
invertible_hulk's review
4.0
Part roman a clef; part bildungsroman; part oral history of manga in post-WWII Japan; part history of post-WWII Japan and her people -- it's difficult to give a true sense of what this book is and the various stories Tatsumi conveys effortlessly throughout these pages.
mizmoffatt's review
5.0
Epic in scope though intimate in its details, A Drifting Life offers an impressive and immersive experience of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's formative years, depicting that elusive time before he revolutionized the world of manga with his gritty, cinematic style. Clocking in at a staggering 800+ pages, this illustrated memoir introduces readers to the initial inspiration of the young mangaka in post-WWII Japan and documents his initial success as a grade school artist and his first experiments with manga. We see the young man transform his initial passion into a paid profession and witness his creation of a new school of manga known as Gekiga.
Throughout the piece, Tatsumi takes great effort with his cultural and historical context, often striking new scenes with a tour of Japan's development at the time and locating his personal growth within the greater evolution of his home nation. This is necessary reading for all fans of manga as an expressive medium and offers a nod to the great talent surrounding Tatsumi and his close friends/fellow mangakas in the 1940s and onward.
Ideal for: Manga-obsessed readers who need an education on the roots of this medium; Readers who gravitate toward memoirs; Individuals with an eye toward Japan and its mid-20th-century cultural revolutions.
Throughout the piece, Tatsumi takes great effort with his cultural and historical context, often striking new scenes with a tour of Japan's development at the time and locating his personal growth within the greater evolution of his home nation. This is necessary reading for all fans of manga as an expressive medium and offers a nod to the great talent surrounding Tatsumi and his close friends/fellow mangakas in the 1940s and onward.
Ideal for: Manga-obsessed readers who need an education on the roots of this medium; Readers who gravitate toward memoirs; Individuals with an eye toward Japan and its mid-20th-century cultural revolutions.
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