Shigeru Mizuki (1922–2015)

Back in 2015, I visited the rural Japanese town of Tono in Iwate prefecture, known as the “City of Folklore,” just a few years after the hundredth anniversary of the publication of the influential Japanese folklorist Kunio Yanagita’s 1910 masterwork Tono Monogatari, a slim, fascinating collection of 119 short vignettes told to him by local citizen Sasaki Kizen. At the same time, I noted that the acclaimed manga artist Shigeru Mizuki had published a comic adaption of the work to celebrate this anniversary, so when I noticed that it had been recently been translated into English, I was eager to read it. Mizuki takes Yanagita’s spare records of the valley's local stories, and crafts a thoughtful comic as the elderly manga artist depicts himself tramping across the Tono valley in the footsteps of Yanagita and Sasaki, making me feel like I was also visiting again.

As the creator of the seminal manga GeGeGe no Kitaro, Mizuki himself also had a significant role in popularizing the yokai and mystery of Japanese folklore both in Japan and across the world, making him an ideal conduit to explore this standard in Japanese folklore study. Along with background information provided by translator and folklorist Zack Davisson on the Shinto meanings behind these lore, the tales lend themselves to Mizuki’s comical yet grounded style. Both eerie and oddly prosaic, the tales reflect the everyday life and concerns of the people of this remote place, both their fears and their desires. Including legends of the kappa, the tengu, snow women, and other supernatural entities, other tales discuss local landmarks and eccentric townspeople while aspects of daily life like farming and hunting continue throughout. Mizuki’s sympathetic yet questioning musings are an ideal medium for revisiting Yanagita’s work and the integral place it has in Japanese folklore study.… (more)

Shigeru Mizuki is one of the great manga authors, but is rarely translated into English. This is one of his classic stories, based on his personal wartime experience.

A platoon of Japanese soldiers is assigned to defend a beachhead near Rabaul, in what is now Papua New Guinea. They are subjected to a terrifying air assault followed by a landing of marines supported by tanks. Hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, their rations dwindle to nothing, and their pitifully low weaponry is useless against the Americans.

Against all advice, the platoon commander decides that the platoon must perform a death-or-glory suicide charge to pay homage to the honour of their ancestors. Since the order is to suicide, anybody who survives and gets back to base is considered a traitorous insubordinate and subjected to the most severe discipline.

The hardship and brutality that the soldiers experience at the hands of their own officers is reminiscent of the wanton waste of life that heedless British commanders wreaked during the trench warfare campaigns of World War 1. It is a reminder that extreme suffering and gross disregard for human life is seen on all sides of a war.… (more)