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Yuichi Yokoyama: New Engineering
Yuichi Yokoyama makes comics in a unique language situated somewhere between the primal drives of William Blake and the elegant geometries of Sol Lewitt--they are works of philosophical complexity and stunning visual power, of which he has said, "I'm not trying to write stories that are set in the future, but rather to write stories which are delivered from references to any given epoch or time. If the history of the world had turned out differently from what we know today, men would live according to different sets of values and different aesthetics It would be a civilization completely alien to ours." This first U.S. book on Yokoyama's work combines two of the artist's central themes: fighting and building. One set of graphic stories, Public Works, details massive structures being erected across a landscape. Plot is pushed aside in favor of sheer formal verve as we watch buildings, about which we know nothing, come into being. The other set of stories, Combats, is one sequence after another of elegantly choreographed battles. Manga comics have never seen a talent that combines this level of formal ambition with such exquisitely drawn depictions of fashion, art and architecture.
226 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2007
1 person is currently reading
323 people want to read
About the author
Yuichi Yokoyama
25 books67 followersYuichi Yokoyama is a Japanese cartoonist and visual artist.
Yokoyama was born in 1967 in Miyazaki. He graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Musashino Art University in 1990 and initially pursued a career in fine arts.
Towards the end of the 90's Yokoyama turned his focus to manga. His cartooning style, blending modernist abstraction and comics, has been described as "neo-manga". His work has appeared in the alternative magazines Comic Cue, Mizue and Saizô. Among his books are New Engineering (2004), Travel (2006), Garden (2007), Outdoors (2009), Baby Boom (2009), World Map Room (2013), Iceland (2016) and Plaza (2019). Many of his manga have been translated in English and French.
Presently, Yokoyama is also active as a contemporary artist and an illustrator for the press and publishing houses in various countries.
Yokoyama was born in 1967 in Miyazaki. He graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Musashino Art University in 1990 and initially pursued a career in fine arts.
Towards the end of the 90's Yokoyama turned his focus to manga. His cartooning style, blending modernist abstraction and comics, has been described as "neo-manga". His work has appeared in the alternative magazines Comic Cue, Mizue and Saizô. Among his books are New Engineering (2004), Travel (2006), Garden (2007), Outdoors (2009), Baby Boom (2009), World Map Room (2013), Iceland (2016) and Plaza (2019). Many of his manga have been translated in English and French.
Presently, Yokoyama is also active as a contemporary artist and an illustrator for the press and publishing houses in various countries.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 26, 2024
Quite experimental. You can really grab any Yuichi Yokoyama and get a good understanding of his work. I appreciate how precise his line work is yet how abstract the concepts he's depicting can be.
October 12, 2019
This is one the best books for programmers and I think every programmer should read it. The only problem this book has is some parts of it is written specifically for senior developers and architects; so, you may want to skip them, if you're not a senior developer yet, like myself.
September 24, 2013
It makes total sense that Yokoyama, in the interview in the back of this book, states that he wasn't interested in comics exactly, he just found that he needed to explore what had happened before and after particular of his paintings. Which then caused them to swell into these odd abstracted narratives. As observed elsewhere, the Engineering stories are his meticulous, inhumanly architectural best, while the "action" stories are interesting explorations of types of motion and deconstructed objects but tend to be less pure and more visually jumbled. Still, nothing tops Travel.
March 18, 2021
This is the one that turned me around on Yokoyama! After being unimpressed with Travel a decade ago and underwhelmed with the snippets I've come across since, I figured it was time to dig deep and reevaluate. The mechanical movements and perfect lines, the sense of mathematic action, it's one of a kind.
March 10, 2011
A visão que Yokoyama tem de seu trabalhos com os quadrinhos é a de um artista plástico em busca de uma nova linguagem sequencial, livre de concessões humanistas. Isso tanto na sua abordagem gráfica, sempre de ângulos inusitados e sem muita profundidade, quanto na escolha dos protagonistas de suas não-narrativas: construções, salas modelo, livros esvoaçando sendo fatiados em meio a lutas de espadas, entre outras esquisitices e desconstruções.
"New Engineering" é uma coletânea de seus primeiros trabalhos, em sua maioria impressões curtas com títulos secos como "Ladder Truck", "Dress Up 1", "Pet", "Store" e "Wheel". Há aqui obras incríveis, como a de abertura, dos livros já mencionados, em que páginas esvoaçantes com ilustrações e textos confundem-se com os próprios painéis, entre cortes de lâminas na horizontal, vertical e diagonal de livros sendo atirados como shurikens. De luta, ou melhor, de "corpos em movimento', como o autor prefere abordar, há também um outra obra, em que objetos de uma cozinha modelo são utilizados das maneiras mais absurdas contra o que se entende geralmente por armas, como espadas e bastões. Essas são as passagens mais longas, com 20 e poucas páginas, junto com a série "Engineering", sobre o processo detalhado de construção de locais inusitados e quase disfuncionais no meio da natureza. Há diversas obras curtas, mas essas são mais levianas, mesmo porque algumas tiveram origem publicitária ou institucional.
Na sequência desta obra, Yokoyama produziria "Travel", uma obra-prima de 200 e poucas páginas que desenvolve algumas das idéias já apresentadas aqui, como a observação aproximada da troca de dinheiro por mercadorias em uma vendinha minimalista em "Store", de uma página, ou o choque constante entre mecanismos e natureza, mais evidentes nos quatro "Engineering". Ali também levaria ao extremo a sua já preferência pela ausência de diálogos e balões, eliminando-os por completo, e também aniquilaria as onomatopéias, as quais permeiam com vigor quase todos os painéis de "New Engineering".
"New Engineering" é uma coletânea de seus primeiros trabalhos, em sua maioria impressões curtas com títulos secos como "Ladder Truck", "Dress Up 1", "Pet", "Store" e "Wheel". Há aqui obras incríveis, como a de abertura, dos livros já mencionados, em que páginas esvoaçantes com ilustrações e textos confundem-se com os próprios painéis, entre cortes de lâminas na horizontal, vertical e diagonal de livros sendo atirados como shurikens. De luta, ou melhor, de "corpos em movimento', como o autor prefere abordar, há também um outra obra, em que objetos de uma cozinha modelo são utilizados das maneiras mais absurdas contra o que se entende geralmente por armas, como espadas e bastões. Essas são as passagens mais longas, com 20 e poucas páginas, junto com a série "Engineering", sobre o processo detalhado de construção de locais inusitados e quase disfuncionais no meio da natureza. Há diversas obras curtas, mas essas são mais levianas, mesmo porque algumas tiveram origem publicitária ou institucional.
Na sequência desta obra, Yokoyama produziria "Travel", uma obra-prima de 200 e poucas páginas que desenvolve algumas das idéias já apresentadas aqui, como a observação aproximada da troca de dinheiro por mercadorias em uma vendinha minimalista em "Store", de uma página, ou o choque constante entre mecanismos e natureza, mais evidentes nos quatro "Engineering". Ali também levaria ao extremo a sua já preferência pela ausência de diálogos e balões, eliminando-os por completo, e também aniquilaria as onomatopéias, as quais permeiam com vigor quase todos os painéis de "New Engineering".
January 11, 2009
Yokoyama is pushing the realms of comics, much like many of his brethren published by Picture Box. Utterly formal, deeply strange, these comics are largely collection of abstract sounds and blocky images tearing through a massive alien landscapes.
July 31, 2025
The first collection of Yuichi Yokoyama comics for western audiences, New Engineering puts on a showcase of abstract narratives, formal playfulness and the extravagant use of sound in a silent in the comics medium. The strips here are generally wordless aside from the occasional bout of onomatopoeia that have obscured captions at the bottom of the page as translation (not that they help). Reading Yokoyama works is quite the mental exercise indeed, as the frenzied lines and captions force the reader to truly interpret the rapid succession of art into meaningful narratives. There's nothing quite like a Yokoyama comic indeed, and the experimentative storytelling is refreshing in general, though I do find a more lengthy collection like this a bit more difficult to get into. With every Yokoyama comic I've read, I've needed multiple returns to somewhat grasp what is being conveyed through the layers of abstraction. The size of this collection might appeal to many (after all, who doesn't want more Yokoyama?), but for me New Engineering felt a lot like having a slice of ice cream cake - a bit too much going on all at once.
February 7, 2014
One of my more rewarding impulse purchases, a random find at a used bookstore, and a delightful surprise! Some of my reflections:
~ narrative ~
This book follows the lineage of "experimental" or wordless comics, with its unconventional exploration of narrative through visual means. Plot elements are stripped down to a minimum, so the experience of "reading" feels more akin to that of taking in a scene that unfolds primarily through abstract landscapes and figures/machines in motion. "My manga does not begin with a narrative," explains Yokoyama, "It starts with a single image." These comics are best appreciated as serialized paintings.
~ text & graphics ~
The katakana text consists of mostly ridiculous Japanese onomatopoeia. While some reviewers (understandably) found the text distracting, I personally consider it integral to the overall aesthetic experience (though it definitely helps if you can read katakana.)
To begin with, Japanese characters register not only as symbols but also as visual graphics (the tradition of calligraphy as a case in point.) Traditionally used only by men and consisting of geometric characters, katakana stands as the least calligraphic and most masculinized of the Japanese alphabets—fitting for an illustrator who claims to remove any trace of human hand or craft from his designs. Moreover, the characters seem so graphically integrated into the images that they seem essential to the design. E.g. The foreshortened screams of "Waah!" in pp. 82-3 cut through the frames at an angle as if hurtling from the sky. I imagine this scene would not have the same impact without them And lastly, they serve the onomatopoetic function of classic action bubbles by making sound effects appear more vividly.
W/r/t the rare few texts that feature English script, Yokoyama claims, "I intentionally had the dialogue translated by a person who does not have a strong command of English. The dialogue will probably seem awkward to foreigners." Mistranslation becomes part of the garbled aesthetic Yokoyama employs to distanciate readers from the familiar human sentiment associated with vernacular language: "An interior or psychological representation would make my work humanistic, which I don't want…It may be that the pictures I draw are not scenes seen through human eyes."
~ visual design ~
Figures depicted in this book appear to be all male or androgynous. Whether they're human or simply anthropomorphic remains open to interpretation. Needless to say, the figures are highly stylized. Their faces bear a deadpan expression, about as cold and mechanical as a figure in a Léger painting. Their garb and gear serve as the only distinguishing feature to individualize their outward appearances. I liken them to model Lego characters in a modular Lego world (in a few of the comics, they're even assembled like robots).
Indeed, Yokoyama claims to be drawing from fashion and architecture in an attempt to convey an alien and world of artifice. Nowhere does this interest seem more apparent than in the Engineering series, where pristine landscapes composed of patterns and lines are modeled and remodeled with materials such as AstroTurf and blocks of carved stone.
~ flow ~
When not surveying the formal structure of the architectural landscapes, comics explore movement and flow. Action comics such as "Books" and "Model Room" aren't simply presented as fight scenes but as bodies in motion, forms colliding and interacting. Again, the author: "I don't like fighting but I do enjoy drawing the movement of bodies in combat, which is similar to that of bodies in sports." In fact, the inanimate objects deployed as props in combat (e.g. slicing a sword through a book, using a table as an improvised weapon, etc.) seem to take centerfold in these scenes.
I consider these fight scenes simply an extension of the explorations of movement in assembly and construction-oriented comics such as "Handicraft," "Upside Down," "Dress Up" and even the Engineering series. The actions seem to flow at a steadier pace in the latter case, such as in "Upside Down" where the pattern of repeating motifs gives off a sense of rhythm.
~ meaning ~
"Man, as living form, bears within him the eternal principle of being, and by economic movement along his endless path his form is also transformed, just as everything that lives in nature was transformed in him."—K. S. Malevich, Suprematist painter.
Throughout the book we witness variations of the same themes: assembly lines, tools, utensils, mechanisms, beings creating and destroying forms, rituals, mass gatherings.
Design seems to follow two basic principles: 1.) form follows function, 2.) form is the expression of arbitrary free play. The peculiar behavior of these beings, the odd forms they assume and create/destroy might appear foreign to us, but something registers as familiar when we take a step back and compare them to ourselves. They seem to mimic the human race, and in this light, their actions seem less perplexing but no less absurd. Perhaps this ceaseless play of tools and instruments parodies cultural codifications of masculinity.
From one angle their behavior seems cold, alien, nothing remotely human, and on the other there is something playful about them, as with the comparison to Léger paintings and Lego toys. Yokoyama claims he wanted to create new forms, but what I think he really did was accentuate a mechanical aspect of humankind already present in modern culture.
~ narrative ~
This book follows the lineage of "experimental" or wordless comics, with its unconventional exploration of narrative through visual means. Plot elements are stripped down to a minimum, so the experience of "reading" feels more akin to that of taking in a scene that unfolds primarily through abstract landscapes and figures/machines in motion. "My manga does not begin with a narrative," explains Yokoyama, "It starts with a single image." These comics are best appreciated as serialized paintings.
~ text & graphics ~
The katakana text consists of mostly ridiculous Japanese onomatopoeia. While some reviewers (understandably) found the text distracting, I personally consider it integral to the overall aesthetic experience (though it definitely helps if you can read katakana.)
To begin with, Japanese characters register not only as symbols but also as visual graphics (the tradition of calligraphy as a case in point.) Traditionally used only by men and consisting of geometric characters, katakana stands as the least calligraphic and most masculinized of the Japanese alphabets—fitting for an illustrator who claims to remove any trace of human hand or craft from his designs. Moreover, the characters seem so graphically integrated into the images that they seem essential to the design. E.g. The foreshortened screams of "Waah!" in pp. 82-3 cut through the frames at an angle as if hurtling from the sky. I imagine this scene would not have the same impact without them And lastly, they serve the onomatopoetic function of classic action bubbles by making sound effects appear more vividly.
W/r/t the rare few texts that feature English script, Yokoyama claims, "I intentionally had the dialogue translated by a person who does not have a strong command of English. The dialogue will probably seem awkward to foreigners." Mistranslation becomes part of the garbled aesthetic Yokoyama employs to distanciate readers from the familiar human sentiment associated with vernacular language: "An interior or psychological representation would make my work humanistic, which I don't want…It may be that the pictures I draw are not scenes seen through human eyes."
~ visual design ~
Figures depicted in this book appear to be all male or androgynous. Whether they're human or simply anthropomorphic remains open to interpretation. Needless to say, the figures are highly stylized. Their faces bear a deadpan expression, about as cold and mechanical as a figure in a Léger painting. Their garb and gear serve as the only distinguishing feature to individualize their outward appearances. I liken them to model Lego characters in a modular Lego world (in a few of the comics, they're even assembled like robots).
Indeed, Yokoyama claims to be drawing from fashion and architecture in an attempt to convey an alien and world of artifice. Nowhere does this interest seem more apparent than in the Engineering series, where pristine landscapes composed of patterns and lines are modeled and remodeled with materials such as AstroTurf and blocks of carved stone.
~ flow ~
When not surveying the formal structure of the architectural landscapes, comics explore movement and flow. Action comics such as "Books" and "Model Room" aren't simply presented as fight scenes but as bodies in motion, forms colliding and interacting. Again, the author: "I don't like fighting but I do enjoy drawing the movement of bodies in combat, which is similar to that of bodies in sports." In fact, the inanimate objects deployed as props in combat (e.g. slicing a sword through a book, using a table as an improvised weapon, etc.) seem to take centerfold in these scenes.
I consider these fight scenes simply an extension of the explorations of movement in assembly and construction-oriented comics such as "Handicraft," "Upside Down," "Dress Up" and even the Engineering series. The actions seem to flow at a steadier pace in the latter case, such as in "Upside Down" where the pattern of repeating motifs gives off a sense of rhythm.
~ meaning ~
"Man, as living form, bears within him the eternal principle of being, and by economic movement along his endless path his form is also transformed, just as everything that lives in nature was transformed in him."—K. S. Malevich, Suprematist painter.
Throughout the book we witness variations of the same themes: assembly lines, tools, utensils, mechanisms, beings creating and destroying forms, rituals, mass gatherings.
Design seems to follow two basic principles: 1.) form follows function, 2.) form is the expression of arbitrary free play. The peculiar behavior of these beings, the odd forms they assume and create/destroy might appear foreign to us, but something registers as familiar when we take a step back and compare them to ourselves. They seem to mimic the human race, and in this light, their actions seem less perplexing but no less absurd. Perhaps this ceaseless play of tools and instruments parodies cultural codifications of masculinity.
From one angle their behavior seems cold, alien, nothing remotely human, and on the other there is something playful about them, as with the comparison to Léger paintings and Lego toys. Yokoyama claims he wanted to create new forms, but what I think he really did was accentuate a mechanical aspect of humankind already present in modern culture.
May 14, 2016
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Absolutely.
Fucking.
Amazing.
Actually the best piece of literature I have read this year (so far). And it's funny because there's virtually no dialogue from the characters. The landscape and the objects within speak to you. What I mean is, Yokoyama does this thing with sound effects in comics I have never seen before.
Just, wow.
Absolutely recommended if you want to dive into Yokoyama and understand his oeuvre. This is really a series/collection of several of his different comics. But then, at the end, there is an interview, followed by brief notes on each of the pieces in the text--valuable insight from the artist himself.
Everything in here will "seem" unrelated but if you know Yokoyama, you know this is not true. I read Garden a few months ago. And in the story "Dress Up 1," pretty much Garden, in its entirety, is given new meaning and sort of explained. And I like that, about an auteur. I remember reading Garden and thinking, "What the fuck?" But then now, look, a few months later and I am beginning to understand it. Everything and nothing is connected.
Essentially tho, in a nutshell, Yokoyama is about striving to communicate something new and the "carrying of information." He explains artwork as either being craft or able to carry information. "Craft" artwork is the type of work "one desires to purchase and own." Yokoyama creates work that is able to carry information, in the sense that he is creating work "that can endure the test of time and be appreciated in a broad range of contexts--a work that can be viewed several hundred years after its production by people of other civilizations, and people from any place on earth, and still be enjoyed for the new discoveries it offers (as opposed to providing the kind of enjoyment that craft offers)."
Wow [2].
Furthermore, Yokoyama is "influenced by the works of Tadashi Kawamata in art, Andrei Tarkovsky in film, Arthur Honegger and Toru Takemitsu in music, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka and Masuji Ibues in literature."
I am buying ALL of his books this afternoon.
<3
Absolutely.
Fucking.
Amazing.
Actually the best piece of literature I have read this year (so far). And it's funny because there's virtually no dialogue from the characters. The landscape and the objects within speak to you. What I mean is, Yokoyama does this thing with sound effects in comics I have never seen before.
Just, wow.
Absolutely recommended if you want to dive into Yokoyama and understand his oeuvre. This is really a series/collection of several of his different comics. But then, at the end, there is an interview, followed by brief notes on each of the pieces in the text--valuable insight from the artist himself.
Everything in here will "seem" unrelated but if you know Yokoyama, you know this is not true. I read Garden a few months ago. And in the story "Dress Up 1," pretty much Garden, in its entirety, is given new meaning and sort of explained. And I like that, about an auteur. I remember reading Garden and thinking, "What the fuck?" But then now, look, a few months later and I am beginning to understand it. Everything and nothing is connected.
Essentially tho, in a nutshell, Yokoyama is about striving to communicate something new and the "carrying of information." He explains artwork as either being craft or able to carry information. "Craft" artwork is the type of work "one desires to purchase and own." Yokoyama creates work that is able to carry information, in the sense that he is creating work "that can endure the test of time and be appreciated in a broad range of contexts--a work that can be viewed several hundred years after its production by people of other civilizations, and people from any place on earth, and still be enjoyed for the new discoveries it offers (as opposed to providing the kind of enjoyment that craft offers)."
Wow [2].
Furthermore, Yokoyama is "influenced by the works of Tadashi Kawamata in art, Andrei Tarkovsky in film, Arthur Honegger and Toru Takemitsu in music, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka and Masuji Ibues in literature."
I am buying ALL of his books this afternoon.
<3
July 1, 2016
Yuichi Yokoyama makes comics that are almost wholly vacuous. In his own words, "I wanted to make serialized paintings rather than single images. A painting is just one image, and can only depict one scene. I wanted to also include what happens before and after that one image." But these words highlight the very problem with his work. In not seeing the narrative value of a given image, his panels require each other to even have a semblance of value. No single image says anything. His comics become panels conveying movement but nothing else. As frustrating as this issue is, visually his works are stunning. Full of density and the panels generate a rapid motion making it impossible not to consume them in one sitting. It is a shame that he has yet to create anything substantive, although he clearly believe he has with statements like: "There are two kinds of artworks. One carries information and the other is cart. The former expresses new ideas. As a result, it may not be pleasing to the ye, but it contains new information within it. The latter is the kind of work one desires to purchase and own. In my comics, I aim for the former. What I mean is this: To make conventional paintings in the contemporary period is to produce craft in the sense explained above. I don't believe that art is incapable of offering new discoveries, but with my comics, I am really striving to communicate something new." Oh the lies we choose to believe.
July 27, 2014
Pure formalism- aliens fight for unkown reasons, structures built for a mysterious purpose. usually exactly my kind of comic, but I can only give this a middling review. Probably my fault more than the artist, but I found in many of the stories that the basic elements needed to make a comic readable, like coherant action within a panel, or a smooth panel-to-panel transition, missing or severely lacking. And since I am not Japanese, the elaborately drawn sound effects that sometimes dominated individual panels had less of an impact in me. Still I think a worthy area of comics inquiry, and I would definitely read another book by the author.
June 22, 2008
There doesn't seem to be a point to most of these "stories". Some people fight, things fall from the sky, and other things grow. Still, the pictures are awesome...really awesome. I took it out of the library for the cover alone. It brought me back to when I was 8, or 9 and would stare at the action figures in the Berenstain Bear's Bad Dream book.
September 26, 2018
On the process and the action. On the surroundings. On the velocity, fight, construction and destruction.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews