You might love the sausage but would you like to know how it is made? Though nostalgic in spirit Jiro Taniguchi’s “A Zoo in the Winter” avoids the trap of romanticism as it explores the author’s early years as a mangaka. It is a work that is both human and humane.
Written and Illustrated by Jiro TaniguchiCover by Jiro TaniguchiTHE PLEASURE OF DRAWING. Kyoto, 1966. The young Hamaguchi is working for a textile manufacturer whilst dreaming of becoming an artist, when an incident at the zoo forces his hand. He moves to Tokyo at the invitation of an old school friend who also arranges an interview at the studios of the famous mangaka, Shiro Kondo. Here he discovers both the long hours of meeting studio deadlines along with the nightlife and artistic haunts of the capital. For the first time ever, Taniguchi recalls his beginnings in manga and his youth spent in Tokyo in the 60’s. It is a magnificent account of his apprenticeship where all the finesse and elegance of the creator are united to illustrate those first emotions of adulthood.
It’s a fascinating experience, reading this manga (originally written between 2005 to 2007 and based on the author’s history in the 1960’s) in the year 2018. The discourse in Western comics’ criticism has been slowly moving from a writer-centric view of comics, our own version of ‘auteur theory’ which holds the director as the driving force behind any movie, to a more team-based outlook. I am certainly shamed by much of my earlier criticism in which the writer was the sole ‘creator’ while the penciler, inker, colorist and letterer were nothing more than the abstract ‘art team’ which is responsible to execute his will. Today I wouldn’t think to write about Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” knowing how that without the work of Dave Gibbons and John Higgins we would look at an utterly different comic-book – one that is possibly not the acknowledged classic people admire to this day.
Though dealing with events taking place in the 1960’s “A Zoo in the Winter” gives us a look through a very different comics scene – one in which everyone is aware that the work credited to one (or sometimes two) people is more often than not helped along by a small army of artistic assistants: doing everything from background to figure-work. Certainly one of my first thoughts, after finishing this book, is whether Jiro Taniguchi (who gets sole credits on the cover and in the inside credits) actually did all the work himself.
It certainly is a strong work: Jiro Taniguchi’s main skill, at least as expressed here, is in naturalistic figurework and expressions: you can tell so much about his characters from just a hint of a smile, or small, almost invisible, bead of sweat dropping across a face in a critical moment. This is not to say that other artistic elements are lacking, there’s always a strong sense of place and being to Taniguchi’s Tokyo without wallowing too much in pathetic fallacy (the city is not extension of the protagonist’s being,), simply that human part are strongest: “A Zoo in Winter” is so fully immersed in the various experience of being alive. Drinking, partying, working late, going to new places and experiencing things you did not think of before. There’s such a charm to existence as it expressed in this book, in this art, and yet it never crosses the invisible line that would make it all unbelievable – he keeps a strong sense of naturalism without being enslaved by it.
I can certainly imagine a book like this being written from righteous anger, young Hamaguchi (the author surrogate) certainly knows nothing of the industry and his own worth as an artist when he is drafted as an assistant for an established mangaka and spends countless nights trying to beat deadlines. All this work alongside a bunch of cohorts, each of which is hoping for a major break that is likely not to come. But Taniguchi avoids looking back in anger, he also avoids the dreaded nostalgia trap; instead “A Zoo in Winter” is something a bit more weighted: Hamaguchi is not an assertive person, which allows the text to drift along from mood to mood.
Continued belowThe parts dealing with life of an art assistant and young man for the first time in the ‘big city’ are certainly the strongest in the book. the other major part of the plot, Hamguchi’s doomed-from-the-start romance with a sickly young lady works less well. This is not because the parts are not well integrated, Taniguchi does fine work in tying the growth in relations to the growth in the protagonists’ desire to express himself outside of the shadow of the elder mangaka, but simply because it is such a tired idea: the young beautiful women who is too good for this world and seemingly exists only as a guiding light to out nebbish male hero. It’s particularly sad because the writing does give life to other characters as well, they do not simply exist as moral reflections of the hero’s journey, only to fumble with the most important female character in the story.
Knowing that this story is rooted in the author’s own experience it is possible that such a woman did exist, that he really saw her like that (at the time) – but part of the reason of writing from historical distance is to allow one to parse things out outside immediate emotional attachments. Most of the book is very adult, the parts dealing with the relationship are, perhaps inevitably, written too much like a young man.
The other odd element, writing from 2018, is the presentation: “A Zoo in Winter” is presented in traditional western format, left to right. This was certainly more common back in the day but this doesn’t seem to hurt the work too much, certainly the comics flows well enough. The lettering is a bit of problem, too many speech balloons feature centered letters with a large chunks of blank space around them, which gives a sense of emptiness; I wonder if this is an intentional element of the work – if so I am not quite sure what they are trying to say.
I am not enough of manga-aficionado to tell you if this work is indeed a stone-cold classic, as it has been recommended to me, but I can tell you that it made captured this neophyte’s hart and mind enough to make me try to more works by Jiro Taniguchi (and possibly his invisible helpers) in the future.
