Flipped!: David Welsh On Recent Works Featuring Jiro Taniguchi




David P. Welsh

Not too long ago, Tom Spurgeon estimated that Jiro Taniguchi had about five sides as a cartoonist. That sounds about right to me.

His best-known sides are probably his reflective, slice-of-life mode, as epitomized by The Walking Man and his contribution to Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators, and his outdoorsy streak, represented by The Ice Wanderer and Other Stories and The Summit of the Gods. There's a bit of the outdoorsman in The Quest for the Missing Girl, but it also reflects a third side, noir Taniguchi. This aspect is represented by his earliest works available in translation, Benkei in New York (written by Jinpachi Mori) and Hotel Harbor View (written by Natsuo Kekikawa). Both are out of print, but I would urge you to track them down if you can. Benkei in particular is a treat and features the only swordfight set in an museum that you ever need to read. Side four could be called historian Taniguchi, represented by his ten-volume The Times of Botchan (scripted by Natsuo Sekikawa), an adaptation of Natsumo Soseki's classic novel of the Meiji Era, Botchan.

The fifth side is a little tricky, as it's almost a meta-side, appearing as an undercurrent in almost all of his translated works. It's Taniguchi as chronicler of male middle age. He never accompanies any of his characters to a colonoscopy, but the aging man and his concerns frequently play thematic roles. This takes on a wish-fulfillment aspect in Benkei, with its artist-by-day, fixer-by-night protagonist. The Quest for the Missing Girl's hero takes mental sidetracks into what his life might have been like if he'd been able to commit to a person instead of mountains. Botchan views its times through the eyes of a middle-aged man.



Taniguchi's most recent release in English, the two-volume A Distant Neighborhood, gives this aspect a slice-of-life flavor. Its 48-year-old protagonist finds himself back in his 14-year-old life in the months shortly before his father disappeared. If he knew then what he knows now (which he does), would he be able to change events and prevent the difficulties that followed? It's not the freshest question on which to hang a story, but Taniguchi is so scrupulous in his telling that the absence of freshness doesn't really matter.

If anything, the familiarity of the concept adds to the nostalgia that informs the series. It's a very specific kind of nostalgia, and while it may not be exclusively Japanese, they do have a phrase for it: mono no aware. It's alternately translated as "the pathos of things" or "a sensitivity of ephemera," and it describes nostalgia for the present moment, the awareness of its inevitable passing. This sentiment appears frequently in manga with a school setting and is used to terrific effect in Kio Shimoku's Genshiken, Chica Umino's Honey and Clover, and many others.

It takes on an added, explicit layer in A Distant Neighborhood, as time-traveling Hiroshi Nakahara knows what comes next. Perhaps he didn't fully appreciate the ephemera (the unpretentiously happy family, the certainty of school life) the first time he was 14, but his 48-year-old revisiting leaves him consumed by it. He's torn between basking in the almost-over simplicity and sweetness and what he believes to be his mission – preventing his father's disappearance.



Hiroshi's giddiness often overtakes his anxiety. Taniguchi has fun exploring the ways a 48-year-old would revisit his youth. Hiroshi revels in the lightness and stamina of his more youthful self, even as he breezes through his schoolwork with over three decades of accumulated knowledge. He impresses the prettiest girl in class, someone he never worked up the nerve to speak to the first time around, and he accelerates events he knew would happen eventually. A Distant Neighborhood isn't antic or slapstick in the way these body-switching comedies usually are, but it is gently funny. It's also rather meandering, but that feels right. Like The Walking Man, which literally consists of nothing but meandering, A Distant Neighborhood is more about examining specific experiences than plot.

Whatever side or composite of sides Taniguchi is showing, readers can be guaranteed that the pages will be extraordinarily detailed and satisfyingly realistic. I can think of few illustrators who are as dedicated to rendering place as Taniguchi, whether it's a windswept mountainside or the streets of a small town. He's also meticulous in capturing the way people move and the way their thoughts play across their faces. (I loved seeing Hiroshi's middle-aged weariness show up on his fresh, unlined face, a lovely and precise fusion of old and young.) Taniguchi's brand of realism isn't static; it's organic and inhabited.

A Distant Neighborhood doesn't go anyplace particularly daring or experimental. To be honest, none of Taniguchi's comics really do, no matter how feral their settings. But if you enjoy comics that routinely exhibit an astonishing level of craftsmanship, you really should read Taniguchi's.

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* all art selected by David Welsh from the two Distant Neighborhood volumes.

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* A Distant Neighborhood, written and illustrated by Jiro Taniguchi, graphic adaptation by Frédéric Boilet, translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian, Fanfare/Ponent Mon, 200 pages, reoriented to read left to right with the consent of the creator, ISBN: 978-8492444281, 06/30/2009, $23.00

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David P. Welsh has loved comics since his parents first used Archie and Casper to sedate him during long trips in the family station wagon.

He's worked as a reporter and editor for daily and weekly newspapers, and later sold out for the glamorous world of public relations. Prior to relocating to The Comics Reporter, he wrote his Flipped column for Comic World News for just over three years. He's written articles on comics for print outlets and a variety of other web sites.

He lives in West Virginia, which he says has gotten a lot easier since the Starbucks and Barnes & Noble opened up.

You may e-mail David with questions or commentary You can write to this site about David's columns

Please bookmark his site, Precocious Curmudgeon.

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