The manga this week
Oya-san to Boku (My landlady and me)
By Taro Yabe (Shinchosha)
Comedian Naoki Matayoshi won the Akutagawa Prize for literature for his first novel. More recently, Taro Yabe, also a comedian, won the short manga award of the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize, which is almost equivalent to the Akutagawa Prize in the world of manga, for his first published work. An incredible feat for Yoshimoto Kogyo Co., the entertainment agency to which these two comedians belong.
I knew that Yabe's manga, "Oya-san to Boku" (My landlady and me), had sold well since it was published in October 2017. I chose to ignore it because I thought it would have been a waste of time and money if it was not entertaining. And even if it was a good read, that would have been somewhat irritating, too, because Yabe's current profession is stand-up comedian, yet he managed to win a manga award on his first attempt. However, I was no longer able to overlook it after it won the Tezuka prize. And I was indeed very irritated.
The protagonist is an obscure comedian who is not a confident public speaker. He rents a second-floor section of a house where an 86-year-old lady lives by herself. The landlady appears to have been born into a wealthy family. She is elegant with a polite demeanor, but has some idiosyncratic tendencies. The lodger and landlady gradually get to know each other, building up a relationship akin to family, and sometimes even like a loving couple.
The drawings are very simple, or rather "heta-uma" -- unskillful but effective. The promotional statement written on the book's wraparound sleeve emphasizes that this manga is based on a real-life experience, which has no doubt contributed to its appeal.
But I wasn't fooled. This manga is entertaining not because it's based on a real story -- it's gripping because of Yabe's enormous talent to transform reality into believable fiction. Even if several thousand people had the same experience, I imagine not one of them would be able to depict it as Yabe has done in this manga.
Take, for example, the episode where the landlady and the protagonist go out for lunch at the Isetan Shinjuku Store. Their taxi starts to travel in the air during the journey. The city view below them, for just a moment, becomes a post-war landscape of ruined fields, reflecting the memories of the landlady. Such expressions are presented quite casually throughout this manga. I'm amazed at Yabe's solid understanding of the genre.
Yabe's father is the picture book artist Mitsunori Yabe. But Yabe's style seems to be quite different from his father's. At first glance, it appears to be ordinary, and yet it does not remind me of anyone else's style. In other words, it is truly unique.
I saw Yabe at the Tezuka Prize award ceremony. Just as the protagonist is portrayed in the manga, he did not speak smoothly and is slender and frail. But I'm certain this is exactly how truly talented people are. In time, all popular writers and manga artists may have backgrounds as comedians. That again would be truly irritating.
Ishida is a Yomiuri Shimbun senior writer whose areas of expertise include manga and anime.
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