Fallen Words

by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Jocelyne Allen (Translator)

A NEW COLLECTION OF STORIES FROM THE FOREFATHER OF THE JAPANESE LITERARY COMICS MOVEMENT

In Fallen Words, Yoshihiro Tatsumi takes up the oral tradition of rakugo and breathes new life into it by shifting the format from spoken word to manga. Each of the eight stories in the collection is lifted from the Edo-era Japanese storytelling form. As Tatsumi notes in the afterword, the world of rakugo, filled with mystery, emotion, revenge, hope, and, of course, love, overlaps perfectly with the world of Gekiga that he has spent the better part of his life developing.

These slice-of-life stories resonate with modern readers thanks to their comedic elements and familiarity with human idiosyncrasies. In one, a father finds his son too bookish and arranges for two workers to take the young man to a brothel on the pretext of visiting a new shrine. In another particularly beloved rakugo tale, a married man falls in love with a prostitute. When his wife finds out, she is enraged and sets a curse on the other woman. The prostitute responds by cursing the wife, and the two escalate in a spiral of voodoo doll cursing. Soon both are dead, but even death can’t extinguish their jealousy.

Tatsumi’s love of wordplay shines through in the telling of these whimsical stories, and yet he still offers timeless insight into human nature.

Genres: Manga, Comics, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Short Stories, Japan, Humor

278 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2012

About the author

Yoshihiro Tatsumi (辰巳 ヨシヒロ Tatsumi Yoshihiro, June 10, 1935 in Tennōji-ku, Osaka) was a Japanese manga artist who was widely credited with starting the gekiga style of alternative comics in Japan, having allegedly coined the term in 1957.

His work has been translated into many languages, and Canadian publisher Drawn and Quarterly have embarked on a project to publish an annual compendium of his works focusing each on the highlights of one year of his work (beginning with 1969), edited by American cartoonist Adrian Tomine. This is one event in a seemingly coincidental rise to worldwide popularity that Tomine relates to in his introduction to the first volume of the aforementioned series. Tatsumi received the Japan Cartoonists Association Award in 1972. In 2009, he was awarded the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for his autobiography, A Drifting Life. The same work garnered him multiple Eisner awards (Best Reality-Based Work and Best U.S. Edition of International Material–Asia) in 2010 and the regards sur le monde award in Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2012.

A full-length animated feature on the life and short stories of Yoshihiro Tatsumi was released in 2011. The film, Tatsumi, is directed by Eric Khoo.

Source: Wikipedia

Reviews

[Tony Vacation · Rating 4 out of 5]

Utilizing the formal restraints of rakugo--a style of Japanese verbal entertainment that features a lone stage-bound storyteller who weaves a long and complicated comedy that always involves a dialogue between two characters and ends on sudden, unexpected punchline--Tatsumi delivers a very lively collection of morality fables set during the Edo era. Chock-full of puns and slapstick, these tales of counterfeit nobles, jealous wives and mistresses battling it out with voodoo dolls, impatient brothel customers, artists with the gift of bringing drawings to life, and even an unlikely friendship and con game between a layabout and Death, are all presented with Tatsumi's effortless pacing and pleasing approach to manga art. And while these stories are often silly, there is an undercurrent of genuine heft simmering beneath all the inexhaustible charm as each story deals with questions of fidelity, loyalty, innocence, temperance, honesty and the inevitability of death. A highly pleasurable and rewarding reading experience.

[George Ilsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Supposedly humorous stories but I fear cultural context is lost in translation (or more likely — it is my own sense of humour malfunctioning).

Even though I couldn't catch the jokes, there is much to enjoy in this straightforward collection.

Easy to read, presented in the original "back to front" Japanese format.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yoshihiro Tatsumi adopts “rakugo”, in Japanese meaning “fallen words”, a kind of comedic fable-storytelling that was an aural tradition for many centuries in Japan. In these eight collected stories, Tatsumi’s masterful storytelling is shorn of its usual tragic veil seen in books like “Good-bye” and “Abandon the Old in Tokyo”, instead taking a light-hearted stance tinged with physical comedy.

The stories are all brilliant, bar none: Tatsumi sets all of them in the Edo period so the reader is treated to traditional Japanese culture set in a romanticised past, free of the Western influence of later years. They have a flavour of whimsy and fantasy about them - one involves a drunken artist paying for his bed and board by drawing some sparrows onto a screen. Once sunlight falls upon them, the sparrows come to life! In a different story, a man whose wife and mistress die after cursing one another through a voodoo-type doll, is haunted by their ghosts depicted as fiery spirits; while in another story a penniless man meets the God of Death and hatches a scheme to make money from the Grim Reaper.

The book is set out like a Japanese book so the reader has to read from right to left instead of left to right, though of course the writing is in English. It adds to overall experience of reading Japanese literature.

The aspect of the stories that I think will jar the reader are the endings which are by turns anti-climactic, bizarre, and slapsticky, as if Tatsumi ran out of space and abruptly ended each story on a strange note. This is in fact part of the “rakugo” style of storytelling where each story has comedic elements with the ending providing a punchline to the tale. The stories of “rakugo” were meant to be performed so each story had to have physical comedy as a part of them with the story changing depending on who told it. Tatsumi ambitiously converts this stylistic storytelling into comics and, while the comedy might not translate so well for a 21st century Western audience (hell, even Japanese readers might find the comedy a bit lax), this is all part of the rakugo experience.

But this is a minor complaint as the stories are so brilliantly told that I didn’t care about how it ended but how he got there. Tatsumi started writing comics in his teens and is now in his late 70s - the man understands comics so indelibly that reading him is an absolute joy. He understands how to set out a story and tell it perfectly with the right amount of panels - he is a true master of the art and reading “Fallen Words” reminded me once again how much I enjoy reading his comics, as well as reminding me why I love comics in the first place. It’s an art form unlike any other and when it’s done well, it’s the best thing in the world.

While this isn’t Tatsumi’s best work - read “A Drifting Life” for that - for readers who want to sample his work without perhaps the darker tones of his more well-known books “The Push Man” and the two I mentioned at the start, “Fallen Words” is a fine place to begin. As a long-time fan of his work, I loved all eight strange tales of historical Japan and it’s collection of con artists, geishas, ghosts, and artists with themes of death, life, fun, silliness, and love.

And now, I leave you in the capable hands of the next story...

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've liked everything I've read by Tatsumi.

[Drew Canole · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of wonderful slice-of-life short stories. They are framed as moral stories and most end with an abrupt but humorous twist/reveal.

Not dark and moody like his earlier 70s work shown in the D+Q trilogy.

[sanaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Besides the art of the book, I found other interesting connection. As we read in the introduction, the stories are coming from the tradition of Rakugo "literally: fallen words". If you don't get Japanese humor or have never heard a rakugo performance, the stories might seem dry, simplistic or pointless to you. But I had by chance watched "Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu" which is an anime about this old form of art. When I remembered that and started to imagine the actors voices, everything fell into place and made a new sense. Wikipedia writes:
"Rakugo (落語, literally "fallen words") is a form of Japanese verbal entertainment. The lone storyteller (落語家 rakugoka) sits on stage, called Kōza (高座). Using only a paper fan (扇子 sensu) and a small cloth (手拭 tenugui) as props, and without standing up from the seiza sitting position, the rakugo artist depicts a long and complicated comical story. The story always involves the dialogue of two or more characters, the difference between the characters depicted only through change in pitch, tone, and a slight turn of the head."
When I was reading the book I was hearing and seeing this lone performer who transforms in any minute and invites me to a new perspective. That was a very fascinating experience!

[aljouharah · Rating 5 out of 5]

مجموعة من قصص الحكواتيه حُولت إلى مانجا مع محاولة للإمساك بروح النكته والمفاجئه.

[Oana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rakugo ("falling words" or "fallen words") is a form of Japanese storytelling, with one storyteller sitting on a stage with a fan and a small towel. With only these props, the storyteller or rakugoka, tells a usually humourous story, with a surprise ending or a punchline (the ochi). In comic book format here, Tatsumi is the lone storyteller/illustrator who uses traditional rakugo stories to retell the story to its punchline conclusion.

Generally I find Japanese humour either weird (no one can explain to me why exactly "Gachon" or "Katochan, pe!" is funny) or merely gently funny instead of uproariously funny. The latter scenario usually means that we English speakers are missing some crucial part of the Japanese experience that prevents us from emitting more than a chuckle. What I did get out of this was a bit more understanding of Edo era culture and at least an intellectual understanding of what constitutes as Japanese humour.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Folk pantomime. It helps if you imagine a single person acting it out and narrating all the voices in a funny way.

If you appreciate calm, simple, warm folk stories like this then you might also enjoy Shigeru Mizuki's "Tono Monogatari".

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an entertaining book of humorous short stores from Japan in the Edo era. They're stories that have been told for a long time, because they're just that fun. I'd recommend it to anyone that likes a bit of humor. It's not in the typical manga style of drawing, but don't let that stop you.

[Codepoetz · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author retells eight traditional Edo-era Japanese oral stories in graphical form. Each story deals with a serious issue in a somewhat whimsical way, but still offers unique insights into human nature.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

After my disappointing experience reading the Push Man, I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue reading the other Yoshihoro Tatsumi book I had on hold. But I figured it is in my possession and it is not going to take very long to read so I might as well. This is very very different from Push Man. It’s an attempt to do Rakugo in graphic novel format. Rakugo is an Edo period storytelling method that seems similar to stand up comedy where someone is kneeling in the middle of the room and tells a comedic story. These stories have been passed down orally since the 1600s but I thought they translated very well to this format. The Push Man had been reversed so that it read the same direction as a normal western book, and they had to rearrange all the panels and change so much. For this volume they trusted the audience enough to be able to read it the Japanese way. Most of the stories feature a poor man pretending to be rich or hoping for a lucky windfall or deceiving someone etc. Similar to the Push Man, many of the men are deadbeat alcoholics, and often have nagging wives, and many of the women are sex workers (Oiran). But it doesn’t have the viciousness and hatred of the Push Man. My favorite story was the one about the painting where the birds come to life, but then on the last page I realized the entire thing was a set up for an elaborate pun! Many of the stories end abruptly before it seems like a moral or lesson is about to be imparted, but after I read the bird story I realized that probably all of these are set-ups for a punchline. The joke is just lost either to translation or I do not understand the context from the 1600s. I am sure these killed with Edo audiences. Some I could still get a little bit of the humor, like the irony of the Grim Reaper story that ends with the dude sneezing on the candle that will extend his life.

The story about the annoying child made me sad… what a sad downward spiral where you don’t like your kid because you accidentally raised him to be a brat who always gets what he wants but then you like him less and then he behaves worse because he feels the lack of love and so on and so forth… The shopkeepers had no tact!! At my job we have stuffed animals for sale in the kids section and parents get mad when their kids want the stuffed animals instead of books. To avoid meltdowns, they’ll say things like “These aren’t for sale, this is only for display”. I’ve entertained the thought of what if I had no social intuition and I went up to the poor parent trying to avoid a temper tantrum and said “These are totally for sale!”. These shopkeepers kept doing exactly that and I can’t tell if they had no social understanding or were just being a dick to get the sale.

Though I’m sure I missed a large portion of the jokes and meanings of these stories, there was still enough that is the same today for me to enjoy the tales of luck, fortune, and difficult customers.

[Stephane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Old storytellers never die; they disappear into their own story
-Vera Nazarian

Tatsumi shifts a storytelling technic from one medium to another, adapting rakugo to the manga form. Rakugo is a form of Japanese stand up comedy where the storyteller sits alone on stage and tell a long and complicated story, usually comical in nature, using very limited props. Well, I guess stand up comedy is not quite accurate, since the storyteller remains seated through the entire performance. Comical effects come from change of tone, subtle gestures, and the use of punch line and surprising endings. Dialogues are simulated through change of gaze, or tone. It has been described as a one-man soap opera. The concept of rakugo is something I knew nothing about before this book.

As Tatsumi says himself, taking a story from a traditionally oral medium and fixing it on paper is not without perils. Apt storytellers have weaved these stories through years and years of practice, they have been polished by the ebbs and flows of audience and context. Obviously, once Tatsumi was done drawing a story, it was done. It is a gamble that I think he has mostly won here. Those stories rely heavily on the dialogue and often on a surprise ending. Some of them are extremely funny, other more on the kooky or quirky sides of things. They often involve romance, love or money in some ways and have a dash of fantastic elements to them.

So part of the interest in this book is to consider how storytelling change from one medium to another. With the way some of our own storytelling has recently shifted from paper and ink to bits and screens, how our stories evolve should be fascinating. Image takes more room than ever, and that will matter. Social media platforms sit at the intersection of oral and written storytelling. It is evolving, immediate and flexible, and many people have taken to write on social medias as they speak. Social medias is unpolished (or often seek to seem unpolished) like speech. But social medias contributions are also fixed and permanent, as many have sadly come to understand, with dire repercussions.

Those considerations have nothing to do with Tatsumi's book, but the shift in medium he is attempting lead me there. In Fallen Words, you can tell that something from the rakugo survived; this is a most unusual comic book, so this was interesting. It is a comic book, but in some ways the medium did absorb the rakugo ways and ended it (very) slightly transformed.

[Grégoire Maillard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fallen Words is the compilation of eight Japanese moral comedies. Fallen Words also is the English translation for the Japanese term « rakugo », which in Japanese culture defines the story that are handed down through generations and that mostly relies on the storytelling talent of the orator. The same story end up being completely different depending on how it’s conveyed and travelling through the ages. Here, the author experiment a graphic version of these traditional Japanese stories.

In a way, this « rakugo » concept made me feel like I was reading an alternative episode of the TV show Curb Your Enthusiasm in which you follow for a whole episode a story with a challenge or a questioning, and in which the very end closes it with an abrupt and funny-but-not-smiling manner. Hence I loved it!

What is pleasant with these stories is the context in which they are told. Tatsumi shows us a Japan from centuries ago in which geishas were a major topic, honour was a key concept for the average citizen, and in which large temples are part of everyone’s daily life. It’s not a background I’m used to observe and it was really pleasing stopping on some of the backgrounds!

I feel the story always takes some times to develop itself, the real aim of the story is being revealed way later (we always don’t see the point for some time, maybe it’s a voluntary diversion?). And what is at stake feels often unreal: someone who does not want to win the lottery, a fake doctor that sympathizes with the god of death, or the manager of a brothel who is managing the waiting time for customers. The end is always unexpected but doesn’t always make sense nor is specifically funny.

Still a cool ready for anyone who likes the author or want to have some short and original stories before bed.

[Anthony Helm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yoshihiro Tatsumi's Fallen Words entered my reading list when I was looking for Japanese rakugo stories translated into English. I had been expecting to find a simple text collection of these traditionally light-hearted tales so was pleasantly surprised to find this graphic novel collection instead. Rakugo is a performative art in Japan, with kimono-clad storytellers sitting on their knees on a cushion as they tell stories that many fans in the audience are likely to know by heart already. In the retelling, the artist uses different vocal inflections to paint the cast of characters and a folding fan becomes the only prop to serve as everything from fishing rod to the source of sound effects to punctuate the story. The stories themselves have a universal appeal and commentary on human nature but often turn on a clever turn of phrase, a pun, or some other slightly different surprise and abrupt ending. The art is certainly in the performer, though, so text alone can be a bit of a challenge to fully translate, seeing how it is loses both the performative aspect and a deeper cultural understanding of the references. In this collection, that similarly holds true. Taking a manga-based approach to the stories helps to address both, with the comic panels helping to provide some of the visual setting, sound effects, and humor, as well as the ability to add short explanatory notes or translations in the panel gutters. Overall it works well enough, but cannot fully replace a well-done performance. Nevertheless, it provides a better taste than pure text alone would provide, and several of the stories have particularly clever endings.

[Przemysław Skoczyński · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tworząc „Fallen Words”, Tatsumi był już uznanym klasykiem japońskiego komiksu. 75-letni artysta po sukcesie na rynku amerykańskim, związanym z wydaniem „A Drifting Life” (2009), zmierzył się z tradycją opowiadania historii zwaną rakugo. Rakugo To zbiór przekazywanych ustnie opowieści, które wraz z kolejnymi interpretacjami na przestrzeni lat mogły być przez twórców w znacznym stopniu modyfikowane. Sam autor początkowo nieufnie podchodził do tematu, jednak z czasem idea połączenia tradycyjnych komediowych przypowieści ze gekigą (mangą przeznaczoną dla dojrzałego czytelnika) na tyle go przekonała, że podjął wyzwanie.

Mimo sędziwego wieku warsztat Tatsumiego nadal jest świetny. Te dynamiczne historie są nie tylko pomysłowe, ale przy okazji bawią przyjemnym humorem i czarują wyrazistymi postaciami. Ze względu na swoją proweniencję nie brak tu starojapońskich tradycji i motywów baśniowych. To właśnie elementy magiczne stanowią o sile najlepszych opowiadań („Escape of the Sparrows”, „The God of Death”). Jedyne co mi nie zagrało to finalne żarty. Komiczne twisty są ważnym elementem rakugo, lecz te wydały mi się momentami zbyt wieloznaczne, czasem jakby nieuzasadnione lub odwracające uwagę od sedna. W efekcie to, co miało być najciekawszym elementem fabuł, nieco rozczarowało, choć bardzo możliwe, że to wynik różnic kulturowych między twórcą, a czytelnikiem.

Warto, choć, jeśli chodzi o Tatsumiego, nie polecałbym „Fallen Words” jako komiksu pierwszego wyboru

[Udit · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had borrowed two of Tatsumi's books from my university library. The first, The Pushman and Other Stories, I found quite remarkable. It collected stories set in the 60s, when rapid industrialization was leaving several people in Japan disenfranchised and frustrated. The subject matter of those stories was quite dark, and hadn't ever been dealt with in any of the comics I had read previously. I thought they were great, if a little humourless.

This book collects stories from a later period in Tatsumi's career. (I read somewhere that he had spent some time living with monks or something like that?) Here, he is drawing his material from a distinct format of Japanese folk tales that are typically performed by a sole storyteller on stage. They are humorous, but not in the sense that I had in mind when I said the stories in The Pushman were humourless. They're more like the tales from Panchatantra or Jataka that I read as a very young reader. In fact, I first read those stories in the comics format, in Tinkle magazine or volumes of Amar Chitra Katha. So, the stories collected in Fallen Words, although not written with children in mind, don't seem particularly novel or path-breaking to me. But, it's good to know that there is some cultural similarity between the Japanese and the Indians. (Based on the other reviews here, Western readers seem unfamiliar with these types of tales, which is a bit surprising to me.)

[Kai Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

These were fun and many of them punny/ silly. The stories themselves are p repetitive but I like that and think it mirrors the form of these stories passed down from generation to generation. Basically the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles... and also mfs have been down bad to prostitutes since the dawn of time. My favorite stories were the one about the bird painting and the grim reaper one. This is funny bc both are rly well constructed little stories all building towards one final pun or joke on the last panel. I dont think them being build up for a pun negates the value of the stories its more just like a fun turn at the end. Overall p good but def didn't blow my mind or anything, felt v sweet/ soulful which was exactly what the doctor ordered after reading Blood Meridian, Notes from the Underground and Heaven (review coming soon) all in a row. 3.5

[Edna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for the Book Riots 2019 read harder challenge. I've never read manga before, and I am grateful to the read harder challenge for introducing me to new genres.

I'm giving this three stars because I really didn't like it much, but I think that's just me. I don't know anything about manga. To people who love it, maybe this is fantastic. I could tell the author was making jokes, but I didn't get the humour and didn't find it funny, but that's probably due to the humour getting lost in translation.

If you are new to the manga genre, this isn't a bad introduction. The stories are short, the drawings are good. Who knows, you might love it!

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating, though admittedly hit-or-miss adaptation of a handful of classical rakugo stories. Not updated, but dramatized in comic form. Therein lies its greatest strength as well as its greatest weakness. Some of these stories are golden...the other half? Less so. Taste varies from person-to-person, of course, so your experience might vary, but that was my experience. Still, the stories that are good ARE good, and its rare to see rakugo stories in English (performed or written) at all, so it ended up being quite the treat despite some misgivings I had with it (such as the actual viability of translating these oral tales into another medium).

[Emmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first, I was surprised by the "abrupt" ending to the stories, but once I realized that they were punchlines, which meant they were jokes, I started to enjoy the readings much more. It was fun looking forward to the little twist at the end. I also enjoyed learning about the Japanese tradition of rakugo, which is an oral storytelling technique that Tatsumi incorporated into these stories. While it wasn't the best book I've read by this author, I found it very enjoyable and would definitely read more.

[Karah · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first time with Yoshihiro Tatsumi and I shall progress with his oeuvre!!!! Usually, I get dissatisfied with solely black and white illustration. The black and white illustration enables the moral ambiguity. I rooted for many of the characters and witnessed humanity. Nothing preachy about these stories, yet there exists comeuppance.

My exploration with the Japanese comics started last year with only one book. (I didn't revel in that one.) I anticipate immense pleasure in devouring Mr.Tatsumi's work.

KUDOS, MR.TATSUMI!!!!

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of manga stories about inns, cities, and the people who live there. The stories themselves are well-told and drawn beautifully. The endings seem to have a sharp irony or lesson. In the afterword, there is explanation about this style of story which the author has adapted to manga. For me, it would have been better to put this explanation up front. However, if you read the afterword first, beware of minor spoilers after the genre explanation.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting take on Rakugo. I was familiar with the stories and it was very different reading about them rather than seeing them acted out. Some things worked better than others and some feeling was lost without the actors, but others benefitted from the more illustrated scenes. This was a fun manga drawn by one of the masters and definitely one to be experienced.

[Lib DM · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my favourite collection. I understand it’s rakugo and it’s deadpanned ending at times. But I don’t think it resonates me with as a westerner. I give it 2 stars because I really enjoy Tatsumi’s artwork and simple, almost minimalist manner of telling a story.

I liked the following ones: The Innkeepers Fortune, The God of Death, and Shibahama (my favourite)

[Mateen Mahboubi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on Tatsumi’s afterword, this volume was an attempt to integrate the classical humorous storytelling style of Rakugo into the Gekiga style of manga that he is best known for. Ultimately the humour is light and all the stories ends abruptly on a punchline and the still is a bit jarring to this accustomed to Western tastes but your in good hands for sure.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even I didn't get the "point" of many of the stories, but I think the point might partially be that there is no point - life is harsh and brutal and has no tongue in cheek.

The story that lends itself to the front page, the one about the God of Death, was absolutely fantastic and is the primary reason this gets 5⭐ instead of 4⭐.

[Marsha Altman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This manga presents a series of traditional Japanese morality tales. There's a bit missing in translation with some of them - they don't have the familiar beats of Western morality tales with clear plots and endings. I struggled with the first two stories, which don't really have endings, but it got better as I got into the rhythm of it and I really loved the last story.

[Alic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Abandon the old in Tokyo was just a tiny bit more to my tastes, but this one too has great charm to it because of the origins of the stories. Favorites were definitely Shibahama, The God of Death and Escape of the Sparrows.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few years ago my husband and I saw Ron Sunshine perform rakugo in English in NYC and since then, I've been really interested in it as a theatre form. So why not read an manga adaptation? Lots of fun even if I didn't always, culturally, get all of the humor.