Abandon the Old in Tokyo

"Abandon the Old in Tokyo" is Drawn & Quaterly's second collection of the illustrated works of Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Similar to the first volume, this book is a collection of comic vignettes that captures the grim state of 1960's/70's Tokyo, a period where Japan is on the path to hyper accelerated economic growth but not quite out of the doldrums of their post WW2 recovery. Tatsumi's stories in these books chronicles the blue-collar, under-class - the work force that rebuilt Japan but often unrecognized and unappreciated by those reaping the most benefit. The 8 stories in this book are universally grim and bleak and the thematics range the gamut from sexual depravity, socio-economic frustrations, greed, betrayal and abandonment. If you're not in the mood for stories with such a tone then this likely will not appeal to you but if you're willing to give it a try and go in with an open mind you will certainly be in for a memorable reading experience.

This is a collection of manga stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. If you have only experience with Astroboy or the more recent Pokemon/Naruto/mecha manga this will be a surprise and perhaps not to your taste. There are no magical creatures, cyborg computer hackers, fantastic robots, ninjas or samurai. Tatsumi shows a realistic gritty dirty often sordid Japan. The people are often frustrated, disappointed and have lives lacking meaning and satisfaction. Taken together, they offer an interesting look into the oily, dirty underbelly of the normally glossy techno efficient face presented by postwar Japan. If you like more serious comics (Chris Ware, Harvey Pekar, Art Spegelman, etc.) you'll probably appreciate Tatsumi.

super smart and down to earth- all the nitty gritty that most people don't see or choose to ignore as part of their actual lives, all here in hnest simplistic poetic beauty. a timeless classic for sure.

Tatsumi is a great artist and storyteller, so why only 4 stars? The reason is the unrelenting bleakness of the stories. After the middle story, "Unpaid", I found it very hard to finish the collection. Perhaps collecting these stories in one place is a mistake, due to their depressing tone. Apparently, the stories originally appeared in different places. Amazingly, two of them in children's magazines!! I was also left wondering about Tatsumi's place in Manga, since Koji Suzuki in the introduction admits to not knowing about Tatsumi beforehand. In the Q & A at the end of the book, Tatsumi can't think of another Japanese author working in the same style.

Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Abandon the Old in Tokyo (Drawn and Quarterly, 2006) "The more we jam ourselves together, the more isolated we all are." I still have no idea why it is that some authors would pen a line like this and have it be utter trash, while a select few-- the redoubtable Yoshihiro Tatsumi among them-- can make it sound like the deepest sort of philosophic meditation... and get away with it. This is the second compendium of Tatsumi's work to be published in America (the first was The Push Man and Other Stories), and all I can say is "it's about bloody time." This is amazing work. Tatsumi mentions in the interview after the stories that he was entirely unaware of the "underground comix" movement in America at the time he was drawing these stories; it's amazing that he developed independently along the same lines of thought as they did, but that seems to be what happened. Tatsumi's stories are the same kind of slice-of-life thing, but with less of a drug atmosphere and more pessimism (I want to say "nihilism," there, but it's not quite right; there is a sense of hope in some of these stories, however quickly it may be crushed). The end result is small, profoundly affecting pieces of work that command the reader to devour them. If you haven't had the pleasure of encountering the work of Yoshihiro Tatsumi yet-- and most of us in America haven't-- you owe it to yourself to make his acquaintance. **** ½