Nonnonba

by Shigeru Mizuki

It's kind of strange reading Nonnonba so soon after I completed Mizuki's first Showa book, as it covers much of the same material.  That book is a mixture between personal autobiography and straight history book, examining Mizuki's childhood in a small town in Japan in the 1920s and 30s.

In Nonnonba, Mizuki focuses on his childhood, his relationship with the old woman who often worked for his family in a domestic capacity, and their shared belief in the rich spirit world of Japanese mythology and folk tradition.

Young Shige gets up to some pretty usual boyhood stuff, fighting with the kids from a different neighbourhood, visiting a 'haunted house', and drawing about his experiences.  He does terribly in school, and often exasperates his mother.

Nonnonba's familial relationship to Shige or his family is never made very clear, but it is obvious that the two care very deeply for one another.  She teaches him about the various spiritual creatures that live all around them, and as the book progresses, Shige gets to know a few of them on a personal level.

This is an interesting book.  It shows a touching example of inter-generational friendship, and helps document a way of life that is now gone.  I feel like Showa, which is supposed to be a broad examination of Japan's history, does a better job of explaining minute details about the mangaka's life, but this book is much more affecting and charming.

Showa: A History of Japan 1926-1939

by Shigeru Mizuki

I really don't know a lot about Japanese history, and since I liked Shigeru Mizuki's Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, his account of his own involvement in the Second World War, I thought it would be interesting to read his broader take on the country's history.

Showa is a multi-volume look into the era that began when Emperor Hirohito took the throne.  This also coincided, roughly, with Mizuki's birth.  The first volume of this series covers the start of the era through to the Second World War, and this was a time of great turmoil throughout Japan.

A devastating earthquake created economic instability, which was made worse by the Great Depression.  Following that, a number of 'incidents' in China, and a shocking level of independence in the military, plunged Japan into many years of militaristic expansion into other countries, notably Korea and China.

The larger history of the country is told a variety of ways.  We get straight narration, we sit in on discussions among regular men on the street, and are directly told what's going on by Nezumi Otoko, a magical character from Mizuki's other work.  These sections of the book are interesting, but often became a string of names and faces to me.

Of more interest were the sections that juxtaposed Mizuki's own life with the events of the time.  We see young Shigeru move from being a small child through to his early adulthood.  This provides some context to the larger events, and remind us that at every point of history where major events have happened, there have been people just going about their day.

This is a hugely ambitious project from a much-loved cartoonist who sadly passed away this year.  I look forward to reading the rest of this.

Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths

by Shigeru Mizuki

Take a moment and think about how the West has portrayed Japanese soldiers of the Second World War in films, novels, and other media.  The image that immediately comes to my mind is of tenacious fighters who attack suddenly, and who never give up an inch of ground.  I can't think of a single movie I've seen or book I've read that gets into the Japanese perspective though.

That's why I was excited to crack open Sigeru Mizuki's Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, the collection of a manga story that was originally serialized in 1973.

This book is, according to the author, 90% true.  Mizuki was stationed on New Britain, an island in the Papua New Guinean archipelago, and was home to some fierce fighting between the Japanese and the Americans.  Mizuki introduces us to a number of characters of all ranks, and shows the boredom of the soldiers awaiting an Allied attack.

Much of this book is given over to portraying the officers as dehumanizing the men under their command.  Barely a page goes by where someone isn't being slapped or beaten simply because of their lower rank.  The men have their time wasted by officers looking to keep them busy, and the men slowly lose all sense of respect for the war effort in general.  When it becomes clear that the soldiers holding an area around Baien have no hope of success, their leaders decide that the appropriate course of action is to attack the Americans in a frontal suicide charge.

Some of the men survive this, and make their way to their larger forces, far to the rear of the fighting.  That they survived is seen as something between an inconvenience and a complete insult.  Their deaths have been reported to military command, and so it is necessary for them to attack again, ensuring their fate is what their commanders expect.

This book lays bare the problems of Japan during the war.  The need for honor, and for keeping up appearances sent men to needless deaths, while doing nothing to halt the Allied advance.  Mizuki does a terrific job of humanizing this senseless slaughter, and portraying it in a light, enjoyable fashion.

Mizuki's art is very interesting.  His backgrounds and establishing shots are exceptionally detailed and photo-realistic, while his figures are drawn in a very simple, cartoonish style.  Many of the characters look like the racially stereotypical drawings of the Japanese seen in American comics of the war period, which kind of surprised me.

I enjoyed reading this book a great deal.  None of the characters, with the possible exception of the doctor, stuck with me, although that is something that often happens to me when I read war comics; all of the characters are usually so similar that as individuals, they don't matter.  Which was more or less the point of the Japanese command.