The Swamp - Hardcover

by Yoshiharu Tsuge (Author), Ryan Holmberg (Translator), Mitsuhiro Asakawa (Editor)

The essential early work by the modern master of Japanese literary comics

Yoshiharu Tsuge is one of the most influential and acclaimed practitioners of literary comics in Japan. The Swamp collects work from his early years, showing a major talent coming into his own. Bucking the tradition of mystery and adventure stories, Tsuge's fiction focused on the lives of the citizens of Japan. These mesmerizing comics, like those of his contemporary Yoshihiro Tatsumi, reveal a gritty, at times desperate postwar Japan, while displaying Tsuge's unique sense of humor and point of view.

Author Biography

Yoshiharu Tsuge was born in Tokyo in 1937. Influenced by the realistic and gritty rental manga of Yoshihiro Tatsumi, he began making his own comics. He was also recruited to assist Shigeru Mizuki during his explosion of popularity in the 1960s. In 1968, working for Garo magazine, Tsuge published the ground-breaking story "Neji-shiki", which established him as an influential manga-ka and a cultural touchstone in the changing Japanese art world. He is considered the originator and greatest practitioner of the "I-novel" method of comics-making. In 2005, Tsuge was nominated for the Best Album Award at the Angouleme Comics Festival and in 2017 he won the Japan Cartoonists Association Grand Award.