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

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.)