Not many people have heard about artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Wikipedia has about four lines about him. This is all mighty strange, because his work is incredibly worthwhile – not just in the art department, but also story-wise. He’s considered the “grandfather of Japanese alternative comics” (or gekiga), and while in the 1960s his contemporaries were drawing kids’ comics, Tatsumi was drawing about real life – about the dark corners of his city, beneath which sewer workers toil and through which millions of lonely, confused and angry souls pass. The Push Man and Other Stories represents the first volume in an anthology of the man’s works, beginning with stories collected from 1960. Sometimes it’s tough to know what exactly Tatsumi’s getting at – his stories often end at peculiar junctions, and it feels almost like you’ve missed an important part of the plot. Parallels with this evocative cut-thread approach to narrative can be found in Haruki Murakami’s short stories, though the key difference is that Tatsumi’s stories remain grounded in the very real, very gritty day-to-day of Tokyo denizens.
– Owen