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The influential cartoonist hits his stride as he celebrates the charms and oddities of rural postwar culture
Yoshiharu Tsuge leaves early genre trappings behind, taking a light, humorous approach in these stories based on his own travels. Red Flowers ranges from deep character studies to personal reflections to ensemble comedies set in the hotels and bathhouses of rural Japan. There are irascible old men, drunken gangsters, reflective psychiatric-hospital escapees, and mysterious dogs. Tsuge’s stories are mischievous and tender even as they explore complex relationships and heartache. It’s a world of extreme poverty, tradition, secret fishing holes, and top-dollar koi farming.
The title story highlights the nuance and empathy that made Tsuge’s work stand out from that of his peers. A nameless traveler comes across a young girl running an inn. While showing the traveler where the best fishing hole is, a bratty schoolmate reveals the girl must run the business because her alcoholic father is incapable. At the story’s end, the traveler witnesses an unusual act of kindness from the boy as the girl suffers her first menstrual cramps ― and a simple travelogue takes on unexpected depth.
Red Flowers affirms why Tsuge went on to become one of the most important cartoonists in Japan. These vital comics inspired a wealth of fictionalized memoir from his peers and a desire within the postwar generation to document and understand the diversity of their country’s culture.
Yoshiharu Tsuge leaves early genre trappings behind, taking a light, humorous approach in these stories based on his own travels. Red Flowers ranges from deep character studies to personal reflections to ensemble comedies set in the hotels and bathhouses of rural Japan. There are irascible old men, drunken gangsters, reflective psychiatric-hospital escapees, and mysterious dogs. Tsuge’s stories are mischievous and tender even as they explore complex relationships and heartache. It’s a world of extreme poverty, tradition, secret fishing holes, and top-dollar koi farming.
The title story highlights the nuance and empathy that made Tsuge’s work stand out from that of his peers. A nameless traveler comes across a young girl running an inn. While showing the traveler where the best fishing hole is, a bratty schoolmate reveals the girl must run the business because her alcoholic father is incapable. At the story’s end, the traveler witnesses an unusual act of kindness from the boy as the girl suffers her first menstrual cramps ― and a simple travelogue takes on unexpected depth.
Red Flowers affirms why Tsuge went on to become one of the most important cartoonists in Japan. These vital comics inspired a wealth of fictionalized memoir from his peers and a desire within the postwar generation to document and understand the diversity of their country’s culture.
284 pages, Hardcover
First published December 14, 1994
11 people are currently reading
415 people want to read
About the author
Yoshiharu Tsuge
59 books114 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 - 30 of 40 reviews
April 2, 2022
My second collection from one of the great mangaka, a series of slice-of-life auto-fiction based on his own travels around Japan in the sixties, stories of little out-ofthe way inns and fishing and sad characters, that includes Tsuge's stand-in for himself.
Slice-of-life means that little happens, and usually nothing very dramatic; they are not always well-formed narratives, and the art is typical of that period in Japan, with goofy cartoony characters and carefully drawn realistic backgrounds, but there is humor and humanity in them, a considerable amount of warmth. Beautiful production by Drawn and Quarterly and the New York Review of Books of a valuable artifact from the guy who mainly invented autobiographical or memoir manga.
Slice-of-life means that little happens, and usually nothing very dramatic; they are not always well-formed narratives, and the art is typical of that period in Japan, with goofy cartoony characters and carefully drawn realistic backgrounds, but there is humor and humanity in them, a considerable amount of warmth. Beautiful production by Drawn and Quarterly and the New York Review of Books of a valuable artifact from the guy who mainly invented autobiographical or memoir manga.
January 11, 2023
This one is cheating as these stories were all published in Japan decades ago... but please D+Q (or any other publisher for that matter) keep releasing these forgotten classics in English. Before American comics started getting the adult, slice-of-life style books pioneered by guys like R. Crumb and Harvey Pekar, there was guys like Tsuge doing character studies in fictionalized memoir style.
February 16, 2022
It was sort of cool that the first story in this collection was from the month and year of my birth, but it was all downhill from there.
These are "literary manga" short stories from 1967 and 1968, which means nothing much happens in a manner that isn't particularly entertaining. A large chunk of the book is given over to a series of semi-autobiographical travelogue episodes as the author shuffles from one shabby inn to another, fishing and hanging out with the salt of the earth types he finds working in them.
If I had realized this was by the creator of The Man Without Talent I probably wouldn't have bothered checking this out from the library. Here's hoping his name sticks in my head long enough to pass over the next planned entry in this series collecting his "complete mature works."
These are "literary manga" short stories from 1967 and 1968, which means nothing much happens in a manner that isn't particularly entertaining. A large chunk of the book is given over to a series of semi-autobiographical travelogue episodes as the author shuffles from one shabby inn to another, fishing and hanging out with the salt of the earth types he finds working in them.
If I had realized this was by the creator of The Man Without Talent I probably wouldn't have bothered checking this out from the library. Here's hoping his name sticks in my head long enough to pass over the next planned entry in this series collecting his "complete mature works."
October 13, 2023
Most of the stories here are gentle contemporary slice-of-life tales. They are pleasant enough, but I won't remember them afterwards. There's a lot of gorgeous art, as one might expect from Tsuge.
I really liked The Swamp, Drawn and Quarterly's first volume of Tsuge's comics. Tsuge seemed to be subverting traditional samurai story arcs, nudging them into surprising outcomes. There's little to subvert in these contemporary tales, pleasant though they might be.
The last story "Antlion Pit" (not the last of the pieces in the collection by publication date), about travelers (referred to by their country of origin, "England", "Japan" etc) who are trapped in a pit in the desert, shades of Woman in the Dunes, is quite different from the others. I can't say I find it particularly surprising or memorable either. However, I do plan on checking out D&Q's Vol. 3 of Tsuge's work, with its supposedly surreal flavor. Tsuge's incredible Screw-Style appeared just after all of Vol. 2; I hope it's a harbinger of his later style. "Screw-Style" is available online, you lucky people.
I really liked The Swamp, Drawn and Quarterly's first volume of Tsuge's comics. Tsuge seemed to be subverting traditional samurai story arcs, nudging them into surprising outcomes. There's little to subvert in these contemporary tales, pleasant though they might be.
The last story "Antlion Pit" (not the last of the pieces in the collection by publication date), about travelers (referred to by their country of origin, "England", "Japan" etc) who are trapped in a pit in the desert, shades of Woman in the Dunes, is quite different from the others. I can't say I find it particularly surprising or memorable either. However, I do plan on checking out D&Q's Vol. 3 of Tsuge's work, with its supposedly surreal flavor. Tsuge's incredible Screw-Style appeared just after all of Vol. 2; I hope it's a harbinger of his later style. "Screw-Style" is available online, you lucky people.
October 31, 2021
An excellent collection of travelogue shorts that also shows a clear progression in Tsuge's career from the first volume, The Swamp. The included academic essay is informative, and also took me longer to read than all of the manga in the book.
April 12, 2022
My kids read manga but I couldn’t relate to it until I read these stories. One of my kids even picked it up after me. Maybe there’s hope for them. Who am I kidding? If I learned anything from reading these wonderful comics, it’s that there is no hope. Have a nice day!
January 7, 2022
https://thegreatgodpanisdead.substack...
In 1983, the gigantic Japanese publisher Kodansha published an important book in English, Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics by Frederik L. Schodt. It was my introduction to Japanese comics. Yoshiharu Tsuge is mentioned in passing on one page. (Tsuge gets a little more space in Schodt’s followup book, Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga.) I recommend both of Schodt’s books on manga. Two years after Manga! Manga!, Tsuge’s short story, “Red Flowers,” was translated and published in Art Spiegelman’s magazine, RAW. For most American comics fans, it was the first time we’d seen the work of Yoshiharu Tsuge. The editors of RAW knew this was an important artist—the way if was printed, as a small inset booklet in RAW’s otherwise very large pages, every sound effect laboriously translated as a footnote so as not to interfere with the art. What Spiegelman, Mouly and the other editors of RAW realized was that there was something significantly different in Tsuge from any American or European comic. The editors wrote: "In spite of RAW’s internationalist bias—it assimilates work from France, Spain, Belgium, Italy, and Allentown—the only way we could integrate the Japanese work we’ve become interested in was by acknowledging its Otherness. Paris, Barcelona, Milan, and New York are all stops on the same subway line compared to Tokyo."
But since the mid-80s, Japanese culture has been adopted by Americans, partly because of kids and teenagers. They started watching Japanese animated films and reading Japanese comic in huge numbers. But for all of us who loved reading “Red Flowers” in 1985 have had to wait until 2021 to see it published in a book collection.
This is the second volume by Tsuge that Drawn & Quarterly has published. It’s been a long road. For a long time, it was said that Tsuge was not interested in having his work published abroad. When I first read that, I thought that maybe he was a nationalist or was anxious about how his work would be received abroad. The real reason is tragic. Tsuge is a man with mental illness who apparently was incapable of doing the work involved in making a foreign deal. I don’t know how Drawn & Quarterly and The New York Review Comics did it, but they succeeded in getting Tsuge’s work published in English in what is about the nicest format possible....
In 1983, the gigantic Japanese publisher Kodansha published an important book in English, Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics by Frederik L. Schodt. It was my introduction to Japanese comics. Yoshiharu Tsuge is mentioned in passing on one page. (Tsuge gets a little more space in Schodt’s followup book, Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga.) I recommend both of Schodt’s books on manga. Two years after Manga! Manga!, Tsuge’s short story, “Red Flowers,” was translated and published in Art Spiegelman’s magazine, RAW. For most American comics fans, it was the first time we’d seen the work of Yoshiharu Tsuge. The editors of RAW knew this was an important artist—the way if was printed, as a small inset booklet in RAW’s otherwise very large pages, every sound effect laboriously translated as a footnote so as not to interfere with the art. What Spiegelman, Mouly and the other editors of RAW realized was that there was something significantly different in Tsuge from any American or European comic. The editors wrote: "In spite of RAW’s internationalist bias—it assimilates work from France, Spain, Belgium, Italy, and Allentown—the only way we could integrate the Japanese work we’ve become interested in was by acknowledging its Otherness. Paris, Barcelona, Milan, and New York are all stops on the same subway line compared to Tokyo."
But since the mid-80s, Japanese culture has been adopted by Americans, partly because of kids and teenagers. They started watching Japanese animated films and reading Japanese comic in huge numbers. But for all of us who loved reading “Red Flowers” in 1985 have had to wait until 2021 to see it published in a book collection.
This is the second volume by Tsuge that Drawn & Quarterly has published. It’s been a long road. For a long time, it was said that Tsuge was not interested in having his work published abroad. When I first read that, I thought that maybe he was a nationalist or was anxious about how his work would be received abroad. The real reason is tragic. Tsuge is a man with mental illness who apparently was incapable of doing the work involved in making a foreign deal. I don’t know how Drawn & Quarterly and The New York Review Comics did it, but they succeeded in getting Tsuge’s work published in English in what is about the nicest format possible....
June 30, 2023
Tsuge me je naučil veliko o pripovedovanju zgodb.
January 20, 2022
Lovingly presented volume of late-60s comics from a manga master. Tsuge was particularly notable for his gorgeous, evocative land and sea scapes, and for grounding his stories in the real world. Several tales simply stop rather present neat conclusions, which I appreciate (life is more like that than not).
Read
April 28, 2024Not weird enough for me
January 20, 2022
Nice peaceful book as Tsuge takes us with him as he wanders rural Japan from one inn to the next.
April 29, 2024
An awesome collection, although I wouldn't recommend it to someone who isn't into Garo. The essay is amazing too.
July 10, 2022
Beautiful in every way
March 19, 2023
Red Flowers is the second volume from Drawn & Quarterly to focus on the onset of Toshiharu Tsuge’s mature period, when he and a few other illustrators helped transform Japan’s comic book world. Realizing that the technical and dramatic structuring skills of cartoonists often equaled that of artists approved by “the establishment,” Tsuge began writing and illustrating a series of stories roughly based on his travels through the Japanese countryside, post WWII, where he encounters people living at unelectrified substance level, much as they had been for centuries.
Tsuge’s stand-in travels the countryside, describing his various encounters with villagers and innkeepers, combine realist backgrounds (betraying an excellent sense of draftsmanship) with, well, cartoonish-looking people (but not to the exaggerated extent current manga has). While Tsuge’s illustrations also evoke a sense of eerie wonder—perhaps as a result of the folktales and ghost stories that were popular in Japanese literature during the 1920s and ‘30s—his anecdotes often depict ephemeral moments of compassion between the protagonist and whoever he encounters, be it an escapee from a mental institute or a young woman experiencing her first period.
Includes an excellent introduction, co-written by Ryan Holmberg (also the book’s translator) and Mitsuhiro Asakawa, who provide biographical background and place Tsuge’s work in historical context.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
Tsuge’s stand-in travels the countryside, describing his various encounters with villagers and innkeepers, combine realist backgrounds (betraying an excellent sense of draftsmanship) with, well, cartoonish-looking people (but not to the exaggerated extent current manga has). While Tsuge’s illustrations also evoke a sense of eerie wonder—perhaps as a result of the folktales and ghost stories that were popular in Japanese literature during the 1920s and ‘30s—his anecdotes often depict ephemeral moments of compassion between the protagonist and whoever he encounters, be it an escapee from a mental institute or a young woman experiencing her first period.
Includes an excellent introduction, co-written by Ryan Holmberg (also the book’s translator) and Mitsuhiro Asakawa, who provide biographical background and place Tsuge’s work in historical context.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
November 28, 2023
I read Slum Wolf a few years ago and to be honest, I thought this book was by the same author. Though I liked Slum Wolf (especially its stories, which focus on the immediate post-WWII Tokyo) I thought the artwork was a bit rough. So while reading this I was perplexed why the art in this was so much better. It turns out (as I'm sure you know) that Red Flowers is by Tadao's more famous older brother Yoshiharu.
Now that we got that cleared up…
The stories here are mostly odd little tales of rural wanderings based on Tsuge's travels. These rustic locations are inhabited by provincial people with manners and traditions imbued with an undefinable oddness. The plots are simple, almost nonexistent, and the moments small. The aforementioned art is engaging and very often beautiful. There's drama, sadness, and surprising humor in these stories. I was beguiled.
Ryan Holmberg's texts exploring the historical context of the mid-to late-60s milieu in which these were created, as well as a synopsis of each story, were fascinating.
I love this book.
Now that we got that cleared up…
The stories here are mostly odd little tales of rural wanderings based on Tsuge's travels. These rustic locations are inhabited by provincial people with manners and traditions imbued with an undefinable oddness. The plots are simple, almost nonexistent, and the moments small. The aforementioned art is engaging and very often beautiful. There's drama, sadness, and surprising humor in these stories. I was beguiled.
Ryan Holmberg's texts exploring the historical context of the mid-to late-60s milieu in which these were created, as well as a synopsis of each story, were fascinating.
I love this book.
October 6, 2023
The second collection of master mangaka Yoshiharu Tsuge's translated manga as published by Drawn + Quarterly features another set of mystifying yet comforting stories. Heavier on the "travelog" style of stories compared to what was found in the first volume, "The Swamp", the reader gets a front row seat to the many vibrant, lush settings in parts of Japan rarely explored. Alongside some of the travelog stories featuring Tsuge's own trips, there are plenty of more typical slice-of-life stories here too. The stories have a quiet sensibility to them, but can evoke charm, humor, and horror as needed. There is nothing too dramatic here, but the overall collection is neatly put together in a pleasing sequence. The essays provide both some insightful context but can also add a mystifying element to many of the rather more straightforward tales. The collections as put togeher by D+Q have been nice so far, and hopefully more translations of eclectic literary manga will continue to come down the pipeline.
June 21, 2024
This is a spectacular collection that I'm really thankful I picked up on a whim and had the privilege of reading. Tsuge's fictionalized travelogues in this compilation are stunning to me, meditative and characterful, with a deep sense of interiority. The only two stories in this book not of this category are the first and the last, and to me kind of betray the rest of the work. they feel out of place in a book that otherwise has a wider, loose narrative. It's not necessarily wrong that they are here--this book seems to be one of a series compiling tsuge's standalone and one-shot comics--it's just that it feels odd when the rest of the work is vaguely autobiographical and can be easily interpreted as appearing in a chronological order. ho hum. Regardless, one of my favorite reads of the year so far. I will definitely be seeking out and reading more of this author's work.
August 15, 2023
Druga część serii zbierającej ważne dokonania Yoshiharu Tsuge to świadectwo coraz większej dojrzałości twórcy. Sporo tych historii urzeka liryzmem, autor potrafi posługiwać się metaforą i często stosuje zakończenie otwarte. Krótkie formy sprawiają, że w wielu przypadkach można je odbierać jak swego rodzaju przypowieści o uniwersalnym wydźwięku. Dominuje motyw samotnej wędrówki, która łatwo poddaje się uogólnieniu, ale są też rzeczy absolutnie wyjątkowe i nie przystające do reszty. Tsuge posługuje się miękką okrągłą kreską, co jakiś czas powalając efektownymi grafikami przedstawiającymi krajobraz najbardziej niedostępnych zakątków Japonii. Wiele tu kwestii odnoszących się bezpośrednio do życia twórcy i tego co go inspirowało, a o czym przeczytamy w świetnym posłowiu.
September 26, 2022
This second volume of Yoshiharu Tshuge’s stories translated in English by Drawn & Quarterly is markedly different than the first, which were just redrawings of his early work. All these stories he drew in 1967 are quaint, atmospheric, and clever travelogues mixed with fictitious elements.
“I wanted my stories to have a reality to them which emotionally sticks with readers as an experience for years. Works that make you feel that, it doesn’t matter when they were created.”
I think he achieves this. I eagerly await Drawn & Quarterly to finish the translation of the next era of stories from him.
“I wanted my stories to have a reality to them which emotionally sticks with readers as an experience for years. Works that make you feel that, it doesn’t matter when they were created.”
I think he achieves this. I eagerly await Drawn & Quarterly to finish the translation of the next era of stories from him.
January 14, 2022
Lots of quality art, but a lot of my frustration with this stems from many of these stories just kind of ending without feeling like there's a conclusion. The stories feel almost like poetry at times just because of that, which I suppose is fine if you like it. I really enjoyed Tsuge's previous collection, The Swamp, and I like a lot of manga in this style, but this collection didn't do it for me.
October 31, 2022
Whereas the first collection of Tsuge frankly was just alright, here you can see start to see why he became such an icon for a particular type of japanese cartoonists. This collection is mostly travel tails of strange or amusing things happening in rural japan, with striking backgrounds and often a sexual undercurrent. Reading this is also puts a lot of other Garo artists into perspective, because more than one was basically doing this same kind of story years later.
November 29, 2022
Slice of life short stories of travel, autobiographic in nature (there are even pictures of some of the locations drawn in the book...) and sometimes not much happen, but then again such is life. Moody, quietly sad, atmospheric, but don't go in there looking for light sabers, robots or memorable events... The real antagonists here are the little irritant of life, the uncertainty of travel and the adjustments one always have to make when coming in contact with others.
April 21, 2022
i like travelogue comics and i like stories about rural japan. i enjoyed most of these but some were just...puzzling. i might not have the cultural knowledge to really understand them. or maybe they're just weird. not sure which.
August 30, 2021
Confusing, but beautiful artwork.
January 23, 2022
4.25/5.0
April 9, 2022
3.8 stars
Pretty good, but I just don’t understand some of the cultural references, which isn’t the mangaka’s fault. I definitely enjoyed the stories about the older inns the best!
Pretty good, but I just don’t understand some of the cultural references, which isn’t the mangaka’s fault. I definitely enjoyed the stories about the older inns the best!
May 4, 2022
These short stories were strange and humorous.
October 1, 2022
Beautiful, enigmatic and humorous short comics about lonely travelers, ramshackle inns, quirky characters, and hot springs galore throughout Japan in the late 1960’s.
December 16, 2022
the fact that this took me 3 days to read says everything
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews