Customer Reviews

A Drifting Life

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Length:: 0:18 Mins

For those who follow the work of Yoshihiro Tatsumi, this book is a treat. It's a wonderful manga memoir that took almost 10 years to create. The main protagonist is no other than Yoshihiro himself, using another name of Hiroshi Katsumi.

In this book, he explores the journey he took to become a manga artist. It's an inspiring tale that looks into his relationship with his family, friend, fellow manga artists and publishers. The book title is apt as we see how Katsumi "drifts" along in his life, making the numerous career moves. Most of the time, you'll feel the doubt and uncertainty as he felt within the panels.

The book, at over 800 pages, is smartly inserted with historical events to portray the passing of time. It starts in 1948 and ends, a bit abruptly, in 1960 where Katsumi took part in the demonstration against the Security Treaty. Throughout the book, we also learn how manga has evolved and affected the artists.

I'll recommended this book to anyone who wishes to know Yoshihiro Tatsumi a little better, or a little bit of Japanese manga history.

(More pictures are available on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

Incredible and inspiring to see young Katsumi so driven as a high schooler! He was dealing with becoming a professional writer at age 19, an age at which most of his contemporaries in the US are warming seats in creative writing workshops. Especially moving was the part when he felt adrift, because of his transition from writing purely for fun to writing for money. This a true portrait of an artist -- one who works for the love of his work and to put food on the table.
The book is drawn well, and constantly puts the young Katsumi's struggles in historical context. LOVE IT.

Manga legend Yoshihiro Tatsumi chronicles his life and career in post-war Japan as an ever struggling artist attempting to rediscover both himself and his craft, intertwining his autobiography with the history of Manga. These two narratives are backdropped by the reconstruction of Japan in the post-war period as it struggles to regain national pride while at once being influenced by foreign works such as Western films, animation, and later the hard-boiled realism of American detective comics. Tatsumi (who is depicted in the story as Hiroshi Katsumi) begins his career as a Manga artist as early as middle school, where he and his younger brother write postcard Manga everyday for submission in monthly regional Manga magazines. By the time he was in his second year of high school, Tatsumi was already a fairly well known Manga artist who would begin to tip-toe into the same elite social circle as acclaimed Manga artist Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka became Tatsumi's mentor during his formative years in high school and early college and was his lifelong inspiration.

The graphic novel traces Tatsumi's early obsession with Manga as a neophyte in middle school and early college through his development and maturity as a renowned and daringly experimental artist. The work starts off slowly and repetitively, as the reader is taken through rejection letter after rejection letter from various publishers as Tatsumi attempts to kick-start his career. The novel is at its strongest when detailing the chronology of these influences on Tatsumi and Japanese culture at large. The story is one part autobiography, one part Manga almanac, one part history book: it references significant events in Tatsumi's life, such as his parents' failed marriage; events in Manga publication history, complete with replicated cover illustrations and publication dates of influential Manga; and milestones in art and culture, such as reproductions of General Douglas MacArthur's retirement speech from his post in Japan and a photograph of Elvis Presley taking his Army physical examination. At certain points, Tatsumi illustrates popular television figures as they were seen by viewers of that time period, complete with highly interlaced lines of blurred cathray tubed television. The result is very impressive and is a welcomed break from Tatsumi's very generic looking characters.

My major gripe with the work is the lack of in-depth psychological development. Tatsumi begins tracing his psychological development by describing the frictions in his parents marriage caused by his father's failure as a businessman. Furthermore, the narrative alludes to his father maintaining multiple affairs with supposed business partners. We are told the author was too young to realize the true nature of his father's relationships with these women until he became much older. However, Tatsumi never delineates when he finally understood his father's connection to these women and how it affected him and his family. This is altogether unfortunate, as one later finds that Tatsumi's brewing frustration and isolation are foundational to his creation of a new aesthetic theory for Manga, which he calls "Gekiga." Since adolescence, Tatsumi's relationships with women are marked by timidity and apprehension, causing him to retreat more and more deeply into the world of Manga. As Tatsumi's skill and reputation within the world of Manga continues arising, so does his dissatisfaction with it. He wishes to move away from the slapstick humor characterized by most panel and short-length works, and create a style of Manga that captures the psychological state of its characters and to deal with subject matters relating to everyday life. Tatsumi looks towards American and French cinema for inspiration for this new aesthetic, which could be understood as a form of realism (although that term is never used in the novel itself). The new Manga genre became so influential and controversial that politicians and advocacy groups began to demand it be pulled off of shelves and out of the hands of children. Many in Tatsumi's group were blacklisted. My dissatisfaction occurs with Tatsumi's reluctance to reveal the entire theory behind his aesthetic. Although the narrative tells us he used cinematic still frames and designs between panels to create psychological ambience, we are never told that the real meat and potatoes of his new genre lay behind his choice of subject matter. Although I haven't read any of Tatsumi's other works, summaries of his other works, such as Good-Bye, Abandon the Old in Tokyo, and The Push Man and Other Stories expose a writer willing to tackle taboo subjects such as sexuality, Hiroshima, and the inner torment of apparently normal, everyday people. For an artist who is so concerned and contemplative about the common man, there is not much in the book that elucidates his drawing from experiences with people he encountered to use as psychological models for his characters. Tatsumi does a fine job recording the artistic and commercial development of Manga, but falters when he attempts (or neglects) to capture the subjective experiences which are at the heart of his interpretation of Manga.

A Drifting Life is nonetheless a recommendable book for anyone interested in Manga or the history of literature (I fit more closely into the latter category). It places Manga in its context in the history of the Japanese reconstruction after the Second World War and argues for Manga as a powerful and legitimate medium to redefine the voice of a generation juxtaposed between an isolationist history and a heavily commercialized and commodified future.
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First off let me start by saying that I have been a big fan of the earlier Drawn & Quarterly collections of Tatsumi's work. Those collected works were gritty and unfiltered in portraying the despair and ugliness that lurks just beneath the surface of the veneer of normality - and for myself it is that 'peek' beyond the curtain that defines the brilliance of Tatsumi's story and art craft. "A Drifting Life" is a different reading experience being that it is an auto-biographical graphic novel chronicling Tatsumi's life from childhood into adulthood and primarily focusing on his interest in the medium of comics and how he built his career along the way. Keep in mind that this is a mammoth book - taking up 834 pages to tell the story. Tatsumi's simplistic and clean art style remains intact but the story and characterizations seem somewhat sanitized in comparison to the D&Q collections. The first 2/3rd's of this book is an engaging and engrossing coming of age tale that will appeal to anyone that experienced a creativity inspired childhood but the weakness in his story mostly takes place in the final third - this section was a bit too focused on the minutiae of the rapidly growing and evolving state of the Japanese manga industry and while i certainly recognize that there is an audience who will relish such focus on detail, ultimately it couldn't hold my interest to the very end. Still, I would highly recommend this book to anyone aspiring to a life in the creative world of comics and writing along with scholars of Japan's Post WWII evolution.

Although it has just come out and I've only read it once, I have no hesitation in saying that "A Drifting Life" is a manga classic. If you have read and enjoyed "Barefoot Gen," the more mature Tezuka works, or even newer manga like "Monster" or "Pluto" by Urasawa you need to check this out.

The art is simple and easy to read. The story is engaging and interesting all the way through. It really left me wanting more - I read all 800+ pages in one weekend. You get to see how classic manga was made and get insight into the industry.

This is not manga for kids. This is an intriguing story for adults. I would also recommend it to those who are new to manga/graphic novels because it is an extremely easy and intuitive read. Don't be intimidated by the page count. I read manga 5-10 times quicker than prose/regular books, and at least twice as quick as regular american comics.

I hope he writes a sequel because I am interested to know what his life in manga was like after this book ends.

On Wed. April 15, 2009, Dwight Garner reviewed Yoshihiro Tatsumi's autobiographical manga, "A Drifting Life," in the pages of The New York Times, a rare devotion of attention by the Times to anything manga-related. I read the review and immediately went out and bought the book at Jim Hanley's Universe in Manhattan. It took me a long time to read, partly because of the wealth of background details included in the book. Tatsumi frequently points out historical events and pop culture phenomena that took place at the time he was developing as a manga artist. I found it particularly gratifying that he mentions a large number of American films that had an impact on him. For instance, he devotes three pages to the western, SHANE (1953), recreating scenes from the film in drawings. He also mentions a lot of important Japanese films, from the famous (SEVEN SAMURAI) to the obscure (THE THIRTEEN EYES). (There's so much to savor in these pages that the thought of speeding through it, as some reviewers here have bragged about doing, appalls me.)

I took notes on everything I found interesting and even went on lengthy tangents away from the book to explore some of the people and items mentioned. I first heard of singer Hibari Misora from this book. She was the most popular recording star in postwar Japan and I've since acquired quite a collection of her CDs. Later in the book, Tatsumi mentions a movie musical that Misora made, and I tracked down its title, JANKEN MUSUME (1955), and have since acquired and viewed a DVD copy of the film and reviewed it on IMDB. When he mentioned Japan's first color movie, CARMEN COMES HOME (1951), I was astounded because I'd always been led to believe that GATE OF HELL (1953) was Japan's first color movie. I have since acquired and viewed CARMEN COMES HOME, a delightful comedy about a Tokyo stripper who makes a "triumphal" return to her rural hometown, and reviewed it also on IMDB.

Tatsumi expresses an affection for French films such as PEOPLE OF NO IMPORTANCE (DES GENS SANS IMPORTANCE, 1955) starring Jean Gabin. (This parallels "Galaxy Express 999" creator Leiji Matsumoto's tracing his style of drawing women back to the French movie, MARIANNE OF MY YOUTH, 1955.) We learn that Walt Disney's DUMBO was the first foreign film to be dubbed into Japanese. We get a look at wrestler Rikidozan, who beat an American opponent in 1954 by using karate chops. There are many more items like this and it was fun discovering them. All this and Osamu Tezuka, too. Tatsumi recreates most of this material through drawings, although he occasionally relies on photo reproductions, including one of Japanese beauty Kinuko Ito, who placed 3rd in the Miss Universe contest in 1953.

At one point, Tatsumi describes how famed manga artist Takao Saito ("Golgo 13") was influenced by American "hard-boiled" crime novelist Mickey Spillane (creator of Mike Hammer). Occasionally, he offers intriguing tidbits without going into enough depth, including a brief comparison of manga style to American comics and the display of a newspaper headline, "Vulgar manga proliferates / PTA takes stand," addressing the backlash against adult manga. I wanted to hear a lot more from Tatsumi about these things.

At a certain point towards the end of the book, I realized I wasn't seeing enough of Tatsumi's actual manga in these pages. We get a panel here and a cover drawing there, but not enough to truly demonstrate to me what role his work played in the overall development of postwar manga aimed at older readers. I wanted to see whole pages from his original manga. I've read lots of manga, but I'd never encountered Tatsumi's work before reading this book. After finishing the book, I went out to comic book stores and Japanese bookstores in Manhattan to look for Tatsumi's other manga. "A Drifting Life" was on the shelves, but not the other titles that have been published in English that I've been able to identify: "Black Blizzard," "Abandon the Old in Tokyo," "The Push Man and Other Stories," and "Good-Bye." I guess I'll have to order them from Amazon. I felt I would have been better prepared to appreciate this autobiographical manga after first being exposed to some of the artist's previous work. But I didn't realize this until the end of the book.

There have been many attempts at autobiographical graphic novels, Binky Brown and I Saw It among the earliest and Maus the best-known. I think it's fair to say that only fans of the genre and people interested in the specific issues explored were enthusiastic about these books.

Yoshihiro Tatsumi has created something totally different, a memoir that speaks to everyone, in totally original form. He tells an absorbing story using a few simple words and a few simple lines. He uses panels to pace the story, to focus details, to show facial expression, to convey emotion; in ways distinct from written autobiographies, but also distinct from film-makers, painters, photographers and anyone else who ever tried to use art to convey the feeling and meaning of a life.

I feel the reviewers complaining about the lack of depth are missing the point. The author's technique cannot go below the surface, he's drawing pictures. He can use those pictures to suggest depths, but not to explore them. A writer can spend thousands of words (or more) describing internal psychological states or conveying depth in other ways. Other graphic novelists, and also film-makers and painters, attempt to do the same by leaving realism behind or by including a lot of detail. Tatsumi confines himself to simple realism, but realism as perceived at the time, and stripped down to essential lines. He tells us what he saw and leaves it to us to imagine what went on below (and above, and before, and after).

To take one example, a historian might want to know the name and background of the waitress in the restaurant beneath his apartment who tries to seduce him with comic results. An artist might paint a haunting evocation of youth and inexperience and lust. Tatsumi draws her as he saw her, essentials only, few facts and no reliable ones. Was she young and pretty, confident and cheerful, hardworking and promiscuous? We know he thought so at the time, nothing more, but also nothing less. He conveys the episode not in one detailed picture, but in a dozen quick sketches, with word balloons and backdrops. In this way we learn about his life in a different manner than any previous autobiographical work of art, we learn different aspects than we have ever encountered.

This is not only a book for Manga fans. It's a story anyone can understand. The pain of having your ideas ignored or misunderstood. The pleasure of winning some degree of acceptance, and the frustration when others twist it for their own ends (but at the same time, the temptation of letting them do it, to gain recognition and money at the expense of artistic purity). The complex personal relationships, often searing, sometimes wondrous. The ups and downs of collaboration. The enigma of other people, those we love, those we respect and those we fear. All this with a backdrop of Japanese history and culture, a boy growing up, and an art form evolving.

This is an extraordinary masterwork. It takes only a couple of hours to read and you will be drawn into it in a different manner from anything else you've ever experienced.

For myself, I saw this as an homage to the spirit of creativity and the courage needed to express one's self. I consider this to be a masterpiece in world of gegika/manga/comics.

I could go on but it's more important to me to give my five star rating and encourage you to do yourself a favor and pick this up and enjoy!

A DRIFTING LIFE is a marvelous book, which took the author over 10 years to complete. And the memoir covers only a small part of his life; the book abruptly ends in the 1960s and then fast-forwards to the modern time in 1995. There the author ponders about life and death, after attending a memorial service of Osamu Tezuka, the "God of Manga", also the artist who inspired the author as a teenage boy. The artist laments "Time swallows up everyone, without distinction between the genius and the ordinary."

Two salient features of the book. The author weaves quite a few historical events into the book and hence provides a peek into the national psyche of the Japanese people soon after the World War II. Here's a list the events Tatsumi notes in his book:
* Hironoshin Furuhashi won a gold medal at the Los Angeles Olympics. "The news that `Japan had beat the U.S.' made people happy during a time that was otherwise filled with darkness."
* "Dr. Hideki Yakawa became the first Japanese Nobel Prize winner (in Physics), giving much needed confidence and courage to the Japanese people."
* "Yoshio Shirai defeated Dado Marino to become the first world champion boxer from Japan, lifting the Japanese people's spirit."
* "Audiences went wild for the established pattern in which Rikidozan...would defeat an American wrestler with Karate chops. Japan had been dominated economically and militarily by the U.S. since the end of the war, and these wrestling matches were a much-welcomed (if symbolic) response."

Another equally interesting aspect is the author's account of western influence on his life as an artist and on other aspects of the Japanese society, as well as the technological progress in Japan during the first two decades after the war.
* "The first domestically manufactured washing machine was released."
* The release of Walter Disney films "Bambi", "Cinderella" and many other American movies (e.g. Romeo and Juliet & Godzilla).
* The beginning of the television ear in 1953, when "crowds gathered around `street corner' TVs."
* A "fancy cake" at on a Christmas day, and singing of "Jingle Bells"

His personal life of a drifting artist is also fascinating, albeit quite typical of an artist (then and now). He started publishing manga as a high school student, formed a manga group but flunked his entrance exam to the art school (in fact he skipped the English exam but without telling his parents). He worked hard, moved around a lot, occasionally missed deadlines (and had to run around to dodge incessant telegrams, phone calls and personal visits to collect manuscripts he promised). His greatest contribution to Japanese manga is the development of Gekiga (''), a new genre in the manga world.

A far detailed account is on the intense, nearly cutting throat competition among the young talented Japanese Manga artists. There were many publishers (many of them were located in places like a basement, a street corner, or next to other small grocery shops). These publishers competed ruthlessly, vying to attract young talents, getting ideas from western films, gambling on artistic innovations.

Unlike a typical manga book, which one can sit reading, fully relaxed. A DRIFTING LIFE is packed with series of actions and suspenses. The reader is in for a wild ride, travelling with the author, from one surprise to another. In this masterfully rendered piece, the artist unfolds an unknown and uncertain world of unspeakable beauty and amazement.

Nothing beats spending a raining Saturday reading a book like this, with a cup of tea.

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Excellent read. Went through it within a week and a half. When I had time I couldn't put it down. The storyline is great along with the character development and it really shows you a lot about the process of manga and the history of it.