In Translation | "My Picture Book" by Fumiko Okada
An echo of a scream; a dense and personal one-shot from Fumiko Okada.
When Fumiko Okada was twelve years old, her mom died.
Like most kids--and all future manga artists of the time--she was a fan of Osamu Tezuka growing up in snowy Hokkaido, trading her shoujo books for shounen with the boys from a neighboring family to read the latest Astro Boy, but according to Okada, it wasn't the godfather of manga that inspired her to enter the industry. It wasn't long nights wrapped up in fantasy, or books read so much that the covers fell off, or any kind of praise received for the pictures she'd draw as a child. No, what made her become a manga artist was that empty hole in her life where her mother once stood.
In the wake of the death, young Okada became preoccupied with a question. "If we're just going to die, then why do we have to live?" The question swirled around in her head and crashed headfirst into her interest in drawing, manifesting into manga made to ask an audience--any audience--that very same thing. "I just wanted somebody to give me an answer."
If you've read my other two Okada translations (and you should), then you already--at least in part--what to expect with "My Picture Book": An abstract, associative story of anxiety and indistinct emptiness full of poetry and soliloquies and overwhelmed with visual metaphors; something at once vague, hard to grasp, and deeply affecting.
But there's also something different here. "My Picture Book" drifts, spreads a horror and desperation that borders on something close to anger like a fire gone out of control. Intentionally or not, it is the most obviously personal of her stories yet.
It's also visually quite different, the hyper-stylized dollish characters of "Afternoon in the Sunroom" replaced with something full of detail (just look at the panel of a bookshelf--I ain't translating all that, but she's written a title for each and every one) and pushing comparatively closer towards realism. At some points, I couldn't blame someone for thinking it was drawn by a completely different person. But that's just to be expected from Okada.
Enjoy!
Music of the Week | Blue Water, Red Water by Kazuki Tomokawa
Traveling kamishibai ripped from a Shuji Terayama movie come to life and given an acoustic guitar. Tomokawa is one of the great acid folk singers to emerge in the 70s, wailing and screaming and spiting out poetry with violence as he does his absolute best to destroy his guitar with each strum. This album sees him expand just a bit, other instruments like violins coming in to really heighten a sort of surreal carnival energy to his melodies, but don’t think that means you’ll be getting Van Dyke Parks production—this is still a hell scream from another world.
Book of the Week | Don’t Call It Mystery by Yumi Tamura
Manga god Yumi Tamura’s current smash hit sees her working in the world of mysteries, a completely different genre that her usual SFF. Following the mis-adventures of an oddball college student with big hair, Tamura wrings out great little head-scratchers in the way only she could: With a hard focus on compassionate, empathetic considerations for everyone involved. Every volume is gonna leave you wanting to cry, but in like a good way, from the messy kindness on display. You’ll also probably want to cry just looking at it though, because Tamura is unquestionably one of the greatest the medium has ever seen in terms of both art and pacing. Reading her work is always such a profound joy.
Movie of the Week | Door II: Tokyo Diary (dir. Banmei Takahashi, 1991)
Blood and water. A sequel to a crowd-pleasing satirical horror flick, Door II diverges wildly into a (simultaneously and contradictorily) intimate and distanced character study of a sex worker who loves what she does even though the world screams that she shouldn't. It's all blood and water here. Even when characters aren't surrounded by water or listening to recordings of "ice floes", they are all underwater. Even on dry land, even in homes, even when way up high in a skyscraper--water water water. If that ain't real I don't know what is. Extremely Convenience Store Woman coded. I think I'm the world's biggest defender of this flick.
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 an incredible website translating interviews and author comments from manga magazines