Book Reviews: Soseki Natsume’s Botchan: the manga edition & Akutagawa’s Rashômon and Other Stories

 

reviewed by Liz Brown

Kaori Okura and Makiko Itoh (trans). 2024. Soseki Natsume’s Botchan: the manga edition. Tuttle Publishing. US $14.99 ISBN: 9784805317822. https://www.tuttlepublishing.com/japan/soseki-natsumes-botchan-the-manga-edition-9784805317822

mkdeville and Philippe Nicioux (ills). 2024. Akutagawa’s Rashômon and Other Stories. Tuttle Publishing. US $15.99. ISBN: 9784805318393. https://www.tuttlepublishing.com/japan/akutagawas-rashomon-and-other-stories-9784805318393

Comic adaptations of classics have recently become instrumental tools in literature classrooms for their ability to create and sustain interest in traditional stories, after being used for many years as the equivalent of study guides in lieu of reading the actual book. The Manga Classics imprint was created specifically with classrooms in mind since manga remains one of the most popular comic formats among teens and young adults. Canonical works of literature have been adapted into manga formats, such as Junji Ito’s version of Frankenstein and Osamu Tezuka’s adaptation of Crime and Punishment. However, there is a gap in cultural exchange within comics publishing. Overwhelmingly, it is works from the Western canon that are being developed into comics form- manga and otherwise- leaving classic Eastern tales unadapted or unpublished in the English market. Soseki Natsume’s Botchan: the manga edition begins to fill this gap.

Botchan is one of a series of manga adaptations of the Japanese literary canon into comic format by Tuttle Publishing, including other classics such as Akutagawa’s Rashomon and Other Stories. Works in this series include adaptations by both Japanese and Western artists. They would make a worthwhile inclusion in libraries and reading lists developed for students of literature, especially Japanese literature.

Botchan is a foundational novel in Japanese literature. Written by one of Japan’s preeminent modern novelists and published in 1906, it is a bildungsroman tale of a young man’s everyday experience of family drama and workplace farce during the Meiji Era- when Japan was expanding and opening up to international influence. The eponymous character is frequently compared with Holden Caulfield of The Catcher in the Rye or Huckleberry Finn for his brash, irreverent, yet honest character- clearly flawed but still sympathetic to readers. As a major work of Japanese literature, manga lovers can see Botchan’s pervasive influence within tropes of male characters in contemporary works such as Katsuki Bakugo (My Hero Academia) and Shoyo Hinata (Haikyuu!!) And the novel’s focus on everyday life -- navigating faculty room pettiness and trying to find amusement in a rural town -- carry over into confirming the slice-of-life as a hallmark genre within manga. 

Kaori Okura’s rendition of Botchan is a restrained and faithful adaptation of the novel. She avoids opportunities to play up or exaggerate the embedded humor -- there are no Dr. Slump poop-on-a-stick gags when a character has to fish money out of a toilet and references to the red light district are handled at an arm’s length -- which makes this work an excellent choice for embedding the work in a classroom context. Her drawings depict the mild caricature of the narrator’s playful descriptions of his fellow characters, who are designated by Botchan’s nicknames for them -- “Porcupine,” “Badger,” and “Green Squash” -- rather than their given names. A primary criticism of the novel about the ambiguous relationship between Botchan and his family’s maid, Kiyo, is further complicated in this adaptation because the drawings downplay the age gap between Botchan and Kiyo. The novel establishes at least a twenty-year age difference between the characters while the Okura’s drawings soften Kiyo’s perceived age, in order to make the implications of Botchan and Kiyo’s close relationship more conventionally acceptable.

Akutagawa’s Rashômon is another comic adaptation of the Japanese literary canon, this time from a duo of French comic artists. Rashômon was originally a short story, collected among others by Ryunosuke Akutagawa in 1915. The title is better known for its film version, adapted into cinema by Akira Kurosawa in 1950. The film is not a direct translation of the short stories, melding several of Akutagawa’s narratives together and featuring Kurosawa’s signature artistic flourishes and deviations. This collection attempts to provide a bridge between the two mediums, drawing on the connections that comics have with both the written word and moving picture.

It features four of Akutagawa’s stories. Like the film, the comic unites the stories “Rashômon” and “In a Grove” around the character of Tojômaru, a bandit famously played by actor Toshiro Mifune. The other stories, “Otomi’s Virginity” and “The Martyr,” are standalone. “Otomi’s Virginity” is a tense psychodrama between two characters (and a cat) in an abandoned town. The story is depicted in such a way as to present the narrative as ripe for adaptation into film or live theater. “The Martyr” is a parable about a young monk who suffers after an accusation is flung his way, only to have a surprising twist vindicate him after it is too late. Illustrator Philippe Nicloux’s expressive brushwork manages to convey motion and force, especially in the hand-written sound effects, but without losing texture and detail, such as patterns of the shadow of leaves. Evidence of how he has studied both film and Japanese art forms come through in his work. However, it is also clear that this adaptation represents a cultural exchange that has gone back and forth across Eastern / Western boundaries multiple times, especially in “The Martyr.” Untangling the influences will require a great deal of deliberation. Because of the sexual themes in several of the stories, readers looking to use this comic in the classroom might want to direct it towards upper high school and university classes. 

A version of this review will appear in print in issue 26:1.