A sweeping yet intimate portrait of the legacy of World War II in Japan
"Showa 1944 1953: A History of Japan" continues the award-winning author Shigeru Mizuki's autobiographical and historical account of the Showa period in Japan. This volume recounts the events of the final years of the Pacific War and the consequences of the war's devastation for Mizuki and the Japanese populace at large.
After the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, Japan and the United States are officially at war. The two rival navies engage in a deadly game of feint and thrust, waging a series of micro wars across the tiny Pacific islands. From Guadalcanal to Okinawa, Japan slowly loses ground. Finally, the United States unleashes the death blow with a new and terrible weapon the atomic bomb. The fallout from the bombs is beyond imagining.
On another front, "Showa 1944 1953" traces Mizuki's own life story across history's sweeping changes during this period, charting the impact of the war's end on his life choices. After losing his arm during the brutal fighting, Mizuki struggles to decide where to go: whether to remain on the island as an honoured friend of the local Tolai people or return to the rubble of Japan and take up his dream of becoming a cartoonist. "Showa 1944 1953 "is a searing condemnation of the personal toll of war from one of Japan's most famous cartoonists."
Reviews:
...confirms that Shigeru Mizuki is a priceless chronicler of the major events that rocked Japan during the twentieth century...these works serve as a dire warning against the dangers of imperialism, of the consequences of choosing to fight rather than to think.
World Literature Today
There's just something uncannily, well ... wise about Mizuki. In one segment he'll be an icy judge, in another a cynical gadfly, then a daffy outcast. His drawing style varies wildly: He'll lavish detail on a jungle backdrop, then put two overtly cartoony soldiers in front of it. But he depicts Japan's military leaders with more realism, and his re-creations of actual photos of dead bodies — both during and after the war — are utterly sombre.
NPR
Showa is literature, illustrated or not, at its finest: a story that sweeps you off your feet only to find, when you return to Earth, that nothing looks quite the same.
Los Angeles Times
Showa is literature, illustrated or not, at its finest: a story that sweeps you off your feet only to find, when you return to Earth, that nothing looks quite the same.
Los Angeles Times
Drawn & Quarterly’s translation of Shigeru Mizuki’s historical epic Showa is perhaps the great achievement in American manga publishing this year…Mizuki’s canny, self-excoriating memoir draws the reader close and into the intimate heart of the 20th century’s worst conflict.
AV Club, Best Comics of 2014
“Utterly compelling . . . [Showa] shows once again why Mizuki is one of the best creators in all of Japan. Highly recommended.”
Manga Bookshelf
About the author
Born 8 March 1922, in Sakaiminato, Tottori, Japan, Shigeru Mizuki is a specialist in the stories of yokai and is considered a master of the genre. He is a member of the Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology. He has travelled to more than sixty countries worldwide to engage in fieldwork on the yokai and spirits of different cultures. He has been published in Japan, South Korea, France, Spain, Taiwan, and Italy. His award-winning works include Kitaro, Nonnonba, and Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths. Mizuki's four-part autobiography and historical portrait Showa: A History of Japan won an Eisner Award in 2015.
