Tales from Hiatus: A Recommendation

I see we still get some daily visits on this lil' ol' blog here, I guess some of you are eager for some more mango so you probably want an ETA on our return. Well, maybe next week or if not the week after(bear with us, we're a bit rusty).

Now, onto the rec. I've had a Kazuo Kamimura obsession for some time now, he's a legendary artist best known for his work on Lady Snowblood with Kazuo Koike; another legendary mangaka, writer of works such as Lone Wold and Cub and Crying Freeman. Kamimura was an extremely talented illustrator with work outside of manga, he sadly passed away in 1987 at only 45 years only (cancer iirc) but he left behind an absurd number of titles, partially because he was producing an insane amount of pages per month, something like 400! And it really doesn't show that he was being overworked, his elegant brushstrokes, his creative layouts and insane sense of space and composition, all coupled with his incredible storytelling skills make him seem almost inhuman, yeah there were (very few) that could actually pump out even more pages in a month like Kirby or Tezuka but it does show that they were getting stretched thin by having to draw so much, while with Kamimura it looks like he took his sweet time creating them.
He's quite famous for doing stories in the 70s about feminism and sexual liberation. His stuff was highly influential and the start of a new era in the manga scene.
The real tragedy is that while he's quite famous in Japan and he has A LOT of stuff licensed in France and Italy and even some in Spain and Germany... in English we never had any of his manga scanlated in these over 30 years since he passed away and we only got one of his manga licensed (Lady Snowblood; by Dark Horse). I actually wanted to work on some of his stuff with the group and I had my sights set on his supposed magnum opus, Dousei Jidai. I wanted to work on it since last year but we already had our hands full with our projects and I didn't want to force it because I had the idea that when we'd start it, we should release 2 chapters/week seeing as how it's almost 80 chapters long.
Anywho, thing is, someone actually started scanlating this manga not long ago and I recommend it to everyone. I'll be honest, I have not actually read it myself beyond what has been scanlated and know it mostly by reputation but it's worth your time for sure.
Dousei Jidai (lit. translation: Period of Cohabitation) is a gekiga set in the 70s about an unmarried couple of Kyoko(21 years old) and Jiro(23 years old) living together in a tumultuous time of change for Japan, in a time when an unmarried couple living together was uncommon, a time in which the country was seeing a sexual revolution taking place within youth culture. This is not a story of triumphant love or some lovey-dovey romcom, the two stars are broken, aimless young adults searching for meaning and an identity in a country that was itself trying to create a new identity. This is a great companion piece to Seiichi Hayashi's Red Colored Elegy, a more experimental take on the premise of Dousei Jidai, collected by Drawn & Quarterly, a publisher that's done a fantastic job with bringing gekiga to the english only peasants, they're collecting Yoshihiru Tsuge's stuff in nice hardcovers, another absolute legend, a mangaka's mangaka that was kind of ignored for the longest time by publishers and scanlators. They recently released The Sky Is Blue With a Single Cloud by Kuniko Tsurita, the first woman to be published in Garo, sadly she died young and, again, she was pretty overlooked, only one of her short stories was ever scanlated(it's pretty okay). Previews show a very Seiichi Hayashi vibe from her and although I have not read it yet as my copy has not arrived, I still feel like it should be on everyone's radar.

I got a bit sidetracked there, but anyway, read Dousei Jidai, it's really cool:


https://mangadex.org/title/18166/dousei-jidai


As for us, we'll definitely be doing some Kamimura, some time in the future... but not soon, unless we get another cleaner/redrawer and a japanese-english translator (though another italian-english or french-english translator would be cool too). We can only work on so many series at once.
Good to know we don't have to wrestle the behemoth that is his body of work alone ^_^

And I guess I'll talk a bit about the stuff released so far. Go read the chapters now and if you care come back:
The first chapter introduces the characters for us, as we can see, these are drifting young people, they didn't move in together because they were oh so in love and had planned on it for a long time or anything but because they were lonely and sought companionship. As Kyoko contemplates her new life and future, she witnesses a lovers suicide which shakes her to her core. The poetry is exceptional, with the "snow" falling down and as Kyoko closes the chapter "to bleed is to be alive" a mood has been set, love is beautiful but love hurts. We live and we grow, our shape is not yet strongly defined. His sequential storytelling firmly establishes that you are reading gekiga, pages are not info dumps and the author wants you to feel the emotion in the movements of the characters.
The second chapter brings up a taboo subject, train gropers are one of those blights of Japan. The way Kamimura utilizes the snail that leaves its slime all over is amazing, bare in mind this is, like, '71. As he corrupts everything and leaves his dirtiness, we are reminded that what is tainted cannot be cleaned.
The third chapter delves deeper into Kyoko's past and building off on chapter two, "trauma is hard to get over". Love is a battlefield and hesitation means defeat and defeat in a war can mean death.
Fourth chapter I have not yet read but I really liked the first three, they feel like well made pinku films, films like Rouge(1984) or Tokyo Decadence(1992), maybe even some Koji Wakamatsu stuff? although Red Colored Elegy is probably closer to Wakamatsu or Nagisa Oshima.