As America focused on rebuilding itself after WWII, a distinctly different thing was happening in Japan. Manga became a popular form of graphic art, and Yoshihiro Tatsumi, author of a new graphic biography, A Drifting Life, soon became its leader. In the 1950s, Tatsumi developed “gekiga”—a darker form of Manga, which catapulted him to the top. His new book is simultaneously a graphic autobiography and a tour of the cultural climate in post-war Japan. Write The New York Times: “It’s as if someone had taken a Haruki Murakami novel and drawn, beautifully and comprehensively, in its margins.”
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