The Hard Stuff, the Weird Stuff: Gekiga & Alternative Manga
Detail from Slum Wolf by Tadao Tsuge.
Originally associated with controversy, taboo-breaking, and radicalism, gekiga traits have since become subsumed into a wide range of manga, leaving the term gegika with more historical significance today than an overall descriptive function.
— Phillip Brophy, "Osamu Tezuka’s Gekiga: Behind the Mask of Manga"
In 1964, editor Katsuichi Nagai and artist Sanpei Shirato founded a new monthly magazine, Garo, as a "showcase and laboratory for creator-driven manga" (Gravett, 2006, p. 42). Garo (which translates to "art gallery") was envisioned as a place for the work of mangaka that did not conform to the strictures of Japan's mainstream manga industry, similar to R. Crumb's underground comix anthology Zap or Art Spiegelman's glossy art-comic magazine Raw.
Much of the work featured in Garo was part of a style of Japanese comic called gekiga, a "realistic, adult-oriented style, which arose out of anti-establishment manga subculture in the late 1950s" (Kinsella, as quoted in Rosenbaum, 2012, p. 261). Gekiga was "different from the period's mainstream comics titles targeted at kids—less simplistic and fanciful, their settings closer to the street and contemporary reality" (Gravett, 2006, p. 38). While in some quarters the term has become a catchall for any works that are violent, explicit or that simply don't fit into the other broad editorial categories of manga, gekiga most accurately refers to realist Japanese comics from the postwar period that are primarily concerned with "mature" themes such as class, politics and interpersonal relationships. It is also sometimes used to refer to avante-garde or experimental manga from the same period—works that would be included under the catchall category of "alternative manga" today.
Slum Wolf
A gritty collection of graphic short stories by a Japanese manga master depicting life on the streets among punks, gangsters, and vagrants. Though virtually unknown in the United States, Tadao Tsuge is one of the original masters of alternative manga, and one of the world's great artists of the down-and-out.
Red Colored Elegy
Ichiro and Sachiko hope for something better, but they're no revolutionaries: their spare time is spent drinking, smoking, daydreaming, and sprawling between the sheets. Red Colored Elegy charts the heartache, passion, and squabbles of a young artist couple struggling to make ends meet.
Talk to My Back
Set in an apartment complex on the outskirts of Tokyo, Talk to My Back explores the fraying of Japan's suburban middle-class dreams through a woman's relationship with her two daughters as they mature and assert their independence, and with her husband, who works late and sees his wife as little more than a domestic servant.
The Push Man and Other Stories
Over four decades ago, Yoshihiro Tatsumi expanded the horizons of comics story-telling by using the visual language of manga to tell gritty, literary short stories about the private lives of everyday people, earning him the title of "grandfather of Japanese alternative comics."
Nejishiki
Originally published in the legendary alt-manga magazine Garo in 1968, the title story marks cult cartoonist Yoshiharu Tsuge's radical turn to dreams, surrealism, and existential horror.
Ding Dong Circus and Other Stories, 1967-1974
Collects the best of Sasaki Maki's work from alt-manga super magazine Garo. Drawn between 1967 and 1974, the fifteen stories within follow Sasaki's unprecedented exploration of collage methods in comics storytelling.
