The Walking Man by Jiro Taniguchi (1992). Fanfare/Potent Mon, 2004. 155 p. $16.99US.
I was going to write a post about a few “nouvelle manga” books from Fanfare/Potent Mon, but this one stood out so much from the others that it deserved its own review. Jiro Taniguchi is associated with the nouvelle manga (more on that in a separate post) but I am not sure what the exact association is. Certainly, his work predates the concept. This translation is published under the publisher’s Nouvelle Manga series though.
I just got back from a walk to the post office down the street. As I walked, thinking about this book, I realized I hadn’t really looked at my new neighborhood (been here about a month now). I’ve walked the streets and I’ve been to different buildings, but I’ve not really looked around me.
The Walking Man is for the most part about walking and looking. The main character, who remains nameless throughout the 18 vignettes contained in the book, is a youngish married Japanese man who in the first story has just moved into a new house in a new town (subtly conveyed by a few boxes in the background and the way he is surprised to see a bird that a bird watcher tells him is the most common bird in the area). The man must have some kind of job–we see him dressed in his suit, carrying a briefcase, coming home–but there is never any indication of what he does. The book solely focuses on his walks, often beginning or ending at his house.
In one sense, “nothing” really happens in this book: he walks, he looks, he reads, he exchanges a few words, he takes a bath, it rains, he buys cake or a paper balloon, he walks his dog, he helps a group of boys retrieve their model airplane from a tree. On the other hand, the world happens in this book: plants, weather, animals, people. In an age where zooming from one place to another is de rigeur, the simple act of walking and looking becomes almost revolutionary. Taniguchi skillfully takes us along with the “walking man” and makes us look at his surroundings. Maybe next time we won’t have to be lead along.
The walking man seems endlessly curious, observative, and kind. His dog uncovers a seashell in the backyard, and he no sooner goes to the library to look up the shell. He gets off a bus early after spotting a tree covered hill at the end of a small cross street, then climbs the hill to its top. He helps an old lady find her way and squeezes through the narrowest alley I’ve ever seen (he has to turn sideways). Throughout he is looking and smiling and appreciating the world. Very few words are exchanged in the book. Other than with his wife, he rarely says more than a word or two to people. When engaged in conversation he lets the other person do the talking. He listens.
The artwork is in a realist manga style. It is quite reminiscent of Katsuhiro Otomo’s artwork (perhaps Taniguchi was an influence or there is some other mutual influence in manga history). Backgrounds are quite detailed, while characters are slightly more cartoony with large chins and eyes somewhere between the “big eyed” manga style and the small eyed American style.
The realist backgrounds are a great strength in this book. While the story made me think a bit of John Porcellino’s comics, with the interest in looking, nature, and discovery, the backgrounds made a great difference. When Taniguchi shows his characters interested in something we see that something in amazing detail, in Porcellino’s case the art does not allow that sense of looking. On the other hand Porcellino’s work also uses more narration which conveys attitude, emotion, thoughts. Taniguchi makes us guess the walking man’s attitudes and thoughts and gives us only his wonder and curiosity with the world. It is much more about the looking. Numerous scenes are set up with a panel of the man looking and then a panel of the thing he is looking at. This is particular prevalent in the earlier parts of the book, as if Taniguchi is teaching us to look with the character.
The pages are organized in what Peeters would call the rhetorical style: tall panels are used for trees, wide panels for scenic vistas, smaller wider panels for the man’s head looking off panel at something, single panel pages for slowed down moments that last forever (he takes a hot bath after being stuck in the cold rain in two single panel pages). The organization is mostly invisible because it is so integrated into the story.
One thing that I’d love to know is how the pages were flipped for the left-to-right reading in this book. Flipped or “original” format for manga is a big issue, as I understand, in the translated manga world. There are a few ways to do this that I am aware of: one being to just flip the whole page, so it is a mirror image of the original (causing some problems such as a high percentage of left-handed characters); the other being to take the page apart by panels and recreate it going the opposite direction. This would preserve things like handedness but also destroys elements of the layout.
I started questioning this because of a few scenes’, some excellent some poor, panel layout. One excellent example is a set of four panels on page 17 (when I have scanner access again I’ll try to scan it) that are smoothly integrated with each other. In the first panel is a curving road and guard rail along the bridge where the man and his dog are walking. The top end of the curve leads off the right side of the panel to the next panel where the line is continued by the guardrail at a different angle that curves into the walking man as he looks down at a mosiac in the street. The bottom curve of the road in the first panel leads down to the third panel in the group. The road line becomes the one end of the mosaic in close-up. This line of the road/edge of the mosaic moves into the fourth panel (to the right of the mosaic panel) and becomes the shoreline of the river below the bridge where we see a bird taking off. Words do not do the smooth layout justice.
On the other hand there are numerous scenes where the man’s walking and gaze go off in the complete opposite direction from the next panel where we see his continued walk or the object of his gaze. It looks backwards and awkward, making me wonder if something with the flipping (or lack of flipping) broke-up the layout. (I wonder how much Taniguchi was involved in the process, I understand D+Q’s forthcoming manga book “The Push Man”‘s flipping was done under the supervisor of the artist.)
An example that really put the whole thing in question is on page 57. The man is walking after a storm and comes upon a car that has had a tree and (because of the tree one assumes) a wooden fence blown over onto it. In the first panel the tree and fence are leaning against the left side of the car. In the second panel we see the man crawling around the left side of the car, except it is clear in this panel the tree is coming from the right side of the car. Two panels later he is crawling out from along the right side of the car. Either the artist messed this up in the original or there is a problem with the flipping. Can I know the answer? Not without seeing an unflipped version, but it does make me rethink my opinion of flipping manga and puts me more firmly in the con side unless the artist is involved (which seems like a good way to avoid trouble).
But those are only minor problems. This is an excellent work, one I will gladly place on my shelf with Phoenix, Buddha, and Nausicaa. I’m looking forward to more works from Taniguchi (the publisher is also bringing out his Time of Botchan collaboration) and more translations from Fanfare/Ponent Mon.
[The publisher's page, linked above, has a few sample pages.]