Good-Bye [Hardcover]

Yoshihiro Tatsumi (Author), Adrian Tomine (Editor)

Book Description

Release date: July 8, 2008

“Prepare to be disturbed and blown away. The stuff is remarkable, amazing.”—Los Angeles Times

Good-Bye is the third in a series of collected short stories from Drawn & Quarterly by the legendary Japanese cartoonist Yoshihiro Tatsumi, whose previous work has been selected for several annual “top 10” lists, including those compiled by Amazon and Time.com. Drawn in 1971 and 1972, these stories expand the prolific artist’s vocabulary for characters contextualized by themes of depravity and disorientation in twentieth-century Japan.

Some of the tales focus on the devastation the country felt directly as a result of World War II: a prostitute loses all hope when American GIs go home to their wives; a man devotes twenty years of his life to preserving the memory of those killed at Hiroshima, only to discover a horrible misconception at the heart of his tribute. Yet, while American influence does play a role in the disturbing and bizarre stories contained within this volume, it is hardly the overriding theme. A philanthropic foot fetishist, a rash-ridden retiree, and a lonely public onanist are but a few of the characters etching out darkly nuanced lives in the midst of isolated despair and fleeting pleasure.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Tatsumi has been called the grandfather of Japanese alternative comics, and this third collection of his stories shows why. Tatsumi takes on subjects as difficult as the legacy of Hiroshima, incest and the sexual humiliations of postwar Japanese soldiers, yet is never exploitative. Instead, the stories humanize all of the characters involved. Tatsumi excels at depicting honest human reactions to complex situations, and he refuses to rely on a single style of storytelling. The first story, Hell, is a brief masterpiece. A freelance photojournalist snaps a picture of one of the infamous Hiroshima shadows—shadows of people burnt into the walls by the intensity of the atomic blast. The shadow appears to be a boy rubbing his mother's back, but years later, the photographer learns the awful truth behind the scene. By contrast, Just a Man forgoes the O. Henry twist, instead telling a circular slice-of-life story about the quiet despair of a Japanese salaryman. Rash, a brief story of a man afflicted with a psychosomatic skin condition, reads as if Haruki Murakami decided to try his hand at manga. Tatsumi's art is masterful: he switches art styles from cartoony manga to stark realism with ease and is equally adept at depicting graceful motion, grisly suffering and complicated emotion. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The 1971–72 stories in Tomine’s third collection of vintage works by revolutionary manga artist Tatsumi portray a society haunted by loss and mired in resignation in the quarter-century following World War II. Although Tatsumi typically depicts malaise-entrapped protagonists without spelling out the social causes of their despondency, several tales here are uncharacteristically political, set just after the war and addressing its actual effect or, more precisely, that of Japan’s face-losing defeat on the characters rather than only suggesting it. In the harrowing “Good-Bye,” a woman turns to prostitution with American soldiers, while her father heedlessly exploits her situation. In “Hell,” a photographer finds his life’s meaning in a photo he took in A-bombed Hiroshima but learns the harsh truth behind the image decades later. In other stories, a henpecked man decides to squander his squirreled-away savings on a prostitute, a bar hostess remains faithful to her imprisoned boyfriend, and a retired salaryman suffers a mysterious rash. Tatsumi’s mastery of the visual simplicity of classic manga gives a stark power to these devastating, uncompromising pieces. --Gordon Flagg

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly; 1st Hardcover Ed edition (July 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1897299370
• ISBN-13: 978-1897299371
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #774,063 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Gekiga! Welcome to magazine publishing, Mr. Tatsumi August 31, 2008

By animate ~

Format:Hardcover

The selections for D&Q's third Tatsumi publishing were mostly taken from 1971 or '72, around the time that he was moving away from rental comics (similar to rental movies in America) and into magazine publishing, which impacted his work greatly.

The stories are mostly concerned with the daily nuances of life; many of the stories end on the exact note that they begin on. Some of them are less serious in tone, but the first ("HELL") and last ("GOOD-BYE") are especially unnerving in one way or another. Without giving too much away, I'll say that the first story immediately brought me into Hiroshima and its aftermath. Tatsumi has a way of bringing readers into his art with his gorgeous drawings and shading. The writing itself is superb, too, with themes being more adult oriented ("gekiga") than typical shonen manga.

War, sex, murder, mystery, fetishism -- Tatsumi covers all the bases of the Japanese underbelly, and in this third volume goes more political than before. This is highly recommended.

His next publishing will be "A DRIFTING LIFE", an 820 page autobiographical work involving a post-war adolescent growing into a budding manga artist.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Sick and twisted -- in a good way. :) September 8, 2008

By J. Vee

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I've enjoyed all of Tatsumi's published work (that is in English), and purchased the books for my small library. His art provides social commentary in a rare form that could be considered *extremely* offensive to some -- fair warning!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Eye-opening manga October 20, 2008

By A. Yun

Format:Hardcover

Kudos to Drawn & Quarterly and Adrian Tomine for bringing Yoshihiro Tatsumi's work to the US! Good-Bye is the third collection of Tatsumi's short stories and each collection just gets better. Tatsumi's style that mixes realistic backgrounds with cartoon characters works so well. His stories are darker than typical manga of the time, yet they are so relevant in the present day. I hope D&Q continues to publish his work here.