May 16, 2022
Alt-manga pioneer Yamada’s nuanced depictions of marriage and family life make their English-language debut in this pensive collection of comics from 1981–1984. With delicate lines and solid black shapes, Yamada sketches a portrait of housewife Chiharu Yamakawa, who raises two young daughters and is treated like a servant by her husband. As her children become more independent and her husband spends even less time with the family, Chiharu takes a part-time job and eventually starts selling handmade dolls, while trying to figure out how to find contentment. This groundbreaking comic was one of the first manga to depict matrimony and motherhood from such an intimate perspective, as Yamada drew on her experiences to illuminate Chiharu’s fictional compromised domesticity. Despite Chiharu’s simmering discontent, the moments of joy and love she experiences with her children (such as looking at puddles after the rain) bring levity to the everyday events. Yamada’s art style is so overly spare that it omits even characters' faces at points, with loosely sketched gestural action. Defying conventions expected still by many manga fans, this will appeal best to manga-curious indie comics readers, especially fans of comics parenting chronicles by the likes of Keiler Roberts or Glynnis Fawkes.
Starred review from August 1, 2022
A middle-class Japanese housewife in the early 1980s contemplates her identity and place in society in this masterwork from one of alternative manga's most important and influential figures. Chiharu Yamakawa's life is so thoroughly dominated by caring for her husband and daughters that when she finally has an opportunity to leave the house alone, she's haunted by a sense of having forgotten something important and is uncomfortable moving through the world unaccompanied. At home, she wrestles with seeing her children as distinct beings instead of extensions of herself. She resents their neediness but delights in watching them explore the world. Her husband is less of a partner than another dependent; she wonders how it's possible that she knows everything about him while he doesn't know her at all, and whether the bond between them can still be called love. Translator and comics historian Holmberg supplies a long essay explaining the impact that this work had when it was first published in the early 1980s as a serial in the influential magazine Garo. VERDICT In this seminal feminist alt-manga, Yamada (who passed away in 2009) revealed her protagonist's complex inner life through poetic prose and fluid, expressive linework reminiscent of fashion illustration but keyed to depict complex emotion. A brilliantly realized, keenly insightful, resonant character study.
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July 1, 2022
Initially serialized in Japan between 1981 and 1984, this is considered the late Yamada's most famous work; it's also her first to arrive in the U.S., translated by notable manga historian Holmberg. Decades since its introduction, the slice-of-home-life bildungsroman remains hauntingly relevant as a resonating record of wife- and motherhood. Chihiru is raising two young daughters, answering their every need until they go to bed, and then, "The night is mine now." Yet she finds she doesn't know what to do with herself. When her husband calls to announce he is (again) not coming home because of work, only then does she admit, "Some days . . . are just so . . . intolerably . . . lonely." Chihiru is married to a mostly absent husband, left to be primary parent (nurse, chef, scheduler, mediator) and full-time housekeeper. His few appearances are rarely joyful, creating more disruption and demands. As the girls mature, Chihiru dares to venture out, seeking part-time employment, making her own money, and asking (and answering) "Who am I?" The story is autobiographically inspired--Yamada herself survived a violent marriage, during which drawing in secret became an act of resistance. Her pioneering manga--mostly black-and-white and strikingly expressive--was some of the first to realistically confront the difficulties of womanhood, a feat for which she deserves wider, greater recognition, as Holmberg presents in his essential, definitive afterword.
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