In Translation | "The Cockatoo" by Masami Kuroda
Part four of the proto-gekiga publication, Kage.
Welcome back to another thrilling installment of Kage, and the end is in sight! There's one more story after this and then that original first publication which quietly shifted the course of manga history forever will be fully translated. Now, there's also a second volume of Kage featuring the same artists providing even more crime goodness, but for the sake of everyone (mostly myself) we'll hold off on that for now. I'm happy to translate that eventually if you all want it, but I got some other EXTREMELY cool things to work on before that...also I really want to write some essays – you know, what I'm supposed to be doing on this site lol
Anyway! Today's a nice, short one – "The Cockatoo" by Masami Kuroda.
Kuroda is a truly unknown name English-side (Google him, it's rough), but he's an instrumental name in Kage's history as well as having one heck of a life's story.
Born in 1917 and serving in the Pacific War after studying oil painting, Kuroda spent his life before entering the world of manga drifting through jobs that slowly led to his calling. He worked in a coal mine, then made money drawing shunga (think erotic ukiyo-e – you know, like the classic Hokusai octopus drawing) for American soldiers. Then he applied narrative to his art and peddled as a kamishibai (street theater using a series of drawn images) performer which eventually allowed him to open up his own bookstore, which he ran while drawing up art for various clients in various fields. A real collection of the most interesting jobs you can imagine, huh!
What's important for today though, is that he eventually became an advisor for the publisher Hinomaru Bunko and helped convince the company to make a push into the booming manga industry, personally helping bring fresh, young talent together to create a new series of stand-alone crime shorts – Kage.
And lucky for all of us, he was able to contribute his own story to the collection, a charming 5-page mystery that condenses the genre to its essentials and layers on top of it a charming sense of humor.
Enjoy!
Music of the Week | Love by Yuki Saito
Everyone’s favorite mormon idol has put out a whole host of great pop work throughout her career—you basically can’t go wrong with her run in the 80s—but the more personal and intimate Love might be her masterpiece. And while it’s nonstop highlights, my favorites are the staggeringly beautiful closer "Imi" and “Yours” which is genuinely, no joke or hyperbole, one of my favorite pop songs of all time.
Book of the Week | The Summer of Ubume by Natsuhiko Kyogoku
Me-core to the max. A mystery novel that serves as a swirling lecture on world war 2, post-war Japan, spirits and yokai, curses, metaphysics, memory, faith, fiction, and how all of it is connected deeper than any one person could possibly hope to understand. But despite how dense it is (it DOES open with nearly 100 pages just talking about metaphysics) it’s also shockingly readable; an addictive horror whodunnit about newborns kidnapped from a hospital, a woman who’s been pregnant for 20 months, and her husband who vanished like smoke in a locked room. Horrible nightmare tragedy has never been better.
Movie of the Week | Study of the Virgin in School Uniform Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (dir. Keiichi Tanaami, 1975)
An independent animated short from one of the major names of Japanese pop art, this short kaleidoscopic collage of rapid associative imagery blasts the senses until they can't take much in anymore. It's easy to appreciate (and love) on a purely aesthetic, experiential level – very much feels like something the crew at anime studio Shaft have studied – but you can also dig way deeper than you might expect into this thorny well of eroticism, feminist interrogation of the exploitation of women, and the creator's clearly complicated relationship to sex. A great object to rotate int he brain.
Have thoughts about anything covered this week? Got a recommendation you’re dying to share? Want to tell me how handsome and cool I am? Leave a comment below!
oh and here's some knowledge about why anime eyes are Like That