Drawn in 1971 and 1972, these stories expand Yoshihiro Tatsumi's prolific
artist's vocabulary for characters contextualized by themes of depravity and
disorientation in twentieth-century Japan.
Some of the tales focus on the devastation the country felt as a result of World
War II: in one story a man devotes twenty years to preserving the memory of
those killed at Hiroshima, only to discover a horrible misconception at the
heart of his tribute. Yet, while American influence does play a role in the
disturbing and bizarre stories contained within this volume, as always it is
Tatsumi's characters that bear his hallmark, muddling through isolated despair
and fleeting pleasure