The Push Man and Other Stories

Tatsumi's short stories #1

by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Yuji Oniki (Translator)

Thirty years before the advent of the literary graphic novel movement in the United States, Yoshihiro Tatsumi created a library of comics that draw parallels to modern prose fiction and today's alternative comics. The stories collected in The Push Man are simultaneously haunting, disturbing, and darkly humorous. A lone man travels the country, projecting pornographic films for private individuals while attempting to maintain a normal home life. The lives of two men become intertwined when one hires the other to observe his sexual escapades through a telescope. An auto mechanic's obsession with a female TV personality turns fatal after a chance meeting between the two

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

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

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

[Wes Hazard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boo Hoo for the sad boys.
I know. I know. The postwar generation of Japan. Culturally scarred by the atom bomb. Searching for an identity when the militarist/imperialist tradition has crumbled. Occupied by foreign GIs. Faced with a sexual revolution while still rooted in a resolutely patriarchal culture. Teeming cities. Yes yes yes.

All of that's here, and it's a hell of a lot to face, and I know it's the environment Tatsumi's characters find themselves in, but damn if there doesn't come a point beyond which I could no longer care and I had to judge them for what they (almost universally) are: pathetic/incapable losers wallowing in either casual or active misogyny.

Every single protagonist is either an "I'm socially crippled and I can't talk to girls" weakling chump. Or a "all women are whores" weakling chump. There are maybe 2 women in all of these stories who aren't either avaricious, spiteful, emasculators or doomed simpletons relying on the love of a man who will never be able to give it. The others are just victims or background noise. It gets tired. To be clear, I have no problem with sex, nihilism, violence or mental wastelands in art, bring 'em on. But I didn't sense that I was just being *presented* with those elements and these characters, I was being asked to *care* about them, and in this context I just couldn't.


It seems they've released additional volumes of Tatsumi's work (each one collecting stories from a different calendar year, this one being the 1st). I might very well end up skipping a few volumes ahead to see if he ever matured (or at least diversified) because there is a lot of talent/honesty here, but I won't be doing it anytime soon.

[E. G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Introduction, by Adrian Tomine

--Piranha
--Projectionist
--Black Smoke
--The Burden
--Test Tube
--Pimp
--The Push Man
--Sewer
--Telescope
--The Killer
--Traffic Accident
--Make-Up
--Disinfection
--Who Are You?
--Bedridden
--My Hitler

Q&A with Yoshihiro Tatsumi

[Nakkinak · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's telling that every negative review complains about how pessimistic, misanthropic, and dark Tatsumi's stories are. In the neoliberal entertainment society it's highly unwanted to show the other side of prosperity and wealth. In a society that is supposed to honor effort with respect and wealth, the accusation of Tatsumi to be cynical doesn't make sense. His characters work hard, but they fail. Their labor just doesn't pay off. The people believing in the fun society are far more cynical than any story written by Yoshihiro Tatsumi.

There is a lot going on psychologically in these stories; that's why I like Tatsumi so much. The Projectionist is a good example, a story about a man who screens porn to businessmen. He doesn't talk a lot so one has to closely read his actions and the little he says to learn what this story is really about.

Special attention needs to go to his facial expressions and the close-ups. And he's comparably talkative; in most Tatsumi stories, the protagonist is completely silent, contributing to a neurotic mood, creating some kind of "dark everyman". In the ending of the story, the projectionist is implied to have shown a particularly perverted or even violent sex film to the businessmen and now questions if it's worth it to carry on and indirectly support producing it. Or is it that the screenings confronts him with his own age? That he isn't as young as before so he can't please his wife/girlfriend anymore as often? The list of possible reasons for his mood can go on, Tatsumi rarely is explicit about them; as he's examining some brooding passive-aggressiveness in the human nature that just waits to snap. Just like Hemingway, Tatsumi only states the bare essence of what is required to understand a plot, you have to think to understand what the story is about.

Tatsumi manga are inaccesible and bleak, but they are thought-provoking and inspiring. We can be grateful that Drawn and Quartely released his best work so Tatsumi finally receives the recognition he deserves.

This is an important document of manga literature, essential to every serious manga and comics fan.

8/10

[Drew Canole · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of short stories from 1969. Mostly featuring emotionally unavailable men crippled by their environment, economical situation or just general ennui. Some of these stories are really creepy - Bedridden is quite disturbing.

-Piranha
-Projectionist
-Black Smoke
-The Burden
-Test Tube
-Pimp
-The Push Man
-Sewer
-Telescope
-The Killer
-Traffic Accident
-Make-Up
-Disinfection
-Who Are You?
-Bedridden
-My Hitler

It was nice to revisit this collection and see that it still holds up as one of my favourite collections of short comics.

2013 review: An awesome collection of short-stories. Drawn and Quarterly (the publisher) ought to publish more volumes. The interviews at the back of each volume of D+Q Tatsumi books indicate that Tatsumi has an enormous amount of work published over the decades in Japan. I would eagerly sit down and read every single page if only I could.

I'm not sure I can say much about the actual subject matter of this book. The writing and drawing is incredible, and that should be all the prodigious comic book reader should need to know in order to rush out and grab some Tatsumi.

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

The darker side of the city is examined in the true to life stories presented in this manga classic. Reminds me very much of the work Will Eisner: and that is a huge compliment. Yoshihiro Tatsumi has the unique ability to put you 'in the streets' with the characters; you feel the grit and grime that rubs off on you as you make your way through the maze of the city.

[Jolanta (knygupė) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Labai nustebinęs mane skaitinys/žiūrinys.
Autorius yra vadinamas alternatyvių japonų komiksų (manga) seneliu.
Trumpos istorijos apie pokario japonų kartos gyvenymą, kasdienybę. Beveik visos jos kalba apie siaubingą to laikmečio japonų dvasinį išsigimimą. Pasakojimai pateikiami per seksualinius veikėjų išgyvenimus. Kraupiai! Žiauriai! Brutaliai!

[Dylan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I get that this is historically significant, along with Tatsumi's other works, but at the end of the day a short-story collection filled with repetitive art, one-dimensional female characters and all the misogyny you could imagine is just not a fun thing to read.

[Paul Greer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting from a technical point of view of layout and story structure, execution of plot in short form etc. But, yes, content bleaker than bleak. the violence, hatred and misogyny drips off the page and kinds of nullifies any benefit mentioned earlier. Wasn't prepared to recommend it to anyone I know. In the preface Tatsumi says do not judge him on these early works alone. Almost interested enough to see what else he did, but maybe not.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yoshihiro Tatsumi's "The Push Man" is a collection of 8 page stories detailing the lives of young people in working class areas of a nameless city. As usual with Tatsumi's work the stories are highly imaginative, well drawn, and utterly compelling to read. Once you pick up the book you won't put it down until you've finished. Then you'll go back and re-read some of the more haunting stories.

The themes are of betrayal, isolation, revenge, sacrifice, and loneliness. It isn't the most cheerful of books! That said, a lot of the stories will stay with you. "Piranha" follows a factory worker deliberately having his arm chopped off for the insurance money, giving the money to his cocktail waitress girlfriend, who leaves him after he can't take more of her abuse and grabs her arm, thrusting it into his piranha tank.

"Bedridden" features a mysterious girl in a bed who is apparently the perfect sex slave. Yet each of her "masters" ends up dead. "The Push Man" follows a train worker/student whose job is to push people onto the trains, literally cramming them in so they'll all fit, until one day he gets swallowed by the crowd himself.

There are a lot of 8 page stories in the 200 page book so I won't go into all of them. Unwanted pregnancies, cheating partners, confused and desperate young men, are all explored in the book. There are a couple of longer pieces included as well.

The artwork is fantastic, in particular the opening pages to the stories which is usually a page long illustration of a shadowy part of a city. Tatsumi does a brilliant job of capturing urban life in Japan albeit slightly dated with massive TVs and a lack of computers, it's fascinating to see how familiar the stories are and how fresh they read despite being decades old. The freshness of the stories reflects the high quality storyteller and artist that is Tatsumi and I loved this book like all the others the brilliant Drawn & Quarterly have been steadily putting out over the last 5 years. An excellent comic book by an incredible artist.

[Vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first few stories gave me a bad impression of what this book might be like. Each story features a working class man who might be a plantation worker, a push man, a projectionist. What made me skeptical was how cold and materialistic the women were in the beginning. The men would be absolutely helpless and act upon fantasies of hurting the women, like hiding a scorpion in a purse or sticking the woman's arm into a tank of piranhas. And then I would be positioned in the protagonist's perspective, thus rooting for their acts of revenge while maintaining some kind of guilt, as if those wives are misrepresented.

At the same time, it is a fantasy, and Yoshihiro Tatsumi seems to be aware of this since he sympathizes with these men who are lonely and longing and probably misunderstood. A couple stories, I read with my face wrinkled inward. A dead fetus wrapped up in a blanket, floating in the sewer water. A large rat that won't leave this man's apartment, splashing around in his semen. Male characters that narrow their eyes and shine a nasty grin at this voiceless sex slave who lives beneath the bed sheets, whose face we never get to see, who supposedly has been conditioned with the ideal tongue shape and vagina to satisfy these masters.

My favorite story was "Make Up" for the quiet man who dresses as a woman and has what appears to an affair with a married woman who has a crush on him as a man at work but wants to love him as a woman.

[Kaśyap · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yoshihiro Tatsumi's art and storytelling style is brilliant. Every single panel is expressive and conveys a lot. The stories themselves, set in a modernising, urban Japan are bleak and miserable with dark humour. Our lead characters are all lonely, broken and confused working class men who often act in shocking and violent ways. They are frequently depicted in their daily drudgery, and walking alone through the city streets. Silent witnesses to a meaningless society.

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A colleague let me borrow this and I'm probably going to have to replace the copy now because I've read and re-read these dystopic little vignettes over and over again and can't stop. Tatsumi's characters strike a similar chord with me that my favorite English-speaking fiends do from drama and fiction (Shakespeare's Iago and Nabokov's Humbert come immediately to mind). Previous reviewers have already pointed out here that these stories tend to revolve around men who feel oppressed by women and hence fantasize or even act out aggressively because of it, but I think that's an oversimplified way of viewing things. All of Tatsumi's characters are broken and terrible in their own ways; and while it feels natural to want to distance ourselves from them and judge them for the awful things they do, the more we consider their situations the more we come to identify with them.

OprahLit here in the U.S. usually gets away with is moving the characters along far enough on the timeline or in "golden opportunity" moments that give these broken characters one last chance for redemption; when they make the right (but usually tortured) decision to move away from the darkness, we collectively exhale grandly and believe Everything Is Gonna Be Alright. That's why it's so interesting to read Tatsumi's stories: these golden opportunities never present themselves.

And the more we study the world, the more we realize these opportunities simply *don't belong*, that they are an elaborate rhetorical trick to get us to finally disconnect from what we're really experiencing. Tatsumi's characters aren't flawed because they drink too much and haven't found Jesus yet; they are individuals who--like all of us--are being ground up in the machinery of their jobs and relationships (this is brilliantly metaphorized by the title character, the Push Man, who is caught in an endless loop of both railing against and controlling the machine).

In the end, yes, we are all together, but we are all suffering.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

A young Tatsumi's stories, which he says should be seen in the light of later works. He wrote these when he was unknown, for a men's magazine, and did not gain acclaim for them, and they are not warm and fuzzy stories, many of them are about sex, looking at (mostly young) working class men's lust and loneliness and failure to connect, though it is also true that women fail to connect with the men, and are filled with longing and lust as well. Sad, mostly, rarely happy, people... but there's a kind of deep compassion that threads its way through these... Some are horror stories, murders, some fantasies, but they are largely slice of life working class Japan...

[Bill Hsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Harsh and sordid, kind of like Lucia Berlin, but without the humor.

[Sue Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whoa. That was desperately dark. Every. Single. Story. And although the artist comments that they aren't a commentary on his life but rather one of the common working class man, they all reek of desperation and such hopelessness .... it's distressing.

And although I found it a little heartbreaking, I also discovered it was like witnessing an accident scene and not being able to look away. Each story made me want to read the next - to see if things would get any better, but finding that there were endless ways to suffer. And to discover that the common man - in Yoshihiro Tatsumi's stories at any rate - find most women to be spiteful whores that are confusing as f*ck.

I loved the graphic style. Simple and yet full of information.

Looking forward to seeing the rest of the series.

[MariNaomi]

The art was good, but the stories were so poorly written (and ridiculously executed, but not in a good way) I wanted to cry. What a waste of art-that-doesn't-suck! And to add injury to insult, almost every story in this book of shorts was a violent misogynist fantasy (executed with the grace of a warped, hateful child), many of them not even making much sense. I want my hour of reading back!

[Joey Shapiro · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can see myself probably loving his later, more developed work (might pick up the copies at the bookstore…) but these comics are a little rough. The stories feel even more like fragments than Adrian Tomine’s, who writes the intro and was clearly inspired by this stuff. Every story is nearly dialogue-free and has nothing resembling a three-act structure, kind of just miserable slices-of-life that introduce a fucked-up premise then end abruptly and ambiguously. Such stories as: why is this college professor so awkward and still single at 40? He has a sex slave who lives in his home! Man obsessed with hitler fixates on the rat who keeps coming back to his apartment. Man spies on other people having sex across the street from his apartment, then jumps off a building because he’s so lonely. So many men kill their wives/girlfriends. These are the safe for work examples but trust me when I say there are much more overtly gross, upsetting ones in here. I’m not a prude or like uptight about “edgy” fiction but I kinda just wonder what the point is of writing such monotonously gross, nihilistic stories? Like what is being communicated besides “the modern world alienates people.” I can see the seed of the style of short story I love here and I think some of these are so great, but on the whole… what am I supposed to get out of this?

[Joni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Con la nueva relectura disiento de mi primer impresión años atrás. Por eso borré aquella reseña y dejo esta nueva.
Japón en los sesentas, era momento de dejar atrás la guerra en lo posible pero el país seguía sumergido en la miseria.
Son 16 historias cortas, de aproximadamente ocho páginas.
Se retrata al japonés tipo de entonces. Sufrido, sumiso, los personajes femeninos suelen tener más diálogo pero casi siempre en plan de reclamo, desatando violaciones, asesinatos o femicidios tal como se reconoce actualmente.
Visto en estos tiempos de replanteo es espantoso el lugar de la mujer, como objeto sexual, como fuente de opresión y humillación.
Habla del japonés que a día de hoy no sé qué tan lejos estarán de ese hombre reprimido, angustiado, que prefiere el silencio hasta la explosión.
La violación no es sádica, es parte de un desahogo y es una apreciación que hago, no una excusa. A eso me refiero con que quizás pueda chocar una lectura así.
Algunas historias son brutales. Violencia, aborto forzado, hasta el asesinato de una madre en el momento de dar a luz.
Es una obra dura, fruto de una era dura en una civilización que tuvo más golpes que caricias y sin embargo hoy, a más de medio siglo del momento retratado se encumbra como una de las potencias mundiales.

[Hanin Reads · Rating 1 out of 5]

No. No. No. it’s creepy in a bad way. I didn’t like it.
1 star for the art.

[M. J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel as if I'd just finished a Raymond Carver or a Kenzaburo Oe anthology. I feel heavy, dirty almost, but somehow enlightened, this is a special book. I do not believe in the existence of a soul, we are material people, made of flesh, bones and impulses, and after we die there's nothing. Life is here and now and it's hard to remember that on a daily basis, we often forget the importance of the now, the importance of the trivial moment. Tatsumi shines a light over those, every one of these stories are an examination of the everyday life. Silent working-class men are the main characters, the focal point. They are often overwhelmed by moral conflicts, they are sexually repressed, some of them can be evil, some pitiful, some of them are kind, others are murderers, they can be all of that at the same time, it seems sometimes that they are burdened by the human condition itself. This anthology won't be for everyone, some of these tales are deeply disturbing (Telescope, My Hitler) and violent (Black Smoke), others are about love and freedom (Make-up), or love misguided (Pimp). It is as if Tatsumi is taking a magnifying glass, his art, and using it to reveal the worst and best thing about human nature: its endless potential.

[Joey Dhaumya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before labeling this as a misogynistic collection, consider whether The Push Man and Other Stories misogynistic or misanthropic.

I'm writing my review partly in response to Wes' stellar review. The stories had a male "protagonist" but considering how in most of the stories the character did not speak at all, and we get an "insight" into his mind only through his actions (which culminated to more often than not a sudden outburst of violence or abandonment), it is equally possible to view the story from the lens of each character individually or through all the characters collectively. But even if Yoshihiro intended the reader to focus on the male protagonist, I far from agree that he also intended for us to sympathize with him. Throughout his career Yoshihori Tatsumi wrote about the working class and lower-middle class, but he was as critical (and comical) of them as he was of the bourgeoisie.

In the stories where the women were portrayed as either "avaricious whores or self-effacing saints", the men are also portrayed in the extremes of "unstable, aggressive brutes or wimpy pushovers", as well as adulterous or voyeuristic. Both cases deal with the perceptual-stereotypes of gender - with one focusing on women in terms of morality and the other on men in terms of virility. Ultimately, both the male and female characters in these stories are two-dimensional and portrayed radically.

I also find these comics to be surreal or experimental in their nature. We begin and finish a story with little understanding of the mindset and motivations of the characters; what we see are explosive and even bizarre actions borne out of inexplicable obsessions or pent-up frustrations.

There is dark comedy underlying several of these stories. A young sperm donour becomes obsessed with the recipient, and when she asks to be assigned a different donour (since the young man's sperm wasn't helping her conceive), he rushes up to her and asks her, "How can you do this to me?", and is put to jail for sexual assault; a mechanic enamoured by an actress(?) finds out that she died in a car accident and then asphyxiates himself; a man left impotent by an accident is paid by an old stranger to watch him have sex with a young women. Made painfully aware of his lack of virility, the young man jumps off a building to commit suicide; goaded by his wife, who wants a million yen to open a bar, an industrial worker lets a machine destroy his arm so that he could avail a large insurance claim. Seeing her subsequent cold and aggressive behaviour towards him, he plunges her arm into a fishtank filled with piranha. Afterwards, he seeks out a job at another factory which hired disabled people.

[Parka · Rating 4 out of 5]

(More pictures at parkablogs.com)

Before I read the book, I had no idea who Yoshihiro Tatsumi is. He has been called "the grandfather of Japanese alternative comics" and he certainly deserves it.

The Push Man and Other Stories is a collection of short stories previously published in Japanese, now translated and reformatted for the western audience by Adrain Tomine.

In each story, Yoshihiro Tatsumi looks at a different facet of Japanese society. The main character is always a man filled with restrained angst, going about their daily jobs, ending with a solemn note. Every tale is filled with some form of sexuality — sex, abortion, prostitution, etc.

In the story "The Push Man", we're introduced to the pusher, whose job is to get commuters into packed trains by pushing them in. One day, he helped a lady whose clothes were torn from the pushing. They spent the night together and she invited him to her place the next day. The story ends with her sisters pushing each other away to get him. In "Telescope", a disabled guy committed suicide after being paid to watch someone else have sex. In "Test Tube", a sperm donor can't stop thinking about his recipient and eventually forced himself onto her. You can see that there are no happy endings here.

The storytelling is masterly. Every story is told in a darkly comic style, short dialogues and cleanly laid out panels. Even without text, the stories will be easy to understand. Yoshihiro Tatsumi has a way of dissecting his characters, providing a very raw look at their hard and unforgiving life.

The 16 stories are short. I like short if it means leaving the reader wanting more* at the end.

It's highly recommended but certainly not for everyone.

[Leif · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seeing the approval and citation of Adrian Tomine, I thought I'd give this a try. My mistake. A strongly masculinist take on the inconstancy of materialistic women, the deviancy of sexual desire, and the vulnerable violence of men claims itself as a "slice of life" vision of the working classes, but reveals little of what it claims save for its few stories that break free from the gleeful reduction of women to their apparently-always promiscuous sex organs and men to their apparently-frequent violent rages. In these stories there are a few moments of possibility opened up by animals, who seem to be ambiguously readable because of their uncertain gender or distance from sexual availability, but these possibilities seem few and far between. Instead, a cowardly logic rules: possibility is cruelly and even violently shuttered on these often-mute men. In turn, they take out their anger on themselves and the women near to them.

I will say, however, that the clean animations and direct storytelling are powerful devices. I can see that this would be influential in a history of graphic novel design, but the blade cuts both ways: if its style and bracing directness are influential, then so too should we read its single-sided masculine self-abuse as the same?

[Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing, disturbing, revolting. Revolutionized the way I look at manga. Yoshihiro's protagonists (dare I call them "heroes?" )are mostly speechless; they're mute observers to the senselessness that surrounds them. Yoshihiro's depiction of post-war Japan is very different from the standard narrative we read in textbooks of the Japanese economic miracle coupled with orderly, conservative social norms. Rather it's one of moral confusion, sexual perversion, and soul-crushing anonymity. For those reasons alone it's worth reading his work.

[Przemysław Skoczyński · Rating 4 out of 5]

W zamieszczonym na końcu „The Push Man And Other Stories” wywiadzie Tatsumi bardzo mocno podkreśla, że ten zbiór opowiadań nie jest jeszcze reprezentatywny dla jego twórczości i żeby go w pełni zrozumieć należy zapoznać się z późniejszymi pracami jednego z największych klasyków mangi dla dorosłych czytelników. Bardzo zależy mu również, by nie utożsamiano cech samego autora z jego bohaterami – trudno się dziwić, bo te depresyjne 8-stronicowe miniatury to prawdziwy festiwal dysfunkcji i patologii pojawiających się w społeczeństwie, w którym normą jest poniżająca praca, frustracje, depresja, skłonności do okrucieństwa wobec kobiet czy prostytucja.

Z dzisiejszej pespektywy autor z pewnością byłby posądzony o mizoginię – przeciętna kobieta jest tu strojnisią żerującą na otępiałych i zacharowujących się partnerach. Skłonna do zdrady, interesowna, oderwana od realiów i pozbawiona empatii, choć bywa także ofiarą - szczególnie biedne nieletnie dziewczyny wykorzystywane przez dojrzałych zamożniejszych mężczyzn. Faceci są zazwyczaj apatyczni, choć skłonni do okrucieństw. Parają się poniżającymi zawodami (jeden z bohaterów chodzi w walizką po imprezach i wyświetla wysoko postawionej klienteli filmy porno, inny jest upychaczem - jego rolą jest wpychanie tłumów do pociągów, by wszyscy się zmieścili). Japonia tamtych czasów to okrutne miejsce na ziemi, w którym martwe płody spuszczane są do ścieków, pracownicy fabryki trwale okaleczają się, by zyskać odszkodowanie, a życie ludzkie jest warte tyle co egzystencja szczura w kanale.

Tatsumi wspomina, że inspirację czerpał z prasy, policyjnych raportów i obserwacji życia klasy pracującej. Jego wczesne dokonania to nie tylko znak czasów, ale też fascynujący obraz rodzącej się sztuki komiksowej dla dorosłego czytelnika. Po lekturze jestem zszokowany treścią, dojrzałością i umiejętności zwięzłego opowiadania, jaką reprezentują te historie. Ta naturalistyczna poetyka jakoś nie bardzo koresponduje z wizją mozolnego przekształcania medium z infantylnego w bardziej poważne. Wydaje się, że klasycy dorosłej mangi byli pod koniec lat 60-tych na takim etapie rozwoju sztuki komiksowej, jakiego na zachodzie jeszcze mało kto się spodziewał.

[Toby · Rating 3 out of 5]

A hard one to review, as are the other two collections in this series. On the one hand, I love the illustration, like an adult-orientated Mizuki, and the evocation of post-WW2 Japan is so absorbing, instantly drawing the reader into the contemporaneous world of Tatsumi's stories. On the other hand, the forceful nihilism at the crux of each story becomes dull and predictable. In one interview, Tatsumi said that he wanted his Gekiga comics to counteract the Gag-centered manga that was popular at the time. Nevertheless, these stories follow a similar trajectory, but instead of a joke they end in a gotcha moment of grim irony, a la Chuck Palahniuk. Certain stories are very powerful but they get lost amongst the repetitious misery of these collections.

[Chris Browning · Rating 4 out of 5]

It probably deserves five stars but is so brutal and so unrelentingly bleak i can’t pretend I actually enjoyed any of it - admired it? Oh absolutely. This is brilliant writing and cartooning, with an extraordinary skill at boiling down stories to their very essence. There’s something particularly brilliant about how taciturn and frequently silent his male characters are (I wish the female characters had a bit more shade though), which makes them feel passive against the big stuff happening around them. They’re unflinching in how dark they are, but never glib or cynical or filled with cheap nihilism. They’re going to linger for a long time, but they’re very hard to love

[Prem Hari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yoshihiro Tatsumi's "The Push Man and other Stories" is an anthology of 16 short stories each 8 - 10 pages long except the final three stories detailing the lives of people who are on the fringes of society. The stories are dark, haunting, thought provoking, well drawn and quite compelling to read. Once you pick up the book you won't put it down until you've finished. The themes are of betrayal, isolation, revenge, sacrifice, and loneliness. That said, this excellent anthology is more for a mature audience by an incredible artist and a master of storytelling. I highly recommend it.

[Ricardo Baptista · Rating 4 out of 5]

Para se afastar do Manga (imagens irresponsáveis) e dos seus temas, o termo Gekida (imagens dramáticas) foi criado para designar uma bd mais adulta e "alternativa". Um dos autores a quem foi atribuída a invenção da palavra é Yoshihiro Tatsumi que começa a publicar o que chama de gekida já em 1957.
Resultado da iniciativa de Adrian Tomine e da Drawn and Quarterly, The Push Man and other stories trata-se da primeira tradução oficial da obra de Tatsumi para inglês e é uma antologia de 16 bds curtas feitas em 1969 (o propósito é cada volume representar o melhor que Tatsumi fez em determinado ano, portanto, o segundo teria histórias de 1970, o seguinte de 1971 e por aí adiante...).
As histórias escolhidas partilham uma atmosfera opressiva e tensa que culmina numa explosão emocional que, embora esperada, surpreende sempre. O Japão representado no livro está longe da sociedade ultramoderna e tecnocêntrica que actualmente associamos aos nipónicos risonhos, aluados e de câmara fotográfica na mão. Em 1969 ainda pairava o fantasma do pós-guerra (a II Guerra Mundial deixou grandes mazelas na psyche japonesa): prédios degradados; as roupas ocidentais que coexistiam com os trajes tradicionais que resultam de uma espécie de esquizofrenia cultural; personagens desempregadas ou com profissões de baixa qualificação. O que nos leva a outra coisa comum a todas as narrativas: o protagonista. Embora se tratem de indivíduos diferentes, a desempenhar papéis e profissões diversas, podemos falar de um protagonista único. Homem, introvertido, dado a impulsos, vive uma relação com uma mulher que o domina de uma forma ou outra. O desenho de Tatsumi ajuda também a esta personagem masculina genérica, claro que há excepções mas, a representação física dos protagonistas é tão próxima que as histórias misturam-se na cabeça do leitor. São narrativas que normalmente retratam um relacionamento onde há um desequilíbrio de forças na dinâmica do casal que acaba por se resolver, regra geral, de forma violenta. Como remate, uma moral que salienta a tragicidade da resolução. Esta relação é sempre disfuncional e, por vezes, a disfunção estende-se à interacção social e temos o protagonista a adoptar um papel de pária.
É uma leitura desconcertante, nem mesmo o distanciamento temporal, físico e cultural permite ao leitor não se deixar afectar; a estranheza encontra-se no que é e como é contado, longe do quotidiano "normalzinho" de uma sociedade ocidental moderna. Tatsumi ainda ressalva numa entrevista no final do livro que o leitor não deve interpretar estas histórias como representativas da personalidade do autor e que para compreender a sua obra é preciso ler mais.

[Ahk · Rating 1 out of 5]

The male protagonist in each of the stories is a different person (they all have different names and jobs), but are usually drawn with the same bland, innocent, open face. That face becomes more and more disturbing as each story reveals the violence and anger underneath. All of the women in the stories are flippantly cruel, taunting, and promiscuous. The protagonist is routinely mocked by other men in his life, usually co-workers. But it is usually the women that he destroys in the end, in sensationalist ways - by mutilation, poisoning, car crashes - behind his wide-eyed, placid, wondering expression. Disturbing.