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The Complete Mature Works Of Yoshiharu Tsuge #4
Oba Electroplating Factory
An alt-manga legend strikes out on his own, creating some of his most revealing and personal works
Oba Electroplating Factory is a startlingly bleak but nonetheless captivating portrait of mid-century Japan in its most unglamorous iteration. Glimpses of the artist reflecting upon his life, his work, and his contemporaries pepper the narrative a wife teases her husband about a former fling on a trip to the hot springs, a young cartoonist is aghast at the cavalier conduct of his supposed betters, and imperfect men must grapple with the discomfort of their own honesty. Tsuge’s stories are studies in staging nature, working to evoke stillness and movement in such a way that renders his chosen setting a character all on its own.
Following the breakthrough success of Nejishiki, Yoshiharu Tsuge forges a path for autofiction in manga and changes the cultural landscape of comics forever. Some of his most revealing and personal works were published between 1973 to 1974. As much as it is a testament to the author’s predilection for addressing sensitive and mature themes in response to his culture, this volume also collects works from the only period in which Tsuge tries his hand at writing for a mainstream audience in earnest.
This fourth volume in the complete works of a legendary manga-ka is an indispensable addition to the literary comics canon and shining example of world literature at its most human.
EditBuild
Oba Electroplating Factory is a startlingly bleak but nonetheless captivating portrait of mid-century Japan in its most unglamorous iteration. Glimpses of the artist reflecting upon his life, his work, and his contemporaries pepper the narrative a wife teases her husband about a former fling on a trip to the hot springs, a young cartoonist is aghast at the cavalier conduct of his supposed betters, and imperfect men must grapple with the discomfort of their own honesty. Tsuge’s stories are studies in staging nature, working to evoke stillness and movement in such a way that renders his chosen setting a character all on its own.
Following the breakthrough success of Nejishiki, Yoshiharu Tsuge forges a path for autofiction in manga and changes the cultural landscape of comics forever. Some of his most revealing and personal works were published between 1973 to 1974. As much as it is a testament to the author’s predilection for addressing sensitive and mature themes in response to his culture, this volume also collects works from the only period in which Tsuge tries his hand at writing for a mainstream audience in earnest.
This fourth volume in the complete works of a legendary manga-ka is an indispensable addition to the literary comics canon and shining example of world literature at its most human.
EditBuild
Kindle Edition
Published August 13, 2024
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About the author
Yoshiharu Tsuge
59 books112 followersInfluenced by the adventure comics of Osamu Tezuka and the gritty mystery manga of Yoshihiro Tatsumi and Masahiko Matsumoto, Yoshiharu Tsuge began making his own comics in the mid-1950s. He was also briefly recruited to assist Shigeru Mizuki during his explosion of popularity in the 1960s. In 1968, Tsuge published the groundbreaking, surrealistic story "Nejishiki" in the legendary alternative manga magazine Garo. This story established Tsuge as not only an influential manga-ka but also a major figure within Japan's counter-culture and art world at large. He is considered the originator and greatest practitioner of the semi-autobiographical "I-novel" genre of making comics. In 2005, Tsuge was nominated for the Best Album Award at Angoulême International, and in 2017 a survey of his work, A World Of Dreams And Travel, won the Japan Cartoonists Association Grand Award.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 28, 2025
My fourth volume of mangaka Yoshiharu Tsuge's manga, these from the seventies--1973-74, specifically--short stories, with a great scholarly essay as usual by manga historian and translator Ryan Holmberg, the series wonderfully produced by Drawn & Quarterly. This was probably my favorite so far, as Tsuge settles into his auto-fictional mode. Self-deprecating, bleak, it shows the struggles of a young cartoonist, and working class life.
"Boarding House Days" features talk of sexual conquest by one guy as another listens. This volume begins and ends with the boarding house, where Tsuge lived for a decade, in poverty, after moving out from his mother's home. Slice of life.
"Oba Electroplating Factory" is a working class tale of Tsuge and his brother working in an unsafe electroplating factory. Misery, but if you have ever worked in a factory. . . reminds me of Bukowski on terrible jobs
"Someone I Miss." A manga artist visits a hot spring to do some background work on a manga he is working on (in other words, he is returning to a place he had visited years ago), but he finds a woman whom he slept with when he was there. Sweet, nostalgia, with that title? Ah, but he is now visiting the place with his wife, and when he slips out to talk with her at night he discovers he still has feelings for her, and of course embarrasses himself .
"Realism Inn" is about a manga artist who wants to write aout merchant inns and so stays there--he has many stories of staying in such inns--but stays at a low rent place instead. Which is also the kind of place he know a lot about.
"Wasteland Inn" is a storyy about staying at an inn, where the son of the owner has his artwork on all the walls.
"Yoshio's Youth" is the longest and possibly most memorable of the stories, about an older mangaka, broke, not paying for his exorbitant stays at a hot springs inn. He collects porn, drinks too much, hangs out with geishas, doesn't finish promised projects, and when he refuses to pay for his bill leaves Tsuge, who did work for him without being paid--at the inn as kidnapped collateral. The guy also suggests Tsuge not make a life as a comics artist, as it is a miserable underpaid existence. Tsuge kinda agrees, as he is slow, procrastinates, prefers to wander the land.
Yoshiharu Tsuge's autofiction was not in the seventies a common approach to manga, but he is today one of the most celebrated mangkas of all time. I know the misery above doesn't seem inviting, but Tsuge gives an interesting portrait of lower class life with slice of life comics, and an interesting view of himself and comics, too. Holmberg's essay puts his work in historical perspective.
"Boarding House Days" features talk of sexual conquest by one guy as another listens. This volume begins and ends with the boarding house, where Tsuge lived for a decade, in poverty, after moving out from his mother's home. Slice of life.
"Oba Electroplating Factory" is a working class tale of Tsuge and his brother working in an unsafe electroplating factory. Misery, but if you have ever worked in a factory. . . reminds me of Bukowski on terrible jobs
"Someone I Miss." A manga artist visits a hot spring to do some background work on a manga he is working on (in other words, he is returning to a place he had visited years ago), but he finds a woman whom he slept with when he was there. Sweet, nostalgia, with that title? Ah, but he is now visiting the place with his wife, and when he slips out to talk with her at night he discovers he still has feelings for her, and of course embarrasses himself .
"Realism Inn" is about a manga artist who wants to write aout merchant inns and so stays there--he has many stories of staying in such inns--but stays at a low rent place instead. Which is also the kind of place he know a lot about.
"Wasteland Inn" is a storyy about staying at an inn, where the son of the owner has his artwork on all the walls.
"Yoshio's Youth" is the longest and possibly most memorable of the stories, about an older mangaka, broke, not paying for his exorbitant stays at a hot springs inn. He collects porn, drinks too much, hangs out with geishas, doesn't finish promised projects, and when he refuses to pay for his bill leaves Tsuge, who did work for him without being paid--at the inn as kidnapped collateral. The guy also suggests Tsuge not make a life as a comics artist, as it is a miserable underpaid existence. Tsuge kinda agrees, as he is slow, procrastinates, prefers to wander the land.
Yoshiharu Tsuge's autofiction was not in the seventies a common approach to manga, but he is today one of the most celebrated mangkas of all time. I know the misery above doesn't seem inviting, but Tsuge gives an interesting portrait of lower class life with slice of life comics, and an interesting view of himself and comics, too. Holmberg's essay puts his work in historical perspective.
September 8, 2024
The fourth volume of Drawn & Quarterly's collection of Yoshiharu Tsuge's stories, Oba Electroplating Factory remains as bleak as the works collected in the previous volume, Nejishiki. I'd liked the stories contained in here to be most similar to
The Man Without Talent,
which serves a little like autofiction surrounding the struggles of a cartoonist in a despairing local economy. More than half the entries in Oba Electroplating Factory feature a struggling comics artist who are often held back by things outside of their ability to make art. The various featured characters frequently handle the unglamorous reality of postwar Japan, from emasculation to infidelity to sexual violence. The stories here are fairly dark, but Tsuge's stories all somehow maintain in a meditative pace and stillness that cultivates a nice easiness to them. It's apparent in one of the more lighter stories here, "Someone I Miss", which takes on the travelogue-styled storytelling from earlier volumes of this series but maintains an uneasy tension as we follow a man who grapples with the idea of cheating on his wife during a trip.
As seen with Nejishiki, Tsuge is completely unafraid of tackling more challenging themes with his stories. It's even more daring to frame these as loosely autobiographical, since very few of the characters are portrayed under a sympathetic light. Men specifically are most frequently depicted as inept and ill-qualified to deal with the harsh realities of a struggling economy, but the ire seems even more directed at male cartoonists. Women don't fare much better admittedly, but it does seem like the central theme of the stories in Oba Electroplating Factory feature a class of artist that simply can't cut it. Perhaps there's some self-admonishment at play here, but nothing here really comes off as indulging in self-pity or overindulgent either.
As with any collection of short stories, one can expect to see some variability in quality, but I have to say that Oba Electroplating Factory has no weak entry. Each story is as good as the next, and after reading through each story twice, I still can't pick a favorite out of the bunch. "Boarding House Days", the titular "Oba Electroplating Factory", "The Incident" and "Wasteland Inn" are all phenomenal short stories that highlight the artistic prowess of one of the eminent artists to grace Garo and cultivates a uniquely surreal storytelling quality that only grows more profound with time. All four volumes are worth reading, but both Nejishiki and Oba Electroplating Factory are the two clear standouts so far.
As seen with Nejishiki, Tsuge is completely unafraid of tackling more challenging themes with his stories. It's even more daring to frame these as loosely autobiographical, since very few of the characters are portrayed under a sympathetic light. Men specifically are most frequently depicted as inept and ill-qualified to deal with the harsh realities of a struggling economy, but the ire seems even more directed at male cartoonists. Women don't fare much better admittedly, but it does seem like the central theme of the stories in Oba Electroplating Factory feature a class of artist that simply can't cut it. Perhaps there's some self-admonishment at play here, but nothing here really comes off as indulging in self-pity or overindulgent either.
As with any collection of short stories, one can expect to see some variability in quality, but I have to say that Oba Electroplating Factory has no weak entry. Each story is as good as the next, and after reading through each story twice, I still can't pick a favorite out of the bunch. "Boarding House Days", the titular "Oba Electroplating Factory", "The Incident" and "Wasteland Inn" are all phenomenal short stories that highlight the artistic prowess of one of the eminent artists to grace Garo and cultivates a uniquely surreal storytelling quality that only grows more profound with time. All four volumes are worth reading, but both Nejishiki and Oba Electroplating Factory are the two clear standouts so far.
October 28, 2024
By now I'm resigned to the fact that there's probably nothing else in Tsuge's oeuvre like "Nejishiki". Most of these stories will be familiar to readers of Vol. 2 of Drawn and Quarterly's Tsuge series. I like "Someone I miss" for the tension, but the rest are mostly working class slice of life tales, often with autobiographical references. Competent and pleasant, but I won't remember them.
September 26, 2024
Couldn't put it down. Mesmerizing.
July 11, 2025
Lido em Inglês.
Todas as histórias têm um certo tom biográfico e de "crónica do quotidiano" de que gosto particularmente. No entanto, acho que acabam de forma um bocadinho abrupta. A vida é um pouco assim, nem sempre há conclusões decisivas... Mas ficou a "faltar algo" para que eu pudesse afirmar que gostei muito deste livro...
Todas as histórias têm um certo tom biográfico e de "crónica do quotidiano" de que gosto particularmente. No entanto, acho que acabam de forma um bocadinho abrupta. A vida é um pouco assim, nem sempre há conclusões decisivas... Mas ficou a "faltar algo" para que eu pudesse afirmar que gostei muito deste livro...
September 23, 2024
Another fantastic collection of short stories by the master Yoshiharu Tsuge. Perhaps the most consistent volume to date as Tsuge seems to be at the height of his powers here. Can't wait to get my hands on volume 5! This series collects his mature works, so after doing manga for the rental market (I wouldn't mind seeing some of that just for fun).
An excellent biographical essay included that documents Tsuge's struggle and recognition in the Japanese art world. He was the first mangaka inducted into the Japan Art Academy.
Collects his work from 1973 and 1974.
Boarding House Days
-Two young men chatting, one talks about his sexual exploits to the other's obvious discomfort.
Oba Electroplating Factory
-Tsuge and his brother both worked at an electroplating factory. This is a fictionalised story of a young boy working hard when the adults already seem disenfranchised.
Someone I Miss
A mangaka goes with his wife to take photos of a hot spring for his manga... but its the same hot spring where a girl he slept with still works.
Realism Inn
A mangaka wants to stay at a merchant's inn but accidentally steps into a dumpy inn and gets emotionally manipulated into staying there.
The Incident
A guy driving a car has an emotional breakdown, locking himself in and eventually setting fire to it.
Wasteland Inn
A mangaka stays at an inn, a common element of Tsuge's work, the rooms are decorated with outsider artwork painted by the inn's adult son who is a bit of a freeloading alcoholic.
Yoshio's Youth
Another mangaka, this one even more like Tsuge himself, gets a job apprenticing for a manga artist who is a slimeball - stealing money, and gets Yoshio trapped at an inn as he refused to pay. The longest story in the collection.
An excellent biographical essay included that documents Tsuge's struggle and recognition in the Japanese art world. He was the first mangaka inducted into the Japan Art Academy.
Collects his work from 1973 and 1974.
Boarding House Days
-Two young men chatting, one talks about his sexual exploits to the other's obvious discomfort.
Oba Electroplating Factory
-Tsuge and his brother both worked at an electroplating factory. This is a fictionalised story of a young boy working hard when the adults already seem disenfranchised.
Someone I Miss
A mangaka goes with his wife to take photos of a hot spring for his manga... but its the same hot spring where a girl he slept with still works.
Realism Inn
A mangaka wants to stay at a merchant's inn but accidentally steps into a dumpy inn and gets emotionally manipulated into staying there.
The Incident
A guy driving a car has an emotional breakdown, locking himself in and eventually setting fire to it.
Wasteland Inn
A mangaka stays at an inn, a common element of Tsuge's work, the rooms are decorated with outsider artwork painted by the inn's adult son who is a bit of a freeloading alcoholic.
Yoshio's Youth
Another mangaka, this one even more like Tsuge himself, gets a job apprenticing for a manga artist who is a slimeball - stealing money, and gets Yoshio trapped at an inn as he refused to pay. The longest story in the collection.
February 25, 2025
An absolute masterwork. I could read and re-read these stories over and over again and find something new and strange in them.
August 7, 2025
The existence of Tsuge and his work being available in the West is important and good. I don't know how much I actually enjoy the work itself having now read more than one volume of it - it is shockingly close to Western alt comix trends of the time in terms of content, and frankly I have read a lot of autobios by disheveled male cartoonists so despite the marked difference in setting this isn't quite as unique as one might expect. Won't be going out of my way to read more Tsuge but will happily pick them up if I see them at the library, as I did with this one.
As always the Holmberg essay at the back goes a long way in helping contextualize the material. With the confirmation that D+Q will be bringing over all of Tsuge's work in release order, I suspect the essays contained within will collectively function like a full biography of the author and his work, as well as the surrounding gekiga manga industry (as much as there was one), so the volumes are worth it for that alone.
As always the Holmberg essay at the back goes a long way in helping contextualize the material. With the confirmation that D+Q will be bringing over all of Tsuge's work in release order, I suspect the essays contained within will collectively function like a full biography of the author and his work, as well as the surrounding gekiga manga industry (as much as there was one), so the volumes are worth it for that alone.
March 13, 2025
The fourth volume in the resuscitation of Yoshiharu Tsuge's literary manga. This one hews strongly toward situations and stories inspired by Tsuge-san's own life, from his childhood years to his early years pursuing his art. I really enjoyed the glimpse he shows us here, and it's all framed through his eccentric characters and simple linework.
January 4, 2025
Some works of autofiction from a classic manga artist written in the 70s. The stories are bleak and often risque. The artwork could be strange. Backgrounds were very detailed while faces were often cartoonish and elongated. I thought this was fine.
October 30, 2025
i love that he made that the last frame
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews