What do you think?
Rate this book
My Picture Diary
The wife of Japan’s most lauded manga-ka documents a year in their lives with her own artistry.
In 1981, Fujiwara Maki began a picture diary about daily life with her son and husband, the legendary manga author Tsuge Yoshiharu. Publishing was not her original intention. “I wanted to record our family’s daily life while our son, Shosuke, was small. But as 8mm cameras were too expensive and we were poor, I decided on the picture diary format instead. I figured Shosuke would enjoy reading it when he got older.”
Drawn in a simple, personable style, and covering the same years fictionalized in Tsuge’s final masterpiece The Man Without Talent , Fujiwara’s journal focuses on the joys of daily life amidst the stresses of childrearing, housekeeping, and managing a depressed husband. A touching and inspiring testimony of one Japanese woman's resilience, My Picture Diary is also an important glimpse of the enigma that is Tsuge. Fujiwara’s diary is unsparing. It provides a stark picture of the gender divide in their Tsuge sleeps until noon and does practically nothing. He never compliments her cooking, and dictates how money is spent. Not once is he shown drawing. And yet Fujiwara remains surprisingly empathetic toward her mercurial husband.
Translated by Ryan Holmberg, this edition sheds light on Fujiwara's life, her own career in art, writing, and underground theater, and her extensive influence upon her husband's celebrated manga.
In 1981, Fujiwara Maki began a picture diary about daily life with her son and husband, the legendary manga author Tsuge Yoshiharu. Publishing was not her original intention. “I wanted to record our family’s daily life while our son, Shosuke, was small. But as 8mm cameras were too expensive and we were poor, I decided on the picture diary format instead. I figured Shosuke would enjoy reading it when he got older.”
Drawn in a simple, personable style, and covering the same years fictionalized in Tsuge’s final masterpiece The Man Without Talent , Fujiwara’s journal focuses on the joys of daily life amidst the stresses of childrearing, housekeeping, and managing a depressed husband. A touching and inspiring testimony of one Japanese woman's resilience, My Picture Diary is also an important glimpse of the enigma that is Tsuge. Fujiwara’s diary is unsparing. It provides a stark picture of the gender divide in their Tsuge sleeps until noon and does practically nothing. He never compliments her cooking, and dictates how money is spent. Not once is he shown drawing. And yet Fujiwara remains surprisingly empathetic toward her mercurial husband.
Translated by Ryan Holmberg, this edition sheds light on Fujiwara's life, her own career in art, writing, and underground theater, and her extensive influence upon her husband's celebrated manga.
284 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
7 people are currently reading
509 people want to read
About the author
Maki Fujiwara
4 books2 followersMaki Fujiwara (1941-1999) was a Japanese actress, artist and writer. She first gained notoriety in the 60's as an actress in Tokyo's underground theater scene. The wife of influential alternative manga artist Yoshiharu Tsuge, Fujiwara began herself drawing and writing in the early '80s. Her best-known work is the autobiographical My Picture Diary, published in Japan in 1982 and first translated in English in 2023.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
December 28, 2023
This is a frustrating book.
First, I only read it as part of a project to read all the books on NPR's Favorite Graphic Novels list (see below), but it doesn't really fit my definition of a graphic novel. Each diary entry is a block of typeset text facing a full-page illustration. There is no sequential storytelling. I feel misled, though that's not fault of this book.
Second, like many a diary, this one rocks steady, almost daily entries for four months, but then the diarist loses momentum and finishes out the entire rest of the year with only four entries created months apart. So it feels very incomplete, just a very brief dip into someone's life with little context and dangling threads left all over the place.
Third, the translator does try to provide context in an afterword, and while he pays some lip service to wanting to center the author as her own person and artist, he cannot keep himself from making the essay mostly about her husband, the mangaka Yoshiharu Tsuge, and the insights Maki Fujiwara provides into his life and art. Frankly, I really dislike Tsuge's work -- see The Man Without Talent and Red Flowers -- and the persona he projects into them. He's not a guy I would choose to spend more time with, and yet here he is in all his pathetic glory.
It speaks to how charming Fujiwara's art is and how sparkling her personality is that I still like this book despite all the above. I kept flashing to The Emotional Load: And Other Invisible Stuff as I followed this housewife through the daily travails of keeping house, especially when living with a sensitive child and a husband who is mostly disengaged from the family. Sure, it gets a little repetitive as we see so much cleaning, run so many errands, and loop through so many colds and other viruses making their way through the family, but I enjoyed keeping up with Fujiwara even as things turn darker with a moment of domestic violence and her husband's growing mental health crisis.
The final frustration: it's a shame this talented person wasn't able to express herself more fully before her death.
(Best of 2023 Project: I'm reading all the graphic novels that made it onto NPR's Books We Love 2023: Favorite Comics and Graphic Novels list.)
First, I only read it as part of a project to read all the books on NPR's Favorite Graphic Novels list (see below), but it doesn't really fit my definition of a graphic novel. Each diary entry is a block of typeset text facing a full-page illustration. There is no sequential storytelling. I feel misled, though that's not fault of this book.
Second, like many a diary, this one rocks steady, almost daily entries for four months, but then the diarist loses momentum and finishes out the entire rest of the year with only four entries created months apart. So it feels very incomplete, just a very brief dip into someone's life with little context and dangling threads left all over the place.
Third, the translator does try to provide context in an afterword, and while he pays some lip service to wanting to center the author as her own person and artist, he cannot keep himself from making the essay mostly about her husband, the mangaka Yoshiharu Tsuge, and the insights Maki Fujiwara provides into his life and art. Frankly, I really dislike Tsuge's work -- see The Man Without Talent and Red Flowers -- and the persona he projects into them. He's not a guy I would choose to spend more time with, and yet here he is in all his pathetic glory.
It speaks to how charming Fujiwara's art is and how sparkling her personality is that I still like this book despite all the above. I kept flashing to The Emotional Load: And Other Invisible Stuff as I followed this housewife through the daily travails of keeping house, especially when living with a sensitive child and a husband who is mostly disengaged from the family. Sure, it gets a little repetitive as we see so much cleaning, run so many errands, and loop through so many colds and other viruses making their way through the family, but I enjoyed keeping up with Fujiwara even as things turn darker with a moment of domestic violence and her husband's growing mental health crisis.
The final frustration: it's a shame this talented person wasn't able to express herself more fully before her death.
(Best of 2023 Project: I'm reading all the graphic novels that made it onto NPR's Books We Love 2023: Favorite Comics and Graphic Novels list.)
October 12, 2023
I am a sucker for journal comics. These honest, bittersweet, lonely glimpses into Maki's life were really something special. I wish there were more to read.
October 6, 2023
Absolutely great, heartbreaking, slowburn autobiography from a smart, creative woman dealing with a toddler and a neglectful and occasionally abusive mad genius for a husband in the early 1980s. Deceptively simple and deeply fascinating.
May 23, 2024
This is a hard book to quantify. Written and illustrated by the wife of Yoshiharu Tsuge, her boredom at being primarily a wife and mother shines through, even as she enjoys her time with her young son. There's a thread of being unfulfilled that only grows clearer as the book goes on, and Tsuge himself does not come off in a flattering light; she casually mentions him hitting her and other less obvious acts of domestic abuse. It's a book that needs to be thought about, because at first blush it seems fairly commonplace, but when you reflect, it's a nearly dystopian view of domestic life.
February 16, 2024
We're lucky that Maki Fujiwara's My Picture Diary, originally published in the early 1980s, is now available widely in English. It starts out as a bittersweet slice of life, where Fujiwara tracks her days as a housewife cleaning toilets, taking care of her son, and mending her husband's pants etc., interspersing the quotidian drudgery expected of her as a woman with light anecdotes about her comical toddler. The tone shifts about halfway through, as her husband, a famous manga artist, struggles with his mental health and Fujiwara is backed up against a wall in a psychic/existential sense. In the end we're left with a somewhat sad picture of domesticity and the residue of a claustrophobic relationship.
The afterword provides greater insight into the author's earlier life as a stage actor. Unfortunately, the translator lacks biographical information directly from Fujiwara (outside of what is in My Picture Diary), so we mostly see her through the eyes of her husband. The translator acknowledges this deficit, but I think framing her as a tragic figure that exists solely in the "shadows of faltering manhood and artistic genius" does her a serious disservice. Luckily, the work speaks for itself. Her drawings are clear-eyed, stylistically strong, and free from pretense. Importantly, they provide a record of Fujiwara as an artist with a singular voice that stands on its own.
The afterword provides greater insight into the author's earlier life as a stage actor. Unfortunately, the translator lacks biographical information directly from Fujiwara (outside of what is in My Picture Diary), so we mostly see her through the eyes of her husband. The translator acknowledges this deficit, but I think framing her as a tragic figure that exists solely in the "shadows of faltering manhood and artistic genius" does her a serious disservice. Luckily, the work speaks for itself. Her drawings are clear-eyed, stylistically strong, and free from pretense. Importantly, they provide a record of Fujiwara as an artist with a singular voice that stands on its own.
January 13, 2024
My picture Diary is a touching slice of life memoir, it details day to day life for a Japanese family living in an apartment near Tokyo in the early 80s. Fujiwara Maki is a witty and creative woman stuck with a mean husband and a housewife’s life she’s fallen into. She writes and draws the diary for her young son but as the year goes on it becomes for a more general audience and takes a turn into dark territory, they struggle with mental health issues and domestic abuse. I found this diary fascinating and affecting, the essay at the end explaining more about who Fujiwara Maki was is a great addition. I hope she found more happiness.
Read
April 28, 2024Extremely touching, shockingly poignant in the combination of picture and words.
October 3, 2025
oh my god
March 9, 2024
These diary entries are beautiful little snacks of domestic malaise. This is not a memoir. This is not a novel. This is a series of snapshots in time. The facts of Maki's day to day life as primary caretaker of her son, household, and sometimes husband are presented very simply. But in these pages, we have the fullness and complexity of her relationships to that role and her family.
There's the sweetness and poignancy of motherhood, the wearing monotony and unfairness of housewifery, the joy of simple pleasures and very occasional freedom, the desperation of hard times - all presented by Maki, a whole and imperfect person.
And it's perfect, though it could be more so. We're left wanting more. But what could be more authentic than one losing the motivation to journal regularly?
There's the sweetness and poignancy of motherhood, the wearing monotony and unfairness of housewifery, the joy of simple pleasures and very occasional freedom, the desperation of hard times - all presented by Maki, a whole and imperfect person.
And it's perfect, though it could be more so. We're left wanting more. But what could be more authentic than one losing the motivation to journal regularly?
December 19, 2024
“My Picture Diary” is a graphic novel memoir focusing on the daily life of former actress Fujiwara Maki with her husband manga artist Tsuge Yoshiharu as she raises her son Shōsuke in Tokyo throughout the year 1981.
Each entry in the picture diary consists of the date, the weather, a sentence commenting on Maki’s day followed by a drawing g reflecting the diary entry.
The graphic novel begins by transporting the reader to January 4, 1981 as Maki shares that she got in a fight with her husband who ends the fight by going to bed with his clothes on then she reflects on how adorable their son’s face looks when he sleeps.
As the graphic novel progresses, the reader is taken on a journey that explores life in Tokyo in the 1980s as well as marriage, child rearing, gender roles, and the effects of terminal illness on a family.
Despite the graphic novel occurring in the 1980s in another country, I resonated with Maki’s desire to be frugal, rallying to do household duties despite feeling poorly, and guilt of house she will be perceived if she doesn’t fulfill what is viewed as woman’s work of cleaning house, doing laundry, and cooking for her family.
As the year passes, Maki worries about how Shōsuke will fare in kindergarten since he is shy when around other children as well as surviving an illness which leads to Maki, her husband, and Shōsuke having a high fever. A few days later, Maki writes of getting into a fight with her husband, him hitting her two or three times but her justifying the abuse since she has a habit of speaking too sharply too him when she’s tired.
When Yoshiharu becomes severely ill and visits the hospital, Maki returns home and her mother-in-law is waiting for them to attend Shōsuke’s entering kindergarten ceremony, not know that he son was recently severely ill. Although Maki is still experiencing a low-grade fever and a cold, she rallies enough to dress up and attend Shōsuke’s entering kindergarten ceremony while Yoshiharu remains at home since he often feels dizzy has started staying in bed when such attacks occur.
As the year ends, Yoshiharu begins to feel better and the graphic novel ends on Christmas Eve with him and Maki watching Shōsuke then playing the role of Santa and leaving him presents.
As I finished the graphic novels, I enjoyed Maki’s ability to add depth to daily life experiences. Likewise, the graphic novel was surprisingly informative in teaching me about Japan’s seasons, cultural traditions such as Setsubun, and making a meal of tsukudani with butterbur leaves. I found it interesting that although this graphic novel is set in a different country, some things are universal such as feeling depressed about one’s life, relationship dynamics between husband and wife as well as between mother and son, feeling the need for closeness with your spouse, and worrying about the direction of your child’s life while wanting them to be independent. I will admit that was saddened to see how parenthood has so stripped Maki of her identity as an individual that she refers to herself as Mommy and her husband as Daddy as well as Maki receiving an allowance from Yoshiharu and asking for permission to go see a movie at the theater by herself.
Following the end of the picture diary in an afterword by Maki explaining the purpose of the diary as a way to record their family life while her son was still young ad well as an essay on Maki’s life how her marriage to Yoshiharu permanently transformed his manga art from writing negatively about women to writing them more sympathetically with Yoshiharu realizing that her meeting him was ultimately not to her benefit since she was passionate about acting and he wasn’t able to support them so she could focus on the theater.
Overall, although this was an interesting read since I have not previously read a graphic novel memoir in a diary format, I felt like the marriage between Maki and Yoshiharu was is not one of love but of dependency since she heavily relied on him to provide her with financial support while he seems to view her as the mother of his child but not as person her feels affection or love towards. Likewise, I feel that by seeing Yoshiharu’s cold treatment of Maki, this causes Shōsuke begins to view his mother much as his father does which is as a servant and not as an actual person.
Each entry in the picture diary consists of the date, the weather, a sentence commenting on Maki’s day followed by a drawing g reflecting the diary entry.
The graphic novel begins by transporting the reader to January 4, 1981 as Maki shares that she got in a fight with her husband who ends the fight by going to bed with his clothes on then she reflects on how adorable their son’s face looks when he sleeps.
As the graphic novel progresses, the reader is taken on a journey that explores life in Tokyo in the 1980s as well as marriage, child rearing, gender roles, and the effects of terminal illness on a family.
Despite the graphic novel occurring in the 1980s in another country, I resonated with Maki’s desire to be frugal, rallying to do household duties despite feeling poorly, and guilt of house she will be perceived if she doesn’t fulfill what is viewed as woman’s work of cleaning house, doing laundry, and cooking for her family.
As the year passes, Maki worries about how Shōsuke will fare in kindergarten since he is shy when around other children as well as surviving an illness which leads to Maki, her husband, and Shōsuke having a high fever. A few days later, Maki writes of getting into a fight with her husband, him hitting her two or three times but her justifying the abuse since she has a habit of speaking too sharply too him when she’s tired.
When Yoshiharu becomes severely ill and visits the hospital, Maki returns home and her mother-in-law is waiting for them to attend Shōsuke’s entering kindergarten ceremony, not know that he son was recently severely ill. Although Maki is still experiencing a low-grade fever and a cold, she rallies enough to dress up and attend Shōsuke’s entering kindergarten ceremony while Yoshiharu remains at home since he often feels dizzy has started staying in bed when such attacks occur.
As the year ends, Yoshiharu begins to feel better and the graphic novel ends on Christmas Eve with him and Maki watching Shōsuke then playing the role of Santa and leaving him presents.
As I finished the graphic novels, I enjoyed Maki’s ability to add depth to daily life experiences. Likewise, the graphic novel was surprisingly informative in teaching me about Japan’s seasons, cultural traditions such as Setsubun, and making a meal of tsukudani with butterbur leaves. I found it interesting that although this graphic novel is set in a different country, some things are universal such as feeling depressed about one’s life, relationship dynamics between husband and wife as well as between mother and son, feeling the need for closeness with your spouse, and worrying about the direction of your child’s life while wanting them to be independent. I will admit that was saddened to see how parenthood has so stripped Maki of her identity as an individual that she refers to herself as Mommy and her husband as Daddy as well as Maki receiving an allowance from Yoshiharu and asking for permission to go see a movie at the theater by herself.
Following the end of the picture diary in an afterword by Maki explaining the purpose of the diary as a way to record their family life while her son was still young ad well as an essay on Maki’s life how her marriage to Yoshiharu permanently transformed his manga art from writing negatively about women to writing them more sympathetically with Yoshiharu realizing that her meeting him was ultimately not to her benefit since she was passionate about acting and he wasn’t able to support them so she could focus on the theater.
Overall, although this was an interesting read since I have not previously read a graphic novel memoir in a diary format, I felt like the marriage between Maki and Yoshiharu was is not one of love but of dependency since she heavily relied on him to provide her with financial support while he seems to view her as the mother of his child but not as person her feels affection or love towards. Likewise, I feel that by seeing Yoshiharu’s cold treatment of Maki, this causes Shōsuke begins to view his mother much as his father does which is as a servant and not as an actual person.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 22, 2024
5 stars for Maki Fujiwara, 4 stars for the essay that wastes too much time on her awful husband, averaging out to a 4.5 star rating. Since it's Fujiwara's name on the cover of this gorgeous volume though, I'm rounding up to 5 stars for her.
The Good
Everything in here by Fujiwara is stellar. She brings such clear-eyed honesty and cleverness to her writing, and her great knack for picking out the perfect details extends to her drawings as well. And what drawings they are—whimsical, crafted with care, and keenly observed. Together, it all forms a vivid portrait of her and her life. I devoured this book in one sitting, but could easily come back to ponder on Fujiwara's singular insights for days.
And, credit where it's due: Ryan Holmberg did a great job translating and Drawn & Quarterly pulled together an absolutely stunning book. It's subtle and elegant, and every time I glance at this library copy I want to hoard it for my own. The cover, paper quality, formatting, etc. are all breathtaking.
The Not-So-Good
Frustratingly, as mentioned above, Holmberg's essay spends an embarrassing amount of words on Fujiwara's garbage husband. Sure, Yoshiharu Tsuge is enormously influential on both a societal and an individual scale in this context, and Holmberg acknowledges how much of this essay features him, but... It's too much. It's more about him than her, making it tedious and off-putting.
I mean, come on. The essay is titled "Fujiwara Maki: The Art of Life with Tsuge Yoshiharu," begins with a Tsuge quote, and the final quote in the essay is a paragraph of Tsuge's words. Apparently, Maki can't even have her own essay title.
(That said, I do find it interesting that the book's "Entire contents copyright © 2023 Tsuge Yoshiharu." Was that a factor in why the essay is so Tsuge-centric? Who knows.)
I also wish there was more context for why Maki's diary entries die off. She starts out diligently with daily entries from January through April, then there's only four other entries for the rest of the year (May, July, November, and December). While I actually don't mind this from a reading or story perspective—life happens and diaries die off, and I actually really enjoy seeing evidence of that—I craved more context in Holmberg's essay about why this happened. Presumably, it's because life became dark and difficult, as mentioned many times, but still. I wanted more.
The Good
Everything in here by Fujiwara is stellar. She brings such clear-eyed honesty and cleverness to her writing, and her great knack for picking out the perfect details extends to her drawings as well. And what drawings they are—whimsical, crafted with care, and keenly observed. Together, it all forms a vivid portrait of her and her life. I devoured this book in one sitting, but could easily come back to ponder on Fujiwara's singular insights for days.
And, credit where it's due: Ryan Holmberg did a great job translating and Drawn & Quarterly pulled together an absolutely stunning book. It's subtle and elegant, and every time I glance at this library copy I want to hoard it for my own. The cover, paper quality, formatting, etc. are all breathtaking.
The Not-So-Good
Frustratingly, as mentioned above, Holmberg's essay spends an embarrassing amount of words on Fujiwara's garbage husband. Sure, Yoshiharu Tsuge is enormously influential on both a societal and an individual scale in this context, and Holmberg acknowledges how much of this essay features him, but... It's too much. It's more about him than her, making it tedious and off-putting.
I mean, come on. The essay is titled "Fujiwara Maki: The Art of Life with Tsuge Yoshiharu," begins with a Tsuge quote, and the final quote in the essay is a paragraph of Tsuge's words. Apparently, Maki can't even have her own essay title.
(That said, I do find it interesting that the book's "Entire contents copyright © 2023 Tsuge Yoshiharu." Was that a factor in why the essay is so Tsuge-centric? Who knows.)
I also wish there was more context for why Maki's diary entries die off. She starts out diligently with daily entries from January through April, then there's only four other entries for the rest of the year (May, July, November, and December). While I actually don't mind this from a reading or story perspective—life happens and diaries die off, and I actually really enjoy seeing evidence of that—I craved more context in Holmberg's essay about why this happened. Presumably, it's because life became dark and difficult, as mentioned many times, but still. I wanted more.
July 5, 2024
This lit manga received many kudos last year and rightfully so. Maki Fujiwara was the wife of Yoshiharu Tsuge, an important figure in literary mange of the late 60s and early 70s. She started as an actress in avant garde Japanese cinema, but she quit soon after marrying Tsuge and having a child with him. She also has a talent for drawing, however, and did produce some manga of her own during their time together. My Picture Diary is her diary of roughly a year of their lives, as their son, Shosuke, attends school and deals with life with a temperamental father. The typical chauvinism of Japanese husbands is on full display, and you feel for Maki's attempts to be a good mother and also help her mate with his depression and bouts of creative self-doubt. By the end, Yoshiharu's sadness reaches such depths that he is admitted to a psychiatric ward. The simple joys and linework of the art take on a far more complicated meaning. Through it all, Maki seems to somehow call on some hidden reserve of strength to shepherd the family through the trials.
Another found lit manga gem. So grateful for Ryan Holmberg's translation, and his constant efforts to raise these forgotten works into the public eye once again, where they belong.
Another found lit manga gem. So grateful for Ryan Holmberg's translation, and his constant efforts to raise these forgotten works into the public eye once again, where they belong.
August 10, 2024
Deceptively simple drawings and prose deliver a poignant memoir of life as a mother to a young boy and wife to an anxious, depressed, controlling, and violent famous manga artist in Japan in the early 1980s. Fujiwara Maki had been a well-known and highly regarded actress in the angura> (underground) theater scene in Japan before meeting and beginning a relationship with Tsuge Yoshiharu. A well-researched essay by translator Ryan Holmberg at the end of this graphic memoir gives context to the lives behind the book and just increases the sense of sadness I felt for what this woman endured in the name of patriarchy.
A great find in New Dominion Bookstore in Charlottesville, VA - I'd never have run across this in the ordinary course of my daily life. Pretty sure I would not have found it browsing my local library shelves either. Hats off once again to the small independent bookstores who stock a wide variety of interesting things to read!
Side note of no importance: I'm annoyed that the only semi-appropriate edition I have to choose from, while a hardback with the correct publisher and publication date, does not have the same cover and number of pages as the book I own. Just my pet peeve when I can't match up my actual physical book to the choices on offer on Goodreads.
A great find in New Dominion Bookstore in Charlottesville, VA - I'd never have run across this in the ordinary course of my daily life. Pretty sure I would not have found it browsing my local library shelves either. Hats off once again to the small independent bookstores who stock a wide variety of interesting things to read!
Side note of no importance: I'm annoyed that the only semi-appropriate edition I have to choose from, while a hardback with the correct publisher and publication date, does not have the same cover and number of pages as the book I own. Just my pet peeve when I can't match up my actual physical book to the choices on offer on Goodreads.
April 22, 2024
I almost didn’t read this book; it was at the bottom of a tall TBR pile from the library and it was due the next day. I went into it knowing nothing aside from that I added it to my library holds while on a bender just going through everything tagged « autobiographical comics » . What I found when I opened it was some earnest, bittersweet slice of life - of a housewife in the 80s with dreams of her own, married to a brooding and anxious mangaka who while a dark soul also was a doting father. Her pen and ink drawings are bursting with surprising detail, and composed in the 3rd person, which makes sense when you juxtapose it against her pre-married life as an underground stage actress. She knows how to frame a tableau. I savoured this book.
June 15, 2024
This comics diary of a younger woman living as a stay-at-home wife with her stay-at-home artist husband helped me pass the time in the South Side Carnegie Library during a rainstorm in the middle of Open Streets. The daily entries were documented before the author knew it would turn into a full-fledged book; I read it without knowing that the husband in question is one of the most famous Japanese comics artists and the author had a life as a performance artist before this era; the lengthy essays at the end of the book filled me in but the book is so great all on its own. The facial expressions and the way the movement of pre-schoolers and sick daddy and the protagonist unclogging a toilet is expressed is really lovely.
October 24, 2023
Fujiwara Maki was the wife of Yoshiharu Tsuge - the famous manga creator who's The Man Without Talent was based on the period covered here. Fujiwara Maki was an actress in the 60s but during this period in 1981 is raising her 5 year old son and dealing with her anxious/depressed husband and poverty.
It's a beautifully illustrated diary. Unfortunately after just the first few months it jumps forward in time quite a bit. So we don't get 1 entry per day.
I've been a fan of Yoshiharu Tsuge since D+Q started publishing his work, but I had no idea about the existence of this book. D+Q needs to keep digging and keep publishing books like these, it's fantastic stuff.
It's a beautifully illustrated diary. Unfortunately after just the first few months it jumps forward in time quite a bit. So we don't get 1 entry per day.
I've been a fan of Yoshiharu Tsuge since D+Q started publishing his work, but I had no idea about the existence of this book. D+Q needs to keep digging and keep publishing books like these, it's fantastic stuff.
April 4, 2024
I loved every aspect of this book: Fujiwara’s writing, and especially the way she encapsulates the feeling of a day through small anecdotes; her loose and loving drawings and compositions; and the difficult and honest story it portrays of being an artist and a housewife devoted to her son, bound to her very difficult husband who she also loves, and trying to find pleasure in the small details of life.
I read it cover to cover, then lingered over the drawings without the words from front to back, then bought myself a copy so I can do it all over again! I hope someday to be able to tell stories with this level of acuity, honesty, and concision. The afterward is also a marvel.
I read it cover to cover, then lingered over the drawings without the words from front to back, then bought myself a copy so I can do it all over again! I hope someday to be able to tell stories with this level of acuity, honesty, and concision. The afterward is also a marvel.
December 28, 2023
This was a super sad read; a woman writes a diary that covers the course of a year. The woman is married to a famous Japanese manga author and she details what it is like to be a mother and live with a famous person who has a lot of mental illness issues. The book describes some very mundane events in a normal person's life, but the book is very compelling. Upon learning more about the author, the book made me very sad. I really enjoyed this book a great deal and liked the author's illustrations.
May 16, 2025
This is an odd little book. It is a day-to-day/day in the life of the author and her family. Things are fairly dull on the surface, but a lot is going on nonetheless. You can see the era (the late 1970s/early 1980s) and culture (Japan). The husband/wife and parent/child relationships. The illustrations are simple, but deceptively so. The style itself is not overly detailed, but they do have a lot to say. Take your time reading, be comfortable, relax and enjoy
March 26, 2024
I read this book after flipping through it at the MassMoCa. It was different than most graphic novels I've read recently--it looped into the Japanese alt-manga movement, post-WWII reconstruction of Japan, parenthood, mental illness, and the unbearable tenor of being a woman pushing past her own sense of self to hold her family together.
May 14, 2024
this book was so enjoyable! very short read, filled with cute illustrations. the author made the mundane everyday life of her life- a mother and housewife- into a beautiful depiction of what women go through. it touched on depression, anxiety, motherhood, feeling upset in a marriage, watching a child grow up, an more.
October 22, 2024
I wasn't familiar with either Fujiwara or her husband, so I was thankful for the essay that the translator, Ryan Homberg wrote at the end of this fascinating diary. This is a bittersweet document, in that it exists at all shows that Fujiwara couldn't help but be an artist, even though she would subsume herself in domesticity.
October 17, 2023
bittersweet story with so much sharing -
the pictures the author drew capture a year for her son, and say so much about her marriage
to a manga artist struggles with his health and attitudes
Images are simple ...in a way
the afterword is dense and gives us more to process
the pictures the author drew capture a year for her son, and say so much about her marriage
to a manga artist struggles with his health and attitudes
Images are simple ...in a way
the afterword is dense and gives us more to process
January 13, 2024
I enjoyed reading this picture book. I do not relate to much or any of the things she wrote but appreciated learning about the daily life of someone different from me. I would read her second book if she decides to make one.
May 12, 2024
This was fascinating to read as a mostly daily diary of life as a mother in Japan, but also sad given the poor relationship with her husband. The progression of life is always fascinating to read as problems shift and change.
June 4, 2024
I picked this up from the library because it was included in D&Q email list. I had no real context about what I was reading when I began. After reading the context at the end, I reread. I just wanted a little more!
July 24, 2024
Reading the biographical context from Ryan Holmberg at the end provided a lot of insight. Fujiwara had the potential to be such an artistic force. I can only imagine what kind of life she would have had if she married someone who built her up instead of drag her down.
September 24, 2024
A diary of a former actress turned housewife barely keeping her family above water in 1981 Toyko. Richer and more compelling than you'd expect from such bare bones words and drawings. I wish there were like ten volumes of this, instead of one.
September 22, 2023
Understated, gorgeous take on the everyday. A few decades earlier, it would have been an incredible Ozu film.
October 17, 2023
Only wish there was more
Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews