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by Yoshiharu Tsuge (Author), Ryan Holmberg (Translator)
An alt-manga legend strikes out on his own, creating some of his most revealing and personal works
Oba Electroplating Factory is a startlingly bleak but nonetheless captivating portrait of mid-century Japan in its most unglamorous iteration. Glimpses of the artist reflecting upon his life, his work, and his contemporaries pepper the narrative landscape: a wife teases her husband about a former fling on a trip to the hot springs, a young cartoonist is aghast at the cavalier conduct of his supposed betters, and imperfect men must grapple with the discomfort of their own honesty. Tsuge's stories are studies in staging nature, working to evoke stillness and movement in such a way that renders his chosen setting a character all on its own.
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Author Biography
Yoshiharu Tsuge was born in Tokyo in 1937. Influenced by the realistic and gritty rental manga of Yoshihiro Tatsumi, he began making his own comics. He was also briefly recruited to assist Shigeru Mizuki in the 1960s. In 1968, working for Garo magazine, Tsuge published the groundbreaking story "Neji-shiki" (commonly called "Screw Style" by Western readers), which established Tsuge as an influential manga-ka and a cultural touchstone in the changing Japanese art world. He is considered the originator and greatest practitioner of the "I-novel" method of comics-making. In 2005, Tsuge was nominated for the Best Album Award at Angoulême International and in 2017 won the Japan Cartoonists Association Grand Award.
