Customer Reviews

The Push Man and Other Stories

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have no idea what pulled me to this book when I first heard about it, but I am glad it did. I have not, as many others have not, heard of Tatsumi and that is a shame. It is good to know, however, there is a plan to release more volumes of work (please hurry). Sixteen stories comprise the first volume and all are powerful. Angst ridden? You don't know the meaning of angst until you read this book. There is very little hope in this with tales of unrequited love, murder, abortion, prostitution and transvestism, peeping toms and suicide. The central character is always a man in some state of despair. The tales, though, some quite wordless, and the drawings, beautifully rendered, pull the reader quickly from one to the next. Despite being a potential downer (and some may cursorily say misogynistic), the stories are actually darkly comic and well told. I paid full price for this book because I didn't want to wait for it - I'm very happy I did. Buy this book!

"I myself am a very normal person. Please do not interpret these stories as representative of the author's personality." This plea to the reader appears on the very last page of this book, and upon coming across it, most readers will probably think the disclaimer belongs at the front of the book. Because by the end of these 16 short graphic stories, which represent a "best of" anthology of Tatsumi's work from 1969 (the plan is to continue releasing a "best of" for each year), it's very hard not to suspect the author of having some major dysfunctions with both society at large, and especially with women. According to the introduction by Adrian Tomine, Tatsumi is considered "the grandfather of Japanese alternative comics", and coined the term "gekiga" to distinguish naturalistic, more adult comics from the popular "manga" fare for kids. The material in this collection certainly falls into the "gekiga" category, as it encompasses very adult material. Not "adult" in the sexual sense (although there is sexual explicit material), but in the more metaphysical sense that is brought on by feelings of urban alienation

The stories are set in late '60s Japan, in what is presumably Tokyo, and Tatsumi writes that he found inspiration in newspaper human interest stories and the police blotter. If that's the case, it seems he was drawn to tragic stories about men who just couldn't cope with their lot. In every story, the protagonist is a kind-faced everyman figure (visually, he is the same in almost every story), who works some kind of menial job either on his own or with men who don't respect him. He either lives alone or at home with a wife or girlfriend who either works as a bar hostess or openly cheats on him. Stripped of his manhood on all fronts, he either lashes out in violence, takes cold-blooded revenge, or commits suicide. Indeed, it's impossible not to notice the misogyny that pervades the stories -- literally every woman is either wanton, scheming, drunk, greedy, or somehow tainted. The urban setting, dominant theme of alienation, outbursts of violence and disgust, and sexual disgust are perhaps best compared to the film "Taxi Driver" in terms of tone, and yet are ones that seem to crop up over and over in modern Japanese fiction and film.

in contrast to the gritty subject matter, the artwork tends to be very clean and crisp, and as with everything published by Drawn & Quarterly, the book is beautifully produced. The panels haven't simply been "flopped" from the original Japanese layout, but have been rearranged for Western formatting, and the results are spectacular. Fans of Adrian Tomine's work will appreciate both the visual style, and the use of silence throughout the stories. However, this is a book that should be read not only by comics aficionados, but by anyone interested in the literature of modern Japan. It will be interesting to see if Tatsumi's stories change tone and theme over time, and I look forward to the 1970 volume.

Length:: 0:17 Mins

Before I read the book, I had no idea who Yoshihiro Tatsumi is. He has been called "the grandfather of Japanese alternative comics" and he certainly deserves it.

The Push Man and Other Stories is a collection of short stories previously published in Japanese, now translated and reformatted for the western audience by Adrain Tomine.

In each story, Yoshihiro Tatsumi looks at a different facet of Japanese society. The main character is always a man filled with restrained angst, going about their daily jobs, ending with a solemn note. Every tale is filled with some form of sexuality -- sex, abortion, prostitution, etc.

In the story "The Push Man", we're introduced to the pusher, whose job is to get commuters into packed trains by pushing them in. One day, he helped a lady whose clothes were torn from the pushing. They spent the night together and she invited him to her place the next day. The story ends with her sisters pushing each other away to get him. In "Telescope", a disabled guy committed suicide after being paid to watch someone else have sex. In "Test Tube", a sperm donor can't stop thinking about his recipient and eventually forced himself onto her. You can see that there are no happy endings here.

The storytelling is masterly. Every story is told in a darkly comic style, short dialogues and cleanly laid out panels. Even without text, the stories will be easy to understand. Yoshihiro Tatsumi has a way of dissecting his characters, providing a very raw look at their hard and unforgiving life.

The 16 stories are short. I like short if it means leaving the reader wanting more* at the end.

It's highly recommended but certainly not for everyone.

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

Yoshihiro Tatsumi, The Push Man and Other Stories (Drawn and Quarterly, 2005)

The Push Man is the kind of thing that's going to weird you out anyway, but it will do so even more when you realize that all of the little stories collected here were actually written thirty-five years before the book's publication. To say Tatsumi was ahead of his time is, perhaps, the understatement of the year.

Because of the odd time differential, pretty much everything I could say about this book would need to be reversed, and would be less appropriate for the review. For example, Tatsumi doesn't show stylistic similarities to Charles Burns; Burns shows stylistic similarities to Tatsumi. (Either way round, it's a compliment.) Burns is an excellent point of comparison for those unfamiliar with Tatsumi; both are looking to get under society's skin and play around with the guts for a while before showing them to you like an eager-to-please six-year-old holding a dead badger out to you as a present and expecting you to exclaim with joy. Of course, the lives themselves are different-- Burns chronicles the stoner-era Pacific Northwest, while Tatsumi is looking at the sixties salaryman-- but looking at the two artists side-by-side, what's more apt to strike the reader is the universality of the darker human emotions. Pain, rage, confusion, hopelessness, and despair float through Tatsumi's characters as if they're breathing it straight from the air. Tatsumi captures these essences wonderfully. You have to wonder about the psyche of a person who's capable of defining characters so well with so few words and then doing such horrible things to them (or letting those things be done to them).

I don't think it would be terribly much of a stretch to at least hazard the hypothesis that Tatsumi's work, when it first appeared in 1969, may have been the single biggest thing to ever happen to graphic literature. Tatsumi made people sit up and say "hey, maybe this is something we should take seriously." Translations of his work into English are long overdue (except, of course, for bootlegs), and very welcome. This is great stuff. Seek it out. **** ½

This book was recommended to me by Amazon having bought some of editor Tomine's comics. But while his Shortcomings is a very good comic, The Push Man and Other Stories is simply amazing.
I am generally not a fan of manga or Japanese comics because I don't like the style of drawing the characters, but the artwork by Tatsumi immediately attracted me (a pleasant surprise because the "Look Inside" feature is not available for this item).
But, boy, did these stories blew me away! They are amazingly daring for the time (compared to most of the European comincs of the time), they are still strikingly relevant. There is a sort of existential quality about them and I was immediately reminded of the Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Kawabata, which I'd recommend if you like this collection. They linger in your mind and form a sort of visual poetry only the best of comics achieve. This is recognised by Fantagraphics and this edition is quite splendid with an introduction and an interview with Tatsumi as a bonus.
I have a feeling I will read this collection more than once. In any case, after finishing the book, I immediately ordered Abandon the Old in Tokyo!

This first Drawn & Quaterly (lavish, beautiful hardcover) compilation of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's work, edited by Adrian Tomine, consists of 16 short stories, originally published in 1969. Most of them are very short, just 8 pages long, and appeared in a magazine called 'Gekiga-Young'. Two longer stories at the end of the volume are more in line with what we will find in the two later books of stories from 1970 ('Abandon the Old in Tokyo') and 1971-1972 ('Goodbye').

An alternative title for this book could be 'The worst jobs in the world'. This is a list of occupations of the protagonists of these stories (all men):
* Factory worker
* Porn movies projectionist (when porn was yet illegal)
* Garbage incinerator operator
* Massage parlor ad-man (i mean, the guy walking the street with a placard saying 'Massage Parlor / Open 10 AM - 5 PM')
* University lab intern / sperm donor
* Pimp
* Push man (one who pushes passengers into crowded rush-hour subway trains)
* Sewer maintenance worker
* Handicapped & unemployed peeping tom
* Contract killer
* Auto mechanic
* Office clerk
* Disinfector (one that cleans & disinfects phones)
* Factory worker
* Seal authentificator at an insurance company
* ... and we don't know the job of the man in the last story, 'My Hitler', if he has one.

Also, for the women, we get quite a few bar hostesses.

As you can see, Tatsumi's work depicts the underbelly of the affluent urban Japanese society of the economic boom of the 60s, dealing with themes of existential alienation and sexual frustration. His focus is always humanist, he's not a Marxist toting party line slogans about the woes of the proletariat. He is direct and physical, yet elliptical and poetic at the same time. I am heavily reminded of Shohei Imamura's movies of the same period, like Criterion's 'The Pornographers' and the box-set 'Pigs, Pimps, & Prostitutes'.

Now the bad news. Reading this book in one sitting can be a rather monotone affair. The stories, while good when taken on their own, tend to be very much alike when taken all together. I don't know to what extent this is Tatsumi's fault (being rather one-noted in the year 1969, certainly the 8-page limit didn't help either) or Adrian Tomine's fault (in not choosing two or three stories that diverged from the common pattern.) Certainly the stories in later volumes are more varied in setting, structure and subject matter, as well as having some women protagonists, too. We must also remember that the natural habitat for this stuff is a bi-weekly manga magazine, not a "graphic novel".

Another qualm is the "Westernized" left-to-right format, that plays havoc with the original page layout. Hey, publishers, I've been reading manga in the original Japanese format for years now, and my head have not exploded yet, it's a myth!

Despite these shortcoming this is a must read for all Gekiga aficionados, or adult (as in grown-up) comics readers in general. Or, even more in general, for readers of good literature.

Yoshihiro Tatsumi's "The Push Man" is a collection of 8 page stories detailing the lives of young people in working class areas of a nameless city. As usual with Tatsumi's work the stories are highly imaginative, well drawn, and utterly compelling to read. Once you pick up the book you won't put it down until you've finished. Then you'll go back and re-read some of the more haunting stories.

The themes are of betrayal, isolation, revenge, sacrifice, and loneliness. It isn't the most cheerful of books! That said, a lot of the stories will stay with you. "Piranha" follows a factory worker deliberately having his arm chopped off for the insurance money, giving the money to his cocktail waitress girlfriend, who leaves him after he can't take more of her abuse and grabs her arm, thrusting it into his piranha tank.

"Bedridden" features a mysterious girl in a bed who is apparently the perfect sex slave. Yet each of her "masters" ends up dead. "The Push Man" follows a train worker/student whose job is to push people onto the trains, literally cramming them in so they'll all fit, until one day he gets swallowed by the crowd himself.

There are a lot of 8 page stories in the 200 page book so I won't go into all of them. Unwanted pregnancies, cheating partners, confused and desperate young men, are all explored in the book. There are a couple of longer pieces included as well.

The artwork is fantastic, in particular the opening pages to the stories which is usually a page long illustration of a shadowy part of a city. Tatsumi does a brilliant job of capturing urban life in Japan albeit slightly dated with massive TVs and a lack of computers, it's fascinating to see how familiar the stories are and how fresh they read despite being decades old. The freshness of the stories reflects the high quality storyteller and artist that is Tatsumi and I loved this book like all the others the brilliant Drawn & Quarterly have been steadily putting out over the last 5 years. An excellent comic book by an incredible artist.

These are Yoshihiro Tatsumi's stories from 1969, part of a series promoted by another comics artist whose works I always read: Adrian Tomaine. These stories could certainly be about real people, as we are all pretty weird under the skin. The stories are almost shocking in their twisted way, unless you've read some of Tatsumi's work before. Think of the most outrageous human behavior you can imagine, and it'll show up in one of Tatsumi's stories. If you're a fan of Yoshihiro Tatsumi or Adrian Tomaine, you won't want to pass this one up.

Around Christmas, I got a package in from a friend. Apparently she had picked a manga at random from my wishlist and sent it to me. This book had been an interest to me but I hadn't really planned on getting it.
I'm very glad she did send it to me. Each comic has a nice, subtle way of getting the message across. And believe me, there is a message in each of the short comics within the book.
This has been a very good read (I've read it several times now) and I intend to follow through with the other books in the series. :)

book arrived in perfect condition, gritty- every day life subject matter that everyone likes to keep secret brought out shamelessly into the open. loves it.