Loading
GRAPHIC NARRATIVE PROJECT
Steven Carter (EALC) on Manga, History and Yoshihiro Tatsumi's "A Drifting Life."
Wednesday January 16, 2013 | 06:00 -08:00 PM | Board Room

Everything has a history. I will begin my remarks by briefly tracing the history of manga as a genre in postwar Japan, teasing out some of the details of the economic, political, and cultural situation in which the genre developed. Then I will discuss some specific features of the plot, characters, themes, and graphic qualities of A Drifting Life that derive from that situation. My conclusion will concentrate on the mood of nostalgia that informs the visual content and drawing style of Tatsumi’s memoir—-for at the same time that A Drifting Life offers a history of manga, it also tells us a coming-of-age story (both personal and professional) for Tatsumi in the context of a culture that is very specifically Japanese.