And a new URL! We now have
www.smithsoncomic.com as a mirror, so you can click over there to read this week's page, which is all about the steam tunnels.
And Andrew has a new installment of
The Chronicles of William Bazillion:
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/andrew/bazillion/series.php Also, the deadline is nearing for the nominating round of the
Harvey Awards, one of the comics industry's big three awards. If you're a comics creator, and you enjoy our fine comics, please consider nominating
Narbonic,
Smithson, and/or
William Bazillion in the Best Online Comics Work category. Since Narbonic ended in December 2006, this is the last year it can be nominated.
What else? Oh, right!
Overlooked Manga Festival!Other bloggers have been talking about this one, but that doesn't mean I can't, right? Right. Okay, let's do this thing.
Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms just came out in a lovely edition from jaPRESS and Last Gasp, with color pages and endnotes and a map and everything. It won crazy awards in Japan, while attracting some controversy for its subject matter. The slim volume comprises two stories by Fumiyo Kouno about her hometown, Hiroshima, and the ghosts that still haunt it.
The first story, "Town of Evening Calm," is set in Hiroshima in 1955. Ten years have passed since the atomic bomb was dropped, but in the dirt-poor "atomic slum," families are still decimated and people still die of radiation sickness. As grim a backdrop as this is, Kouno creates a warm, fond portrait of the devastated city, full of sweetness and small pleasures. Her art is lively and cute, brightening her drawings of Minami, a young woman who survived the atomic explosion, as she goes about her day.
But beneath the joys lie unbearable sorrow and pain, as both Minami and the city itself suffer from a gnawing wound that refuses to heal. This is a sweet story, but also a deeply sad story. To the Japanese mentality, this is not a contradiction.
The second story, "Country of Cherry Blossoms," is divided into two parts. The first takes place in 1987. Nanami, a baseball-loving tomboy, lives in Tokyo, but she's the daughter of a
hibakusha, an atomic bomb survivor, and the spectre of death and illness drifts over her family even in its happiest moments.
In the second part, set in 2004, Nanami secretly follows her father on a trip to Hiroshima. Nanami's afternoon adventure is interspersed with flashbacks depicting how her parents met in the atomic slum.
Discrimination against the
hibakusha (there are over 250,000 living in Japan today) is a recurring theme in "Country of Cherry Blossoms." Valid fears about the long-term effects of radiation get muddled up with superstitions, half-truths, and a general attitude that the people who walked away from the atomic bomb aren't quite right and should be avoided.
But neither half of the story is about Hiroshima, per se. The first half is about moving and losing a friend, and the second is about reconnecting with that friend in adulthood. Hiroshima is just there, an unavoidable part of the scenery, like a mountain or the moon.
Hiroshima stories have long been a part of manga, and particularly a part of manga in America. One of the first manga published in English was
Barefoot Gen, a heavily autobiographical account of the bombing of Hiroshima by survivor Keiji Nakazawa. What Kouno brings to the genre is a sense of distance and a quiet, conversational, uninsistent tone. This is not, for the most part, a book about the horror of the atomic bomb. It's a book about the sad and lovely and aching city that grew up around that horror.
It's not quite accurate to say that the charming artwork and gentle mood of Kuono's stories provide a counterpoint to the darkness of the atomic bomb, or that they mask it. It's more that Kuono finds beauty and sweetness within that darkness. I'm reminded of a snippet of dialogue in
Mariko Parade, a Japanese-French coproduction and probable future Overlooked Manga:
"Though you know, for the Japanese, there is a feeling that is stronger than love itself..."
"Do you think I'm not fully aware of that? It's been a few years now that I've been living here among you! Stronger than love itself is...the decline of love. A flower is never more beautiful than at the very moment it begins to fade..."
The Japanese term for this is
mono no aware, an awareness and love of transience, of mortality, of the beauty of things that are doomed. It suffuses not only Japanese art and literature, but much of the Japanese sensibility in general. The cherry blossom is the most beloved flower in Japan precisely because it dies so quickly.
Manga fans may be a little taken aback by
Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms. In stark contrast to the fast-paced, plot-driven approach of most mainstream manga--and, for that matter, a lot of alternative manga--it's slow, casual, subtle, and largely plotless. Kouno invites you to spend some time with her characters and their city, and then she steps aside. But what a visit.
Previous Overlooked Manga Festivities:BasaraPlease Save My EarthFrom Eroica with LoveEven a Monkey Can Draw MangaDr. SlumpYour and My SecretPhoenixKekkaishiWild ActKnights of the ZodiacThe Drifting ClassroomOMF Special Event: Manga Editors Recommend Manga, Part 1OMF Special Event: Manga Editors Recommend Manga, Part 2OMF Special Event: Manga Editors Recommend Manga, Part 3OMF Special Event: Great Moments in Manga BakingShout Out LoudMonsterSwanWarren Buffett: An Illustrated Biography of the World's Most Successful InvestorSexy Voice and RoboOMF Special Event: 2006 Overlooked Manga UpdateThe Four Immigrants MangaGerard and JacquesOde To KirihitoBringing Home the SushiBanana FishSkip BeatOMF Special Event: The Greatest Manga Magazine in American HistoryCyborg 009Anywhere But HereTo Terra![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.6){kind=small}
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