Pescadores de medianoche

by Yoshihiro Tatsumi

«La atmósfera oscura de estas historias refleja bien mis sentimientos de entonces.» La presente antología recoge nueve historias escritas entre 1972 y 1973 y seleccionadas por el mismo Tatsumi, maestro y fundador del gekiga. El mangaka que contó su vida en el premiado manga Una vida errante disecciona aquí el milagro económico japonés para desvelar las tensiones, los deseos y las angustias de millones de jóvenes que acudieron en masa a las ciudades y vieron sus sueños frustrados. En sus historias, Tatsumi pone en escena la banalidad de la vida moderna y sondea las profundidades de la juventud perdida de los años setenta. Los pescadores de medianoche deambulan por clubes nocturnos, tristes suburbios y desangelados estudios sin baño… ser joven en aquel entonces no tenía nada de romántico. Yoshihiro Tatsumi (1935-2015) fue uno de los padrinos del gekiga, el cómic alternativo japonés que se difundió a partir de 1957. Su obra se ha traducido a multitud de idiomas. Tatsumi recibió el Premio de la Asociación de Dibujantes de Japón en 1972. En 2009, fue galardonado con el Premio Cultural Osamu Tezuka por su autobiografía Una vida errante. Ese mismo trabajo le valió dos premios Eisner en 2010 y el premio «Regards sur le monde» en el Festival Internacional del Cómic de Angoulême en 2012. En 2011 se estrenó una película sobre su vida y sus historias cortas. La película, Tatsumi, dirigida por Eric Khoo, se presentó en el Festival de Cine de Cannes.

Genres: Manga, Comics, Japan, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Comics Manga, Bande Dessinée

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

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

[Sam Quixote · Rating 4 out of 5]

Midnight Fishermen is the final book by Yoshihiro Tatsumi to be published before his death in 2015. It collects nine stories from the early 1970s, so unfortunately there’s no new material here, though they’ve never appeared in English translation before and they’re mostly good too.

They’re also pretty damn grim! The mood in all of them is mostly cynical, reflecting the difficulty the stories’ subjects, young people, had in surviving in the oppressive and growing metropolis of Tokyo. The city is a hulking, dirty beast and the characters in the stories are all working or lower-middle-class who can only dream of upward social mobility, owning their own homes or working a decent job - themes that sadly remain relevant for too many today, in the West as in the East.

But the stories are compelling and well-told by Tatsumi with his characteristically powerful focus on humanity. I enjoyed the one about the stripper who is threatened with arrest if she keeps on stripping, which felt like an unusual but still affecting modern romance about alienation in cities. I also like the one about the man who buys a plot of land way, way out in the country but is overjoyed just to have his foot in the door of property ownership, and the story of the cormorant fisherman, in part because I couldn’t tell where it was going.

I only disliked the one about the robot servant which was like a crap Twilight Zone short. The title story was way too on-the-nose with the ironic ending and the final one about the lantern angler overly underlined its obvious symbolism - they came off as amateurish in tone because of their lack of subtlety. Otherwise, I really liked how the stories unconventionally stopped rather than ended in a way that played to Tatsumi’s largely realistic storytelling style.

Like Tatsumi’s other collections, Midnight Fishermen is dark but compelling reading by one of the greatest manga creators of all time. While fans will need no encouragement to pick this one up, I heartily recommend Tatsumi’s books - particularly his masterpiece, A Drifting Life - to all comics readers.

[Dani Mexuto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Xa levo uns anos traballando para unha multi xaponesa. Mails con TODO subliñado en vermello e problemas de incomunicación, e á vez amizades brutais e moi alien, amabilidade ata que doe etc ...

E é por iso que este gekiga explícame tanto, erame moi necesario ..., é un xenero que eu creo que non temos na Galiza e farianos inmesa falla. Con isto enténdese que os xaponeses son moi parecidos a nós sen perder todo o que os fai alien, o gekiga convertete en xaponés cando o les, ves a merda do xapón exposta á luz do día e empatizas, e entendelo todo, e doe, e deixache mal corpo despois. Non é victimismo, como creo que facemos moito no noso país, é a merda en todo o seu esplendor e estética, case ata estar orgulloso dela. Co que iso supón.

Pescadores de medianoche é a compresión dun incompresíbel como é o xapón. É a polla limonera.

[Alex Pler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Las miserias, los sueños y las esperanzas de pillos, yakuzas y prostitutas. Con un dibujo feísta muy carismático y atmosférico y con una ternura por sus personajes perdedores.

[Jake Nap · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fine collection of Tatsumi stories not found anywhere else. So ahead of his time. Poor lettering job however. I understand the bubbles are already there, they can’t remove them and it’s translated so the bubbles are big for the English translation, but I feel the Drawn and Quarterly published volumes did a better job at handling this problem.

[Coke Fernández · Rating 3 out of 5]

6/10.
Las historias no están mal, pero profundiza muy poco en cada una de ellas.

[Roberta · Rating 3 out of 5]

La sinossi è più che onesta. Lo "stile dal taglio realistico", le "illusioni del "Japanese Dream" e le "periferie degradate di Tokyo" si susseguono una racconto dopo l'altro in una lettura che lascia un vago senso di disagio. Mi è piaciuto davvero molto.

[Lengua Sucinta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reseña completa en el blog: Lengua Sucinta

[Alejandro Gil · Rating 4 out of 5]

cuentos, gekiga

[August · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first manga read, and a very interesting one at that. It was fun getting used to the old reading-inversersely-business of this medium, struggling to keep the eye moving from right to left instead of vice versa, and getting a first few impressions of the idiosyncrasies of (this suborder of) manga, e.g. its succinctness (here resulting in a seemingly truncated form of narrative), mysterious allusions, exotic settings and dark humour (which sometimes for the Westerner, it must be said, borders on the incomprehensible). Tokyo is a dark, dark place according to Yoshihiro Tatsumi - a city and a decrepit state of human life all at once. Here people fight - or cheat - to stay alive, only to realize along the way that they are now stuck for good in this urban quicksand, which in turn leaves them no option but to relinquish all the fond dreams they once had of acquiring a small plot of land of their own in the tranquil Japanese countryside. Abandon all hope, you who enter here!

[Chechu Rebota · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maravillosa recopilación de relatos cortos ambientados en el Japón de la segunda mitad de la década de los 70, cuando el crecimiento económico atraía a los jóvenes a la gran ciudad en busca de un buen trabajo y dinero y acababa engulléndolos. Es un retrato de un país que estaba a punto de entrar en una crisis económica enorme y, de manera un tanto tangencial, se puede ver en estas historias por qué: los jóvenes sin trabajo o con un trabajo precario, la burbuja surgida por la compra de terrenos, la inestabilidad de los negocios, etc.

Las historias son oscuras y tristes y se centran en el día a día de una serie de personajes que tratan de sobrevivir y, en algunos casos, escapar de la miseria que envuelve sus vidas, pero pese a todo el autor logra que estos personajes desprendan cierta ternura en vez de juzgarlos.

A destacar la (agradable) sorpresa que supone El castillo de la mujer, relato que rompe un poco con los demás y que recomiendo leer el primero o el último.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of manga short stories, created by Yoshihiro Tatsumi in the early 70s, that portray disaffected, marginalized youth at the time of the Japanese economic boom. In the midst of exploding affluence, these stories are about youth that either realizes there is no place for them in upwardly-mobile society (for whatever reason) or who may have a momentary triumph or sensation, but then fall back into the stratum or depression they were in originally. Each story has a tacit moral message, despite the fact that most of the stories show the seamy side of life, many have explicit passages, such as one, ¨Hometown¨ that depicts gang rape, another, ¨Midnight Fishermen¨ shows a male hustler looking for cash in a customer´s handbag after she tells him she has no money to pay him, while his friend makes a (dubious and dangerous) living by periodically allowing himself to get run over in order to collect the insurance money. The characters in the stories are mostly what would be called the dregs of society - although most times they are trying to escape their lowly status, most time unsuccessfully. In ¨Welcome Home Daddy¨ however, the protagonist is a businessman who almost gambles away everything he owns including his home, but luckily manages to win it all back when his fortune changes. In ¨The Dawn of Porn¨ a young couple who live in a tiny apartment have a chance to apartment-sit a luxury condo in a high-rise for one night; however, an unexpected twist (soot/pollution) when they open a window means they must scrub everything before the apartment owner returns the next day. In ¨Run with the Midnight Train¨ a young man buys a small piece of land 12 hours by bullet train away from Tokyo; he is so happy that he now owns land that he insists on visiting it immediately, fantasizing about building his own castle there etc. He drags his girlfriend to the empty lot and insists on weeding the land that night. She works on the weeding for a while but then exasperated leaves - returns to Tokyo by herself while he keeps working and running around the plot. In ¨My Boobs¨ a stripper is arrested by a detective posing as a paying customer for performing sex acts on stage. She is a popular performer and her first arrest results in a fine but no jail time. She does the same thing again despite knowing the detective is again in the audience. This time she will have to serve time, leaving behind a baby and the devastated audience. The final page of the story wasn't easy to interpret. It shows the detecting sobbing as he eats some sushi - perhaps regretting his zeal in arresting the stripper. The customer who was trying to help her get out of jail, seems gratified, but in the next frame, looks downcast. There is no dialog on the last page. ¨The Woman´s Palace¨ is a futuristic manga, set in the future, when people will have bionic spare pars installed, which will keep them going for hundreds of years. Robots have been given the tasks of nurses. A 300 year-old woman relies on a robot she has had for 30 years, but it is subject to wear and tear and finally does break down. In the last page, the reader sees that the old woman´s house is an island of traditional architecture within an area that is built up. ¨Hometown¨ is about a cormorant fisherman whose sister Akemi has returned after being away six years. She is far from the demure young woman she initially seems to be - instead, after having an abortion, returns to the the red light district probably the resume being a geisha therein. In ¨Misappriation" a garbage man finds a huge sum of money left in a phone booth in a paper bag by a business owner. The money can only buy him a limited amount of happiness, and by the end of the story, it appears that the police have become suspicious of his new-found great wealth. In ¨The Lantern Angler¨ a seemingly innocent runaway entangles her rescuer in a nefarious plot, that sends him running from her. After thinking he had hit the big time and was about to marry into a rich, powerful family, he is instead running for his life. The last page shows the protagonist back at home, in the little apartment, grateful to have escaped with his life.

The drawings are in a simplified, schematic style, reminded me a bit of ¨Dick Tracy.¨ These are linear, black and white drawings - overall, their quality is good, as is the selection of angles, framing, etc. This is not ordinarily the type of graphic novel I would read, but nudity/sex in the book is handled in a fairly restrained manner. All in all, I would recommend this book to adult readers - it is excellent for manga aficionados.

[Rick Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Midnight Fishermen is a collection of nine translated stories from Yoshiharu Tatsumi - his final collection before he passed away. The three available collections from Drawn + Quarterly collect Tatsumi works between '69-'71 before they stalled out, so it's nice that we get another collection from Singapore-based publisher Landmark Books to deliver a few more stories from that period. Nothing in Midnight Fishermen has been collected in the three D+Q collections, so this is an easy recommendation to pickup for fans of Tatsumi's work. The stories in this collection are equally bleak and pessimistic, painting the post-war Japan with a lens of pervasive poverty, lust, cynicism and disillusionment with society and government. Tatsumi's life was undoubtedly affected by growing up in the late '40s/early '50s where opportunities were scant and cultural growth was impaired by a lengthy period of reconstruction in the WWII fallout, and this all distills into his work. Some of the stories here can be considered downright ghoulish, but understanding this period of literature and art from Japan is crucial towards dissecting the core themes of each tale.

There are a few core themes permeating the stories here: the hustle and grind of city life, the societal decay towards more perverse attitudes, and some idealization of rural living. In stories like "Run With the Midnight Train" and "Midnight Fishermen", the lives of men being trapped within the relentless grind of urban life is made immediately apparent by how it manifests in other forms of greedy and selfish behaviors. Meanwhile, stories like "Welcome Home Daddy", "The Lantern Angler", "The Dawn of Porn" and "Misappropriation" all serve to demonstrate how lack of opportunities and prestige lead to degenerate and self-destructive behaviors. Stories like "Hometown" and "Midnight Fishermen" also contain some of darker themes, but also find a way to demonstrate a love and purity in the human spirit if some form. It doesn't fully balance out the grimness of each individual story, but to simply distill Tatsumi's work as being overly pessimistic would be a disservice - one can spot a semblance of hope within these dark moments.

Those who have found collections like Abandon the Old in Tokyo and Good-Bye to be too cynical, will undeniably not enjoy this one either. But I've always appreciated Tatsumi's ability to blend a delicate dark humor with the naked observations of humanity in bleak times, and Midnight Fishermen is yet another fantastic showing for this legendary mangaka.

[Albus Elown · Rating 5 out of 5]

PESCADORES DE MEDIANOCHE
AUTOR: TATSUMI YOSHIHIRO
EDITORIAL: GALLO NERO
TRADUCCION: YOKO OGIHARA Y FERNANDO CORDOBEZ
PAGINAS: 194

Este manga es una joya, surgido entre los años de 1972 y 1973, es una compilación de nueve historias bajo el mando de Yoshihiro Tatsumi, el cual es conocido por su manga Una Vida Errante. Aquí se nos presenta una modernidad y una vida llena de constantes sobretodo en la juventud japonesa.

En realidad este manga es de un genero conocido como "Gekiga" que en si significa una imagen dramática, y es un estilo más para adultos por el tipo de temáticas que maneja. Se busco realizar historias más adultas desde 1950 y justamente quien dió el término fue el autor Yoshihiro Tatsumi.

Para este compendio de 9 historias, se nos muestra a grandes rasgos diferentes personajes, diferentes motivaciones e ideas de vida, enmarcadas en historias oscuras como ejemplo la que da título a el manga, la cual trata sobre dos jóvenes que estafan y obtienen a sus víctimas por medio de esa cacería nocturna, los dos tienen diferentes motivaciones lo que los lleva a cometer dichos actos.

Así mismo entre esas nueve historias contamos con un relato de Ciencia Ficción El palacio de la mujer, dónde una mujer vive eternamente y su fiel sirviente una máquina se descompone, la mujer ya no quiere vivir, algo que provoca la reflexión sobre los avances científicos y tambien sobre el sufrimiento de las personas.

Este libro en si, es totalmente a lo que he leído , en cuestión de mangas en dónde se nos muestra la modernidad y las capas de la misma sociedad, donde hay un desenfreno respecto a ls sexualidad y un dramatismo marcado en la sociedad japonesa y la marginalidad que acarrea la vida underground (metropolitana o de la metropoli.)

[Felipe Arango Betancourt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Para los personajes de estas historias está la desilusión, la penumbra, las sombras. Ellos, los excluidos de ese milagro económico; a ellos están destinadas las sobras de esa prosperidad creciente.

Algunas de las historias:

*Pescadores de medianoche: Para Ken y Yazu el escenario es la gran ciudad, la muchedumbre, donde el ser se desnaturaliza y pierde toda identidad. Dos timadores tratando de sobrevivir a como de lugar.

*Bienvenido a casa, papá: Un jugador, un hombre que lleva toda su vida al límite, que lo apuesta todo, lo pierde todo y lo recupera todo, para llegar al amanecer a su casa y seguir siendo el papá déspota.

*Mis tetas: Sayuri es la estrella, es la stripper más famosa, sobre ella recaen todas las miradas y anhelos.
Sayuri es modelo erótica y madre. También conoce la cárcel. Sayuri deja su oficio, dejando a sus fans suspirando.

*El palacio de la mujer: La anciana parece ser una anciana. Su compañía, un antiguo robot que está a punto de dejar de funcionar. Un robot con cierta humanidad. Lo que uno no espera es el final.

[Tío Coyote · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo mejor del libro es que permite apreciar el arte de Tatsumi de principios de los años setentas, específicamente entre 1972 y 1973. Lo malo es la edición: el papel es de una calidad mediocre y se pueden ver las ilustraciones del otro lado de la hoja, haciendo que, aunque la encuadernación sea cosida, la experiencia no sea tan memorable como en las ediciones de Drawn & Quarterly, que no llegaron a cubrir esta fase artística de Tatsumi.

[Drew Canole · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of short stories by Tatsumi that has been on my to-read list for far too long! Glad I finally got my hands on a copy. They're all excellent like his D+Q published trilogy of short stories. A collection I'll revisit again soon.

I heard companies in Japan are developing AI to help mass translate manga. AI in comics has so far been a net negative, but I really think this could help us get access to manga that doesn't justify (economically speaking) professional translation. One day I'll get to read through all of Garo magazine!

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Midnight Fisherman is the fourth collection of manga short stories that I’ve read from Yoshiro Tatsumi. I think I appreciate him more with each book.

Tatsumi’s MO: black and white, mostly-realistic art. Realistic storylines (for the most part) that critique societal issues. In this volume, a good portion of the stories confront Japan’s increased industrialization and economic rise decades after WWII.

Excellent stuff.

[Khairulazizi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Novel graphic ini menghimpunkan kisah - kisah di Jepun pada tahun 70an. Hasil kerja Yoshihiro Tatsumi yang mencipta dan memperjuangkan mazhab "gekiga" dalam industri komik Jepun. Kisah - kisah pendek konflik dewasa yang membuatkan kita terfikir kadangkala apa yang kita mahukan kadang2 tidak ada makna. #midnightfisherman #gekiga #sirimembacha

[Antonio · Rating 4 out of 5]

No soy lector habitual de manga y Tatsumi tampoco es un autor al uso por la negrura existencialista y el erotismo poco complaciente de sus relatos. Son muy cinematográficos, estéticos y aparentemente fáciles de leer pero dejan mucho poso. Los nueve que componen esta selección son un conjunto compacto sin momentos flojos.

[José Nebreda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Los jodidos 70. En Japón.

[Juan Fuentes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Las mejores son las tres últimas, que son realmente oscuras y con un nivel gráfico impresionante. Las otras no están mal. No es lo mejor del autor pero es una delicia leerlo.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this one! I found many stories layered with dry humor, which is a change of pace from the usual bleakness his stories embody.

Good stuff!

[Esteban Cabral · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una puñalada al alma pero excelente. Muy recomendable.

[Christel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 1970 years were still a hard time for Japan, especially for young people. No good jobs, living in small apartments, and not much of a future seemed ahead. Yohishiro Tatsumi told these stories, often in a raw and simple way. However, some stories are rather complex and the graphics play well with space and perspective.
He called the new genre 'gekiga' (dramatic pictures) to distinguish it from other manga.
This collection gives a good insight and introduces the world of gekiga to today's readers.

[Mior Ikhmal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holy fuck.

[Pedro Jorge]

No conocía el término gekiga, un tipo de manga más socialmente comprometido. Pero «Pescadores de medianoche» es una excelente recopilación de historias sobre la otra cara del milagro económico japonés.

Mi reseña completa: https://youtu.be/YpR-DhpjxiQ