Je suis née dans un village communautaire

by Kaya Takada, Jean-Louis de la Couronne (Translator)

Kaya Takada a vécu au Japon une aventure peu ordinaire : elle a passé toute son enfance et son adolescence au sein d’un village communautaire. Inspiré par les idées libertaires qui ont abondamment circulé dans les années 1970, le village atypique dans lequel elle a grandi était une communauté rurale alternative, aux moeurs à la fois innovantes et sévères : pas de propriété privée, des lieux d’habitation dépourvus de clés, des biens matériels partagés avec tous, etc.

Parallèlement à ces pratiques généreuses, le mode de vie était marqué par une rigueur monastique et un climat terrorisant : deux repas par jour seulement, des lieux de résidence séparés pour les parents et les enfants, des punitions corporelles pour faire régner une discipline de fer, etc. Aux yeux du reste du monde, la communauté était regardée comme un lieu étrange que les gens « ordinaires » appelaient « le Village », comme ils auraient dit « la secte.»…

C’est dans cet environnement déroutant que Kaya Takada a vécu jusqu’à l’âge de 19 ans, avec ses activités et ses bonheurs simples, mais aussi, comme une litanie sans fin, ses contraintes et ses brimades… Le choc du livre naît de la confrontation entre la fraîcheur du récit de Kaya, mené « à hauteur d’enfant » avec franchise, humour et entrain, et la radicalité des moeurs de cette collectivité singulière, extraordinairement rigide et dogmatique.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Manga

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2016

Reviews

[Westward Woess · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed and appreciated this book. I think the art was endearing. The text and images were well balanced. Because the author uploaded this online originally and wrote it chronologically, you can see real improvement from Part 1 to 2. As such, I greatly enjoyed Part 2, much more than Part 1.

Part 1 is interesting but not terribly reflective. It largely describes child abuse and poor child care and general questionable community decisions. The author acknowledges the pain caused by the community's rules and how a lot of stuff in her life was detrimental to her well-being, didn’t make sense/was according to a logic that she wasn’t privy to, and wasn’t in her control. This part of the story isn't bad in and itself. The issue is that there are very few remarks on the long term ramifications to only being fed 2 meals a day as a child and getting so hungry at school that she nearly fainted (and teachers and nurses at school recognizing the neglect but not doing anything to help or to give her or the other kids food). In Part 1, it's more like “And that’s why as an adult i usually only eat two meals/day over the weekend :)” which isn’t uninteresting, but in terms of reflection, it’s fairly lacklustre. The author has all these really interesting and unique life experiences but they aren’t translated to interesting and unique reflections on her own life, society in general or the internal logic of the community. Again, it’s very interesting, but it could be so much more.

Some of the limitations aren’t her fault. As a child she didn’t live with her parents and lived with an “educator” (who was sort of like the nanny?), but this was a woman who was in charge of lots of kids (no exact number ever given) and to control them was frequently aggressive, violent and handed out a lot of abusive discipline. This woman also won't admit when she’s wrong or apologize. The closest reflection the author gets to in Part 1 is when she talks about how her and the other kids discussed wanted to kill the educatrice (it’s very brief, like 2 panels) and then she meets the woman later (vague on when and how old the author was. She drew herself as a child but it’s implied that she’s several years older) and there’s sort of a sense of pity. The author acknowledges that there was too much pressure on this woman to take care of so many children (again ? number) and her using abusive tactics may have been the best she could do. However, the author also says something like “I didn’t want to kill her anymore because she was weaker than me and that would be sadistic”, so she does imply that the woman was sadistic without doing it directly.

This is not to say that Part 1 is bad. It's not. It's still engaging. I just don't think it was fulfilling its potential and could have been so much more.

Part 2 better in terms of reflection and is less of just an episodic recounting of events. It acknowledges she has a difficult relationship with her parents who never really parented her. (She lived with the other kids and the educator since she was 5 and only saw her parents for a few days/year.) I think the author was just a more mature storyteller by Part 2, which accounts for the discrepancy.

[Ghostcat · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I love most about mangas nowadays is that it enables everyone to share a particular story about their life, and that allows us to seize the diversity of what life can be for each one of us. I had never heard before of those communautarian villages in Japan, so this was a highly educative and fascinating read.
I liked the contrast between the naive simple drawings and light tone with the harsh life described here, full of restraints and violence towards children.

[Laïna]

DNF
Je mettrai une note si jamais je le termine.
Ce qui m'empêche de poursuivre la lecture est la redondance dans les stratégies narratives. Le vécu de la narratrice est somme toute intéressante, mais la mise en récit est défaillante.