The Keyaki Tree (欅の木 人びとシリーズ, 1993)

Over the past year, I have been making my way slowly through the German editions of Jiro Taniguchi’s graphic novels. Once I start reading a Taniguchi book, it is hard to put down until it is finished. They are quite philosophical and I find myself re-reading many them in order to fully appreciate the nuances of the story and its illustrations. The Carlsen editions are more expensive than your average manga, but they are beautifully bound and look very handsome on the bookshelf.

This weekend I read Von der Natur des Menschen – The Nature of People, which is published in Japan as The Keyaki Tree (欅の木). It is a collection of eight short stories by Ryuichiro Utsumi (内海 隆一郎, b. 1937) which were illustrated by Jiro Taniguchi (谷口ジロー, b. 1947) and published as the Hitobito Series (人びとシリーズ/The People series) in Big Comic magazine between May and August 1993.

Like Taniguchi, Utsumi writes moving stories about the lives of ordinary people. The stories in this collection focus on the sorrow that people feel because of changes that happen in their lives: parents divorcing, children growing distant from their parents, how the death of a loved one affects the family, and conflict between siblings. One of the strongest themes in the collection is the difficulty of balancing societal or family expectations with individual needs and desires.

Readers of all ages can identify with the characters in these stories. They range in age from young children to elderly people, but they all have one thing in common: their desire to be loved and understood by their families. Some of the choices that the characters make and some of the expectations that their families have are rooted in Japanese culture and society, but like an Ozu film there is a universality to each story that we can all recognize. For example, in the third story "Reunion", my natural instinct was to identify with Iwasaki’s ex-wife because of the way he just left her home alone with their young daughter for days on end. However, by the end of the story I found myself so moved by Iwasaki’s personal journey that the final page of the story moved me to tears. Utsumi is known for his ability to write heart-warming tales, but I suspect that Taniguchi’s illustrations are largely responsible for my emotional response to these stories. Taniguchi has an uncanny ability to draw emotive expressions on characters’ faces. Although these stories were not written by Taniguchi himself, their contemplative themes and the foregrounding of nature have much in common with other graphic novels that I have read by him.

The collection includes the following stories:

The Keyaki Tree (欅の木/Der Keyaki Baum)

A couple nearing retirement age buy a older house in the countryside because they have fallen in love with its beautiful garden. Unfortunately, when they move in they discover that the previous owners have taken all their plants and trees with them. Disappointed, they hire a gardener to replant the garden and take solace in the lone Keyaki tree that was left behind because it was too big to transplant. Their new neighbours complain that the tree is a nuisance because it fills their gutters with leaves and they ask the couple to chop it down. The couple are reluctant to destroy the beautiful tree, but at the same time do not want to cause friction with their neighbours. A surprise visit from the previous owner of the house causes them to think about the tree in a new light.

The White Rocking Horse (白い木馬/Das weiße Holzpferd)

The Kinoshitas have gotten used to living alone. Since their children grew up and left home, they only see their children and grandchildren on rare occasions like New Year’s. One day, their daughter Yoshiko asks them to look after her daughter Hiromi so that she can spend some time alone with her new boyfriend. The Kinoshitas decide to take Hiromi to the fair, but Hiromi remains sullen with them and is unwilling to go on any of the rides. Her demeanour only changes when they discover a coin operated rocking horse which finally brings a smile to Hiromi’s face. By the end of the day, the Kinoshitas have begun to warm up to their granddaughter and are disappointed when they return home to find that Yoshiko has come early to pick Hiromi up. As they talk with Yoshiko and her boyfriend, Mr. Kinoshita is shocked to discover the real reason Hiromi didn’t want to go on the rides at the fair. His reaction brings more strain to his relationship with his daughter, but strengthens the bond her is developing with his young granddaughter.

The Reunion (再会/Das Wiedersehen)

While on a business trip, Mr. Iwasaki discovers a photograph of his ex-wife and his daughter in the local paper. His daughter, whom he has not seen since she was a little girl, is celebrating the opening of her first exhibition of her own paintings. Iwasaki takes a painful trip down memory lane, recalling what a terrible husband he was to his first wife, and his shock when she left him to return to her parents in Osaka. He has since remarried and has two sons, but his sons do not share his passion for art. He decides to go to his daughter’s exhibition, hopeful that his middle-aged paunch and receding hairline will make him unrecognizable to his former family. The visit to the gallery turns out to be a much more emotional and rewarding experience than he bargained for.

My Brother’s Life (兄の暮らし/Das Leben meines Bruders)

After the death of his wife, Mr. Sakamoto’s older brother Keikichi has shocked the family by moving out of his son’s house into a pension in Shinjuku. Having recently retired himself and moved into his son’s home, Sakamoto decides to visit his brother to find out why he has broken with family tradition and is living alone. The brothers haven’t spoken in ten years, but they fall into conversation easily. Sakamoto discovers that Keikichi’s pride has been hurt by the fact that neither of his sons wanted to go into the family roofing business. Before visiting Keikichi, Sakamoto had assumed that his brother must be lonely, but he soon finds himself questioning whether he himself is the one who is unhappy with his present situation in life.

The Umbrella (雨傘/Der Regenshirm)

Kyoko Komaki’s brother Shin’ichi is coming to visit her for the first time in twelve years and she is nervous about how the visit will go. Kyoko and Shin’ichi were first separated from each other when their parents divorced. Kyoko was taken by her mother and Shin’ichi was left behind with their father – neither child had a say in the matter. Three years later, Kyoko was sent back to live with her father but she was never able to feel at home with her new stepmother and she and Shin’ichi never bonded again as they had as small children. Kyoko’s feeling of being an outsider led her to move to Tokyo as soon as she could and the only time her brother visited her they got into a bitter argument. After all these years, will brother and sister be able to mend their relationship as adults?

At the Art Gallery (絵画館付近/An der Gemäldegalerie)

Mrs. Otani is under a lot of pressure from her son and his wife to sell her home in Shizuoka and move in with them. Mrs. Otani loves her own home and enjoys her solitude, but she agrees to try spending the summer with them in the city. In the evenings, she escapes from her son’s home to go for a walk in the park. On a park bench by the art gallery, she meets an elderly man and they fall into the habit of meeting every evening and chatting together. Mrs. Otani is shocked to discover that she has fallen in love for the first time in her life, but one evening the man does not appear and she wonders if there is any future for their relationship.

Through the Forest (林を抜けて/Durch den Wald)

Two young brothers named Hiroshi and Yoji are forced to move from a large house into a small apartment with their mother. Their father has left their mother for another woman and Hiroshi is mocked for this in school. Making matters even worse, they have to give up their loving and protective Akita dog Koro because their new residence does not allow pets. Yoji becomes convinced that he can hear Koro barking on the other side of the forest every evening. The boys decide to travel through the forest to see if they can find Koro. Their adventure in the forest tests their loyalty to each other and brings them unexpectedly closer together.

His Hometown (彼の故郷/Seine Heimat)

Noémi is a 19-year-old French artist in Paris when she meets and falls in love with a 29-year-old Japanese man named Haruki. Despite their difference in age and the protestations of both of their families, Haruki and Noémi get married and after a visit to Haruki’s hometown of Nagasaki they settle down together in Tokyo. Noémi’s shyness and inability to speak Japanese leads her to keep to herself and her painting at first, but eventually she comes out of her shell and takes up Katazome and Japanese lessons. When Haruki dies suddenly, Noémi’s world falls apart, but she stays in Japan and after many years she is able to finally make a connection with her distant mother-in-law through her art.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Related Posts:

Quartier Lointain - European adaptation of Jiro Taniguchi's A Distant Neighbourhood

Jiro Taniguchi's A Distant Neighbourhood (1998)

Jiro Taniguchi's The Walking Man (1992)

Quartier lointain (遥かな町へ, 2010)

The French film poster

When we look back at the stories of our lives, it is often tempting to imagine how our lives would be different if only we could turn back the hands of time and alter the bad choices we unwittingly made. The middle-aged comic author Thomas Verniaz (Pascal Greggory) is given just such a chance when a surreal twist of fate intervenes and transports him back to his childhood in the weeks leading up to the fateful day when his father disappeared.

Quartier lointain (released in Germany as Vertraute Fremde, 2010), is the German-Belgian director Sam Garbarski’s adapation of Jiro Taniguchi’s 1998 graphic novel Distant Neighbourhood (遥かな町へ/ Haruka na Machi e). Taniguchi’s post-war tale of a man returning to his pivotal adolescent years transfers well to the French setting chosen by Garbarski. There are many parallels between Japan and France in terms of how the trauma of the second World War affected both individuals and families well into the post-war period.

The original graphic novel by Taniguchi

A similar street scene in the Sam Garbarski adaptation

Apart from the change in location, the plot is fairly faithful to the original story. Verniaz seems to be experiencing a mild depression that has led to strain in his family and professional life. When he boards the train back to Paris after a trip to a comic book fair, he falls asleep and awakes to discover that he has boarded the wrong train. He disembarks in order to try change to a Paris-bound train and discovers that fate has brought him back to his home town in the Rhône-Alpes – a place he has avoided since his mother’s funeral more than twenty years earlier.

Thomas takes a trip through memory lane by walking through the town, past the home he used to live in above his father’s tailor shop. Like many small towns, the small shops in the center of town have suffered in the modern age and his father’s old shop is now an out-of-business electronics store. He eventually ends up at the town cemetery where he visits his mother’s grave and her Germanic maiden name tells us she may not have been a local and gives us a clue towards solving the puzzle of her husband’s disappearance. While staring at his mother’s grave, a butterfly appears (a symbol of transformation from the original text) and then Thomas falls asleep.

When he awakes, Thomas finds himself back in his 14 year old body in 1967. He is thus given the unique opportunity of getting to know his parents better, and can spy on his father to try to figure out why he left the family. The film’s best moments are the awkward situations that result from Thomas having the knowledge of a middle aged man and trying to fit back into his life as an adolescent boy. For example, he is now mature enough to flirt with Sylvie Dumontel, the beautiful girl he had only ever admired from afar, but in his head he is still a married man with two young daughters.

The set and costume design for Quartier lointain is impeccably done. From the portrait of Charles de Gaulle in the school to Thomas’s parents’ carefully tailored clothes, great care was taken to give the film an authentic late 1960s look. There are minor differences in plot, some of which were necessary because of the change in location and others that seemed rather random. The main protagonist is transported back to 1967 instead of 1963. This may be due to the minor difference in age between Pascal Greggory, who plays the adult Thomas, and Jiro Taniguchi – it may, however, have only have been nostalgia on the part of the filmmakers who could use a poster advertising Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour on the cinema instead of David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia as in the original.

The scriptwriters would have been better served by keeping more closely to Taniguchi’s original story because some of the random changes (such as the confusion regarding the father’s birthday and leaving the ending too open) actually detracted from the emotional impact of the film. The performances, particularly by Léo Legrand as the young Thomas and Alexandra Maria Lara as his mother, are all superb – the film was really only let down by the script which added inane dialogue in some places and left too much out in other places.

Despite the film’s flaws, it is still enjoyable to watch for the performances and the lovely location filming in Nantua in the mountainous Ain department of the Rhône-Alpes. The brilliant soundtrack by electronic pop band Air (Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel) is at times funky and at other times haunting. Fans should keep their eyes open for a brief cameo by Jiro Taniguchi during the older Thomas’s train journey back to Paris.

The German film poster

This Belgian-French-German-Luxembourg co-production is currently only available on DVD in French (to be released in France in May) and German (this DVD has the original French soundtrack with German subtitles or an optional German dub) but I have found an English subtitled trailer so perhaps it will be available on DVD in English eventually. I will post an update if I hear of an English or Japanese release.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Related Posts:

Jiro Taniguchi’s Distant Neighbourhood (1998)

Jiro Taniguchi’s The Walking Man (1992)

Distant Neighbourhood (遥かな町へ, 1998)

Since moving to Germany in 2007, it has been a challenge for me to improve my German vocabulary when my reading and movie watching is so biased in favour of Japanese culture. One way I have managed to combine the two is by reading manga in German. At a wonderful manga/comics shop in Marburg last year, I discovered the beautifully illustrated graphic novels of Jiro Taniguchi (谷口ジロー, b. 1947). Many of his best works are published in Germany by Carlsen in elegantly bound editions that easily share a bookshelf with my Random House Vintage Classics editions of Japanese literature.

 My kids posing as Asterix outside the manga/comics shop in Marburg

Comics, Kitsch & Kunst - if they added DVDs

they would be selling everything I could ever possibly want

Originally published in Japanese in 1998 as Haruka na Machi e (遥かな町へ), this graphic novel was published in German under the title Vertraute Fremde in 2007.  In English it has been published in two volumes under the title Distant Neighbourhood. It tells the story of a middle aged architect Hiroshi Nakahara. On his way home to Tokyo from a business trip to Kyoto, he accidentally boards the wrong train and dozes off on it. When he awakes, he discovers that the final station on the route is the town in which he was born: Kurayoshi. Nakahara decides to take advantage of his error by visiting his mother’s grave for the first time in many years. As he prays in the cemetery, a butterfly appears to indicate that a transformation is about to take place and Kurayoshi loses consciousness.

When Kurayoshi awakes, he finds that he has been transported back in time to the spring of 1963. As he readjusts to being back in his 14 year old body, he goes to his family home to find his mother and grandmother alive just as they were in 1963. Most significant is the fact that his father is also there. It is then we realize the significance of the spiritual journey that Hiroshi Nakahara is taking. He has arrived in the past just a few short months before his father will disappear from the family forever without a trace. His father’s unexplained betrayal of his family has haunted Nakahara ever since and he now has an opportunity to find out why his father left. . . and possibly even change the course of history by trying to prevent the inevitable from happening.

The story exposition in Distant Neighbourhood is very compelling and the first time I read it I could not put it down until I had finished it. As an illustrator, Taniguchi’s attention to small details of the scenery and framing is as carefully done as in a Yasujiro Ozu film. During the opening sequence as Nakahara passes through Kyoto station, I recognized the station immediately because the architectural details were exactly as I recall them as I passed through the station myself in 2006. I would imagine that for someone of the same generation as Taniguchi Distant Neighbourhood would be a nostalgic trip down memory lane. The streets of Japanese towns, and even the layout of the countryside has altered considerably over the past four decades. Sights such as the grandmother working away at the loom or kids riding a scooter without helmets have become rare indeed with the passage of time. Subtle details remind us of the time period such as a reference to the professional wrestler Antonio Inoki, who was popular at the time, and a movie poster for the Hollywood film Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962). The story even takes us back further to wartime Japan when Nakahara’s parents met.

Earlier this year, Distant Neighbourhood was adapted into a film set in France by the Bavarian director Sam Garbanski. It is called Vertraute Fremde here in Germany, and Quaritier lointain in French.  I actually do think that the essence of this story could translate well to Europe during the same time period so I am hoping that Santa puts a copy of it in my stocking this year. It also stars one of my favourite French actors – Pascal Greggory – which is an added bonus. When I do get a hold of a copy, you can be sure that I will report my findings here on the blog.

Here's the German trailer:

And the French trailer:


Quartier lointain - Bande annonce FR

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010

Interview with Akino Kondoh

I was delighted to have the opportunity to chat with artist, manga-ka, and animator Akino Kondoh at Shinsedai this year. Her 2004 painting Red Fishes was used as the eye-catching poster art for the festival, and her 2006 animation Ladybirds’ Requiem (Tentou Mushi no Otomurai, 2006) preceded Momoko Ando’s Kakera (2009) at the opening event.

Childhood influences

Kondoh was born into an artistic family. Her father and brother are both architects and her homemaker mother studied design at university. Kondoh was never particularly interested in television. Instead, she recalls enjoying having picture books read to her by her parents and being taken to museums. Kondoh also had little interest in popular manga as a child.  She did; however, discover Garo (ガロ, a monthly anthology magazine for avant-garde manga which ran from 1964-2002) when she was a junior high school student. Kondoh’s own manga art has been featured in alternative manga magazines and one of her striking images adorns the cover of the debut English language edition of AX: A Collection of Alternative Manga. This cover art had previously been used for volume 42 (2004) of the Japanese edition of AX (アックス).

Garo cover art

Kondoh cover art - order here

Insects

I have long been interested in the prevalence of insects in Japanese art and culture. Cicadas, for example, are always used as signifiers in movies to indicate that the setting is late summer. When my children were in hoikuen (nursery school) in Bunkyo-ku, they had a pet kabuto-mushi (Japanese rhinoceros beetle) in the same way that a Canadian Kindergarten might have a hamster. In Kondoh’s art insects like ladybirds (ladybugs in Canadian vernacular), butterflies, and insect larvae play an essential role. When I asked Kondoh about this she told me that insects have long been an object of fascination for her. She recalls playing with insects as a child, so it has been only natural that they have become a source of artistic inspiration in her work.

Introduction to art animation

While a student of graphic design at Tama Art University, Kondoh was introduced to animation in her second year of studies through assignment work. Her professor was Masashiro Katayama (b. 1955), who has enjoyed a long and successful career as an animator and illustrator (see my review of Winter Days, and Kawamoto’s Self Portrait). In her third year at Tamabi, Kondoh made The Evening Traveling (Densha kamoshiranai, 2002), her first animation short. The Evening Traveling won her awards at the Japan Media Arts Festival (2002), the Digista Awards (2002), and the third Yuri Norstein Grand Prix / Audience Award at Laputa Animation Festival.

The use of music in her animation

Kondoh and her brother became big fans of the band TAMA when they were teenagers. Through a fortunate series of events, Kondoh was able to develop a professional relationship with band member Toshiaku Chiku. Prof. Katayama often invited animator Tatautoshi Nomura of ROBOT (the company that employs Oscar-winner Kunio Kato) to guest lecture his class. Nomura is also a fan of TAMA and has often worked with the band for the soundtracks to his animations both as musicians and as seiyū (voice actors). Kondoh was able to get permission from Toshiaku Chiku to use his song Densha kamo shirenai for her film of the same name. (English title The Evening Traveling)  At first, Kondoh explained, Chiku was not really sure about her project, but when the film was a success and won awards at festivals, he agreed to compose an original score for Ladybirds’ Requiem.

 French edition of her manga

Elaborate vision, minimalist style

Akino Kondoh’s art carries us into a complex, dream-like world. Yet while the images she creates are highly detailed, at the same time she employs a very minimalist aesthetic. When creating the images for her animation films, she uses plain art paper. Her tools are graphite and marker. Her colour palette is predominantly black against a white background – as in The Evening Traveling which was entirely monochrome. Filler colours like grey or the brilliant reds of Ladybirds’ Requiem are done with markers. The images are then scanned and edited using Adobe Photoshop and After Effects for Macs.

Prolific artist with an eye for detail

Kondoh’s passion for her craft drives her to put in long hours at the canvas. While some artists prefer to work in the morning hours, or well into the night, Kondoh’s entire day revolves around her desire to keep on creating new work. At the same time, Kondoh is a perfectionist with very high standards. There are actually two versions of Ladybirds’ Requiem. The one that is floating around on various video streaming sites was done as a student work in 2003 and has a running time of 2’50”. Kondoh expressed a deep dissatisfaction with this work and so in 2005 she set out to remake the film. She started from scratch, drawing entirely new images for the animation which was eventually completed in 2006 with a running time of 5’38”. A limited edition DVD of the film (only 12 copies!) was released for sale to her representatives Mizuma Art Gallery and snapped up by high end art connoisseurs. It is this version of the film that played at Shinsedai and at Naomi Hocura’s Seconds Under the Sun screenings.

Kondoh’s fascination with contemporary art

Funding from Bunka-cho (the Agency for Cultural Affairs) allowed Kondoh to do a residency in New York City from November 2008 until October 2009. For that first year in New York she lived in Chelsea. She has now moved to Astoria and is supporting herself through her art. When I asked her “Why New York?”, she responded that she wanted to immerse herself in contemporary art and get exposure to the art community outside of Japan.

Kondoh’s depiction of Eiko, the young woman protagonist at the center of her work, has often reminded me of art deco influenced illustrations that I saw at the Yayoi Museum when I lived in Nishikata. I was also reminded of the unusual world of girls I had once seen at the Collection de l’art brut many years ago in Lausanne, Switzerland. When I described the work to Kondoh, she immediately put a name to the artist – Henry Darger. It turns out that Kondoh shares my interest in l’art brut or Outsider Art and she spoke enthusiastically about the Henry Darger collection at the American Folk Art Museum in New York, which is located near the MOMA.

Future Plans

I was impressed by Kondoh’s high ambitions and passion for her work. She dreams of showing her work all over the world. Among other projects she has currently on the go are collaborations with the New York avant-garde jazz musician John Zorn, for whom she designed the cover art for his CD The Goddess: Music for the Ancient of Days. She does plan to do more animation in the future, and is working constantly on her art. She expressed her enthusiasm by saying: “I want to keep creating” 

 

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010

Spirou in Tokio

I made this great discovery this holiday season. The most recent edition of the Franco-Belgian comic book series Spirou + Fantasio, currently written by Jean-David Morvan and illustrated by José-Luis Munera, uses Tokyo (past and present) as its setting. In Germany it is book 47 of this comic that has been running since 1938, but for some reason in the original French series is is book 49. I am keeping my eyes wide open in book stores for the bonus episode 49Z which was done by guest manga-ka Hiroyuki Oshima.

This comic book fascinates me for several reasons. First of all, for those of us saturated with manga and anime images of Japan, it is very refreshing to see Japan rendered via the pen of a European comic book artist. The characters, for example, are more in the style of Tintin and Asterix, with its black eyes and snub noses. A few minor characters did exhibit characteristics of the old buck teeth, slanty-eyes stereotypes, but on the whole I found it very well researched. The artist has clearly gone to Tokyo and used real locations and objects for the mise-en-scene. I particularly enjoyed the references to Japanese pop culture such as Naruto and Cowboy Bebop.

Great reading if you can get a hold of it in a language that you can read. As no English version of Spirou + Fantasio seems to be in print, here is a video preview of Spirou in Tokio to whet your appetite:

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2007