Oba electroplating factory The complete mature works of Yoshiharu Tsuge. Volume 4 Volume 4 /

Canada's graphic powerhouse, Drawn & Quarterly, presents the fourth of an intended seven-volume Complete Mature Works of Yoshiharu Tsuge, showcasing the creations of "Japan's quintessential 'artist-cartoonist.'" Manga historian and translator Holmberg returns as Tsuge's literary and cultural guide, providing another important essay contextualizing and cementing Tsuge's work in the manga canon. These seven shorts, originally published in 1973 and 1974, feature signature black-and-white panels that contrast exquisitely detailed backgrounds and landscapes with simple, line-drawn characters featuring neatly caricatured faces and expressions. Here, Tsuge "began consciously exploring ways to adapt the 'I-novel,'" a central twentieth-century Japanese literary genre. His stand-ins reveal the artist as a struggling young man; Holmberg's illuminating essay carefully parses the reality and fiction within. The title story's protagonist, Yoshio, is a young teen surviving desperate, life-threatening conditions working in a post-Korean War chrome-plating factory. Yoshio reappears in "Yoshio's Youth," in which he--with an older brother--is (barely) supporting his large family with his cartooning; his involvement with an older, dissolute manga artist proves costly. Travel to remote inns recurs in multiple stories, including "Someone I Miss," about revisiting a long-ago sexual encounter; "Realism Inn," about a disappointing, meandering visit; and "Wasteland Inn," about a real estate search that goes awry. For Tsuge newbies, each volume easily stands alone as intriguing entertainment; aficionados (and wannabes) are encouraged to appreciate and admire the series in the intended order.

Tsuge (Nejishiki) is at the top of his game in this dazzling collection from the 1970s, which finds the underground manga legend moving from nightmare surrealism to semi-autobiographical pieces that draw horror from unflinching realism. The title story is a highlight, set at a decaying factory where employees waste away from lung poisoning while processing shrapnel for American bombs. Tsuge mocks his own penchant for grimness in "Realism Inn," in which he visits a run-down rural hotel for inspiration ("People will love it! I'll ride this domestic tourism boom yet!") but is upset to find it isn't gritty in a picturesque way. "Yoshio's Youth" follows a young artist as he finds work in the disreputable end of the manga industry and is taken under the wing of a fast-talking manga creator. By this point in his career, Tsuge had refined his off-kilter indie art into a clear and evocatively detailed style. His depictions of poor and working-class life have the force of lived experience, and his stories about the early manga industry evoke an intriguingly seedy world of con artists and fly-by-night operations. By turns bluntly honest and slyly self-referential, this is an essential work of alternative manga and 20th-century Japanese literature. (Aug.)