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Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms. Fumiyo Kouno (jaPRESS).
This is such a nice story, sweet and warming, but it’s also terribly, terribly sad. And also very worthwhile reading – it’s taken me a while to write this because this is one of those books that you immediately press on people (friends, family, passing strangers) and I’ve only just gotten it back.
The first story – Town of Evening Calm – is about Minami Hirano, who lives with her mother in Hiroshima ten years after the bomb. The cover has her walking home by the river, looking up at the sky, and holding her shoes in one hand so she won’t wear them out too quickly, which is as good a shorthand for her character as any description I could come up with; she and her mother are saving up to go and see her little brother, Asahi, sent away for safety and now adopted by his aunt and uncle. Minami has, on the face of it, a very ordinary life, right down to there being a nice young man who wants a relationship with her – but Minami was there when the bomb fell, and it’s a part of her life that can never be erased.
The second, longer piece (Country of Cherry Blossom) is about Asahi’s daughter, Nanami, impulsive and obsessed with baseball. It’s in two parts, the first in 1987 and the second in 2004; the main plot thread is about a friend of Nanami’s, Toko, who she loses touch with and then meets again, but the broader story works through all of Nanami’s family and friends as well, continuing to trace out the consequences of the bomb. In Minami’s story, the guilt she feels for those she left helpless is always with her; years later, it’s more the shadow of doubt and fear over survivors and their children, the social stigma insidious and difficult to contest or even confront.
The art is gorgeous, and the presentation of the manga – by jaPRESS – is one of the best I’ve seen. It took me a while to even find this, despite there being a lot of enthusiasm for it on the net; it deserves much more attention than it’s gotten anywhere near I am, anyway. It’s excellent, it’s subtle and it’s heart-breaking.
Shaenon Garrity’s OMF entry, which you should look at because it has scans and no spoilers and is much more articulate than mine, is here.
I was also trying to find a review I read that talked about the art style, particularly in the flashback panels that deal directly with the immediate aftermath of the bomb – the panels skew sideways while the text keeps its normal orientation, so as Minami struggles away from the dead and dying she is moving, almost impossibly, directly up the page – but it currently eludes me. A selection of other reviews is here.
This is such a nice story, sweet and warming, but it’s also terribly, terribly sad. And also very worthwhile reading – it’s taken me a while to write this because this is one of those books that you immediately press on people (friends, family, passing strangers) and I’ve only just gotten it back.
The first story – Town of Evening Calm – is about Minami Hirano, who lives with her mother in Hiroshima ten years after the bomb. The cover has her walking home by the river, looking up at the sky, and holding her shoes in one hand so she won’t wear them out too quickly, which is as good a shorthand for her character as any description I could come up with; she and her mother are saving up to go and see her little brother, Asahi, sent away for safety and now adopted by his aunt and uncle. Minami has, on the face of it, a very ordinary life, right down to there being a nice young man who wants a relationship with her – but Minami was there when the bomb fell, and it’s a part of her life that can never be erased.
The second, longer piece (Country of Cherry Blossom) is about Asahi’s daughter, Nanami, impulsive and obsessed with baseball. It’s in two parts, the first in 1987 and the second in 2004; the main plot thread is about a friend of Nanami’s, Toko, who she loses touch with and then meets again, but the broader story works through all of Nanami’s family and friends as well, continuing to trace out the consequences of the bomb. In Minami’s story, the guilt she feels for those she left helpless is always with her; years later, it’s more the shadow of doubt and fear over survivors and their children, the social stigma insidious and difficult to contest or even confront.
The art is gorgeous, and the presentation of the manga – by jaPRESS – is one of the best I’ve seen. It took me a while to even find this, despite there being a lot of enthusiasm for it on the net; it deserves much more attention than it’s gotten anywhere near I am, anyway. It’s excellent, it’s subtle and it’s heart-breaking.
Shaenon Garrity’s OMF entry, which you should look at because it has scans and no spoilers and is much more articulate than mine, is here.
I was also trying to find a review I read that talked about the art style, particularly in the flashback panels that deal directly with the immediate aftermath of the bomb – the panels skew sideways while the text keeps its normal orientation, so as Minami struggles away from the dead and dying she is moving, almost impossibly, directly up the page – but it currently eludes me. A selection of other reviews is here.
