"Abandon the Old in Tokyo "continues to delve into the urban underbelly of 1960s
Tokyo, exposing not only the seedy dealings of the Japanese everyman but
Yoshihiro Tatsumi's maturation as a storyteller. Many of the stories deal with
the economic hardships of the time and the strained relationships between men
and women, but do so by means of dark allegorical twists and turns. A young
sewer cleaner's girlfriend has a miscarriage and leaves him when he proves
incapable of finding higher-paying work. When a factory worker loses his hand on
the job, the parallels between him and his pet monkey prove startling and
significant.