I figure a lot of Same Hat readers are familiar with the publisher Seirinkogeisha (青林工藝舎), but if you're not they are one of the driving forces of contemporary indie manga-- a small publisher (not unlike Fantagraphics or Drawn & Quarterly in North America) behind a stable of diverse and exciting artists, many showcased in their AX anthology/magazine. They are also closely connected to tacoCHE in Nakano. Along with IKKI, EnterBrain/COMIC BEAM, and a few other publishers in Japan (Ohta, some of the stuff in MORNING), Seirinkogeisha is carrying the torch for indie manga- publishing both manga by contemporary creators and collections of unknown or under-appreciated artists of the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
I realized recently that lots of fans of this stuff, waiting to see it in translation, might not be aware that the rad folks at Seirinkogeisha have been posting online a growing selection of previews of their new releases. These are all in Japanese (of course) but even untranslated hopefully present a cool flavor of what's happening right now. They post updates to their blog each time they add new previews too!
If you're interested in seeing what's happening in contemporary indie manga from one of the most interesting comics publishers in the world, I strongly encourage you guys check out the samples! For most titles, they put up the first chapter or so of the book-- and though their web reader is a bit slow to load, it's a great resource for nerds like us. I haven't read any of these books (except for the Yamada Hanako one) so please share comments if you have!
Thematically and visually, Seirinkogeisha's crop of new releases are all over the place (in a good way), but here are a few of ones I found most interesting:
生きる2010 (Ikiru 2010 aka We Live 2010) by Takashi Nemoto The gnarliness we've come to love and expect from Takashi Nemoto is in full force here. The first story in the book/preview is in trippy full-color, and the entire book looks to be equally dense and brimming with sketchy details.
レッツゴー!!おスナック (Let's Go! Snack Bar) by Toyo Kataoka Kataoka is featured in the AX Anthology, and has published a series of short story collections. In his work, Tokyoite Kataoka's uber-ornate and grotesque manga style is used (to great effect) to tell blue collar neighborhood stories about the city's day laborers, bar flies, and housewives.
ドストエフスキーの犬 (Dostoevsky's Dog) by George Akiyama I picked up a copy of this book, along with Akiyama's ANGURA after having them recommended by Shintaro Kago himself. In Dostoevsky's Dog, Akiyama's elegant and clean lines serve up a a collection of raw tales, full of sex, sin, and coming of age angst. One of my favorite discoveries of the last year!
FLIGHT by Tsurita Kuniko I'm not super familiar with Tsurita Kuniko, but this book collecting various manga from her short career has majorly piqued my interest. From a few onlinebios, it sounds like Tsurita's comics were published by Shirato Sanpei in GARO, starting right away in the mid-60s when she was just a high school student and continuing until the early 80s. She is reported to have worked in some way with Shigeru Mizuki, but fell ill with SLE and died at the early age of 37,
砂の剣 (Sword of the Sand)) by Susumu Higa Another title/creator I'm not super familiar with, this one is Seirinkogeisha's latest book released (also featured on the cover of the latest AX). Sword of the Sand looks to be a humane and personal wartime tale set on Okinawa during the end of WWII.
Sujiko by Osamu Kanno This is the first collection from Seirinkogeisha of the absurd and weirdly literary art comics of Osamu Kanno. I don't know much about this guy (post in the comments if you do!) but he has been consistently publishing short stories in AX since the beginning, and made his cartooning debut in 1982 (according to this profile via a Tsuge site). His "The Stranger" is the first story in the new AX Anthology. I am intrigued by this preview and want to learn more about these comics...
From Caroline Bren in the comments:
In addition to last year's book from Serinkogeisha, Osamu had another collection around the same time by Hokutoh Shobu, which I believe has been his regular publisher since the begining of his 80's. The recent book as well as one older one seem to still be available, but there is larger bibliography here. Most of the excerpt from his book that appears on the Serinkogeisha site first appeared in AX #58, and AX #71 had a cover feature on Osamu (but only a short comic). I haven't read any of the books but the pieces in AX are great.
ダニー・ボーイ (Danny Boy) by Shimada Toranosuke I picked up a manga called "Träumerei" by artist Shimada Toranosuke last Spring in Tokyo, after seeing his works at the BIG AX FESTIVAL (pics of him from the show in that post). At first I didn't realize he was a contemporary cartoonist, and thought Seirinkogeisha had reprinted something from the early 70s.
Shimatora has a lovely little story in the AX Anthology ("Enrique Kobayashi's Eldorado"). His style is cartooning in a really beautiful and literal sense, simplifying faces and settings down to elegant lines and contrasting black & white shapes. I haven't read any of his stuff beyond Träumerei, which jumped setting from Cambodia to Japan to the Middle East to America, but this book seems to be a series of short stories named after songs (Danny Boy, Far East Suite, etc), focusing on war, music and late-20th Century politics(?).
正義隊3 (Justice Corps 3) by Yuka Goto The third volume of this action series by young & awesome cartoonist Yuka Goto (age 32). Justice Corps looks like weird shirt drawn in a retarded and mean high school girl's notebook, which is an aesthetic that I love. Goto has a story called The Neighbor in the AX Anthology, and I just love that Seirinkogeisha publishes this type of work. The HETA in her heta-uma is STRONG, but also hilarious, like if Mat Brinkman's MULTIFORCE was drawn by Tammy from Esther Pearl Watson's Unloveable.
As a final note, I realized I never blogged about "Tamashii no ASOKO" the book about the late (& genius!) Yamada Hanako-- a fantastic biography & collection of her high school comics, college zines and assorted works. I've had an art crush on her since first seeing her comics in Comics Underground Japan, and will devote a full post to the book sometime (of which, you can get a sample at the link above).
At some point last weekend between eating pizza, drinking beers in the park and eating indian pizza, my buddy Ramenate reminded me that I still haven't posted the majority of the massive stockpile of photos and dispatches from my trip out to Tokyo earlier this year. How true!
I have a knack lately with all the blogs, projects, brainfarts (oh yeah, and day job) I'm foolishly juggling of forgetting that coming up with an idea is like 10% of the actual work. I am gonna try to be better about this and post more goodies for you guys... How many times have I said that? BUT THIS TIME I MEAN IT :B
So anyway, Nate put me on blast for being lazy while we were inventing a kimchi bloody mary cocktail we're calling the "Gwangju Mary: (so damn tasty! click above for the recipe)
Ready to prove him wrong, here is the next in a series of posts I've labeled Japan 2010!
BIG AX FESTIVAL AT BILLIKEN GALLERY
I had a short list of things set in stone for my Tokyo trip earlier this year that I specifically wanted to check out & photograph for Same Hat. One of the most auspicious was the BIG AX FESTIVAL, a month-long art show organized by manga publisher Seirinkogeisha. The exhibit was held in Billiken Gallery, and featured a huge set of featured artists; in fact, the month-long show was split down the middle with two separate openings and sets of artists. I was lucky enough to visit the final weekend of the exhibit with Nate, and see the 2nd half of BIG AX FESTIVAl (which featured original works by Same Hat patron saints Suehiro Maruo, Yusaku Hanakuma, Shintaro Kago, and many other amazing artists).
Billiken Gallery (Billiken Shokai) is a super cute shop in the highly fashionable and consumerist Aoyama neighborhood of Tokyo. For those that haven't had the pleasure, Aoyama is the 'hood further down the way from Harajuku, home to the crazy Comme des Garçons and Vuitton flagships, swank little eateries, and some of the hottest/fanciest ladies in Tokyo.
The gallery space at Billiken Shokai is in the back, while the front half of the shop features American indie comics (David Bowing by Clowes, David B's Epileptic, etc) along with vintage vinyl figurines, tin toys, and other collectibles. The staff there was cute and polite, a juxtaposition to the wacky-ass art hanging for the AX show. I took a few photos (below) before they informed me that was actually frowned upon... and ended our time there by buying some autographed manga and pins for friends.
Check out the Billiken Gallery's exhibit blog for lots of pics of their ongoing exhibits; I have found tons and tons of contemporary artists to follow/stalk/read about from their blog! It makes me wish that the SuperFrog Gallery in San Francisco was 1/10th as, well, relevant for lack of a better word. Not to harp on this, but it's spaces like Billiken that underscore how much of a missed opportunity for Japan/Manga/Cartoon gallery space the New People building is in its current form.
ON WITH THE PICTURES! HERE ARE MINE: By Yuka Goto, awesome artists of the Justice Corps series. She captures this art brut x nasty high school girl's diary aesthetic really well (and has a story called The Neighbor in the AX Anthology)
Paintings & prints mounted on the wall, manga by AX artists stacked for folks to peruse on all the tables!
BIG AX FESTIVAL t-shirt (not for sale)
Oh yeah, and every issue of AX to date (along with paintings by Maruo, drawing by Hanakuma)
Glass case full of AX/Seirinkogeisha artists pins, including sets by Suehiro Maruo.
Tsuge, Hanakuma, Hayami, and others! These pins were for sale (and are also available at Taco Che
I hope folks enjoyed this collection of photographs and details on the gallery. There are more pics on the Billiken Gallery blog, but it doesn't have permalinks to previous posts unfortunately. Just go back through the archives to February to see 'em!
I would definitely include Billiken Shokai on my list of Tokyo stops, especially if you're already over in West Tokyo at Harajuku or kicking it on the Chuo Line. I just added it to the Same Hat Guide To Everything for anyone planning an upcoming trip!
UPDATE ABOUT THE AX ANTHOLOGY FROM LEIGH AT TOP SHELF:
Hey guys, Leigh here from Top Shelf. The AX book is indeed real, not to worry! It's available via direct order from our web site or at conventions. Unfortunately we had some logistical delays with the book moving through distribution channels, but Diamond has it now and will be distributing to comic shops, bookstores, Amazon, etc within a week or two. Sorry for the confusion and hope you enjoy the book!
In the comments of the 4th anniversary post, jimpac asked for a post sharing pics and details about TACO che. I've had dozens of photos saved up and now that I've been kicked in the pants (and found a happy solution for hosting lots of pictures with PictoBrowser), it's time to post everything!
Folks reading on RSS: PictoBrowser doesn't play nice with you, so please click through and come see the 100+ photos! Mouse over 'Notes' to read the photo captions.
If you've been reading Same Hat for a while, you've probably heard me talk about the Nakano Broadway Mall. It's located just west of Shinjuku, and home to a sprawling complex of strange, otaku stores-- including the massive 15+ Mandarake shops. It's like a more underground and less commercialized version of Akiba, minus the foreign tourists with cameras and with more of the stuff we all like. How to get to Nakano Broadway and maps/pics from the Mandarake shops can be found here.
Last Spring, my GF and I went to Japan for two weeks, and I managed to fit two trips to the greatest shop in Nakano Broadway (and quite possibly, my favorite shop of any kind in the world), TACO che!! I was originally told about the shop by my German buddy Ben (who gavee me the Shintaro Kago Bullying kit from there back in 2007). TACO che is pretty much THE underground manga shop of your dreams. They don't have a specific tie to any one publisher, but I heard that the owner is close with the folks that fun Seirinkogeisha. The shop carries fan zines, dojinshi, along with nearly every title by Seirinkogeisha, EnterBrain/Beam and all the other indies we love.
The shop is located on the 3rd floor, in the general vicinity of the northwest end of the Nakano Broadway mall. Here are some shots from inside the store. The place is tiny, but every square foot is something cool and tempting:
These photos are all from March 2008, and reflect the books and goods that were hot at the time. Kazuo Umezu's 50th Anniversary (of his career in manga) celebration was in full force, and the store was crammed full of incredible Umezz goods:
In my two trips to the shop, I spent (eeek) over 300 bucks and filled a suitcase with books. I didn't really have 300 bucks to spend on comics, but I. JUST. COULDN'T. HELP. MYSELF. In addition to the bigger pubs and indie zines I mentioned above, TACO che also publishes their own occasional zines and pamphlets (which are insanely excellent, like this). Here is just a small smattering of the manga gems I am talking about:
Not content to be simply the BOOK store of our dreams, TACO che also carries limited edition shirts, toys and DVDs, including Suehiro Maruo posters made just for TACO che (sorry, I can't find that pic at the moment, will take one of the miniposter on my wall). Here are some of the shirts:
And here are some of the goodies:
They also carry lapel pins by all our favorites:
I tried to include good captions for all those pics, but if you have any questions (or corrections!) leave a comment here! You can see the photos directly at the non-flashy Same Hat flickr, which I'm using just to store pics for PictoBrowser to pull from.
TACO che continues to be the epicenter for all the manga and art we all love so much, so I'll keep my eyes ope on their blog and post interesting news. In the coming month or so, TACO che will be hosting signing events with Takashi Nemoto and Jun Hayami- hopefully Nate or Schultz can check those out for us!!
I am very, very excited to share some fantastic news for Same Hat readers, and for all fans of indie manga and experimental cartooning... Top Shelf will be publishing a 400 page AX ANTHOLOGY, a selection of stories from the bimonthly underground manga anthology AX... all available in English for the first time!
(Here is the front and back cover to a 16 page AX Anthology sampler to be given away at Alternative Press Expo!)
We've posted extensively about AX before, but remember that it's an anthology book published by Seirinkogeisha, that took up the reins of GARO after they closed their doors and ran with the weirdness. Tokyo Zombie originally was serialized in AX, along with works and interviews of Suehiro Maruo, Shinichi Abe, Nishioka Kyoudai, Naoto Yamakawa(Oops, he was in Comix Beam), Usamaru Furuya, Toshio Saeki, Akino Kondoh, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Toyo Kataoka, and many many many other amazing mangaka.
I don't have anything to do with this book, but recently learned about it and got permission to break the news to ya'll (and of course, am supremely jealous I didn't get to edit or translate for the book!). The full table of contents details have not yet been made available, but I hope to hear more specifics this Fall and post them here.
This gigantic book was co-edited by author SeanMichaelWilson and AX co-founder Mitsuhiro Asakawa. Sean is a comic book writer from Scotland, now an ex-pat living and working in Japan. He's published a number of books, nine graphic novels, and his first English- Japanese-language manga was published this past summer. Asakawa-san is an author and current editor of AX, and worked in the 90s on the staff of GARO, along with writing a number of books on alternative manga and gekiga.
At Alternative Press Expo next weekend, Sean will be doing an presentation on gekiga and presenting rare images from the early, emergent days of the genre. He'll also be there with a 16pg sampler of the AX ANTHOLOGY on hand to give away. I'll be helping run the presentation (and on hand to score my own copy of the sampler, duh!). Details from the APE Site...
SUN, 5:00-5:45: AX and Gekiga: Alternative Manga in Japan—Sean Michael looks at the roots and contemporary state of indy/alternative manga in Japan, using rare and unseen visuals supplied by the original Gekiga creators of the 1950s and 1960s and info from the editors of AX, the premier alternative anthology in Japan today. Plus, a preview of the upcoming book AX Collection (Top Shelf), which presents a selection of this indy manga for the first time in English.
I'm hoping to do an interview with Sean (and Leigh at Top Shelf) and post more details later this fall. What AX creators are you guys most looking forward to reading in English?
After many months, Evan and I are very excited to announce the publication details for our labor of love. The book is...
TOKYO ZOMBIE by Yusaku Hanakuma!
The release date of Tokyo Zombie is September 18, and the manga's being published by Last Gasp. Last Gasp is working hard to be able to debut the book at San Diego Comic Con, and we will be there promoting this manga with Colin Turner (our awesome editor at Last Gasp, who is behind this book, Barefoot Gen, Town of Evening Calm, Junko Mizuno's Pure Trance and many other gems).
Tokyo Zombie is a self-contained story featuring Yusaku Hanakuma's two characters Afro and Hage. It was originally serialized in AX Magazine in 1998-1999, and was collected and published the year after by Seirinkogeisha. Seirinkogeisha is an incredbile indie/underground manga publisher, and publish the vast majority of Same Hat favorites including Suehiro Maruo, Takashi Nemoto, Shintaro Kago, Kazuichi Hanawa and many, many others.
Tokyo Zombie was also made into a movie a few years ago, starring Tadanobu Asano and Sho Aikawa and features a short cameo by Kazuo Umezu! The storyline for the movie differs from the manga, but this is probably where most folks have heard of the book (but we hope to change that this summer).
Through researching this project (sitting around reading tons of awesome manga and learning Jiu-Jitsu terminology), Yusaku Hanakuma has become one of my absolute favorite contemporary cartoonists. I haven't gotten to gush about his work much yet on the blog, for fear of giving away the project, but over the coming months I'll be posting more info about him and his work. Tokyo Zombie is his first book to be released in English, and I'm hoping to be able to work on more in the future.
For the project, I've worked as the translator and editor, while Evan has beautifully handled all the lettering and retouching, along with designing an awesome cover for the English edition. It's been basically our absolute dream gig, and we had a blast working on such an hilarious and gross manga. I think you guys are gonna really, really like this one. In the comments and later on, I'll be happy to post more specifics about our work, but first I wanted to make this announcement as quickly as possible!
For your reading pleasure, here is the book summary and details, which will soon be on Last Gasp's site and the Amazon listing. Stores can pre-order the book directly from Last Gasp, and I definitely encourage you to ask your local shop to order you a copy (more details on doing that soon). I'd be supremely geeked if this book is an alternative manga success story... And you guys are gonna make that happen, right?
DESCRIPTION: Tokyo Zombie is a horror-comedy manga about two blue-collar factory workers, Mitsuo and Fujio, whose plans for martial arts fame are sidelined when zombies take over Tokyo. In this gory and hilarious tale, the survivors of the zombie apocalypse have been enslaved by the wealthy ruling class, and must cater to their every depraved whim...or be thrown outside the city to fend for themselves. When some of the survivors are enlisted to fight in an undead gladiator arena for the amusement of the rich, Mitsuo and Fujio are locked in a battle for fame, freedom, and their very lives!
Years before Shaun of the Dead introduced Western audiences to the zombie comedy genre, Yusaku Hanakuma's hilarious and outrageous manga was already a cult classic in Japan. Tokyo Zombie's class-conscious storyline about the haves and the have-nots during a zombie uprising anticipated such films as George Romero's Land of the Dead. Now English-speaking audiences will have the chance to check out the genre-mashing tale that started it all.
PRAISE FOR TOKYO ZOMBIE:
"This book is fucking awesome. I laughed out loud several times even and I can't remember the last time a comic made me do that. Tokyo Zombie is retarded, weird, violent, bizarre, horrific, hilarious, and pornographic. In other words, everything a comic should be and then some." - Johnny Ryan, cartoonist and author of Angry Youth Comix
"A cross between Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, 28 Days Later, Planet Terror, and Bloodsport, Tokyo Zombie is an epic tale that's either really dumb or an allegory of a twisted society." - Eric Nakamura, publisher of Giant Robot
More details coming soon... I can't wait for everyone to get the chance to read this book!!! PS: As a bonus, here is a gallery with images from Tokyo Zombie and paintings by Hanakuma, from a gallery show in 2005.
Updated: SAME HAT stopped updating in 2013! For all new projects, please see Youth in Decline's sit and Instagram.
All fan translations of manga that you'll see in the archives are previously untranslated into English and range from comedy to horror to avant-absurd weirdness.
Same Hat is written & edited by Ryan. If you would like to contact me, please email: samehat @ gmail.com. Also, you can Ask me anything on the Same Hat Tumblr!
