I decided to round out Asia Month with a book by an alternative manga pioneer, whom we lost earlier this year.
Fallen Words by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, is a collection of short stories inspired by the Japanese oral storytelling tradition of rakugo or “fallen words,” hence the name.
Like the folktales they are based on, these eight morality tales take place during the Edo period, complete with traditional attire, hair-styles, and stereotypes; the men are foolish, and the women cunning and/or spiteful. And each story has a punchline that, for the most part, the reader doesn’t see coming.
The tales are drawn in Tatsumi’s pioneering gekiga manga, considered a darker, more realistic style of cartooning. His clean-line drawings employ universally understandable facial expressions and body language to convey emotion, not the culturally-specific iconography of mainstream manga.
In Fallen Words, Tatsumi shows these two seemingly dissimilar storytelling forms: rakugo (that relies on vocal pitch and intonation) and gekiga (that has no sound) can work together. He recreates audio tone with graphic art.
Perhaps it is my love of morality tales, or Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s use of universally comprehensible imagery that allows me to appreciate this early master of Japanese alternative comics.
A. Book's Review 