A lot of writers and illustrators have attempted to write on what it means to be employed in the creative industry. In my opinion, the best book about writing is John Kendrick Bangs’ 1896 work A Rebellious Heroine. Taiyo Matsumoto will be joining esteemed company as he devotes his talents to delving into the manga genre from a variety of artistic perspectives. (Or, if you’d rather, Matsumoto is the distinguished companion of the Bangs, who have been largely and criminally ignored.) The first volume of Matsumoto’s series examines how working in manga can become an all-consuming passion, a necessary escape, and a labor of unappreciated love as he explores it through the perspectives of several characters, in contrast to Bangs’ novel, which focuses on the way stories can spiral out of their writers’ control.
The manga editor Shiozawa is the main subject of the story. He has been in the industry for thirty years and has been in love with the medium his entire life when we meet. He is retiring. In his office, Shiozawa is considered something of a great, but he feels out of touch with the industry when a magazine he oversaw was canceled. It is implied that he feels he no longer has the right to work in manga, which affects many aspects of his life, including a point when he nearly sells off everything he has collected over the course of his life. Even though he is unaware of it, Shiozawa is punishing himself for the way the industry has evolved.
The premise of the book is the idea of a shifting manga landscape, albeit it isn’t always discussed explicitly. When discussing these titles with younger readers, Shiozawa’s work on some of the most important works of what is assumed to be the late Showa era is met with a deafening silence. From a nostalgic point of view, this suggests that the criteria used to evaluate manga during the Reiwa and Heisei periods have either changed or progressed. Shiozawa and his contemporaries are having difficulty adjusting to the changing manga landscape, much as cheap paperbacks played a role in the downfall of the pulp short story magazine. Two other individuals we meet are traditional manga artists; one is retiring, and the other has given up on manga completely to work at a “regular” grocery job. They’re positioned either side of a recently deceased fellow creator. There is a perception that the deceased manga creator is the only one who has successfully left the manga community, and that she only did so by passing away, despite the fact that Shiozawa still appreciates their work and encourages them to start producing again. Whether you like it or not, manga is here to stay.
Then, the dilemma arises as to whether it is worthwhile to attempt to overcome the field or to change together with it. By the end of the volume, the discussion remains open-ended, with Shiozawa striving to determine his position in it. As we see him waver, on the final page it appears that he has made up his mind to take on one final project, collaborating with the two more seasoned creators, which motivates a younger struggling creator and his editor. However, the question of whether one should create for oneself or for an audience is starting to surface. For instance, the woman who left the field to work in a grocery store is thrilled to be drawing epic shoujo in the vein of Riyoko Ikeda, but her son and husband don’t get it at all and dismiss it as some strange, violent thing. It makes her happy, but it’s unclear if that’s enough. With Shiozawa squarely in the center, the youthful manga creator’s path is more about the business side of things because, although creating manga brings him joy, he also wants to sell, something that the older characters don’t seem to worry about.
Maybe the idea is that there are no simple answers. To emphasize this, Matsumoto incorporates magical realism aspects into the narrative, such as Shiozawa’s interactions with his bird and a ghost. One of the more intriguing literary methods in the novel is the latter one, wherein he converses in full human language with the bird and someone questions him who he is speaking to at one point since he can hear voices through the door. However, the bird appears to be chirping to everyone else in the room, raising doubts about whether Shiozawa is actually having those talks. Does the bird symbolize Shiozawa’s inner artistry? Or is he just answering his queries in the “voice” of the bird?
As is typically the case with Matsumoto’s manga, reading it requires some work on your part. Tokyo These Days encourages critical thinking, which occasionally involves analyzing the text’s accompanying images—which are frequently seen separately. In the end, this book presents a world that is changing, symbolized by the Tokyo that the protagonists currently live in and have lived in the past. It’s about the unbreakable grip that artistic expression—and manga in particular—has on us. It states that it is up to you what you do with that hold.
