Manabeshima Island Japan

Manabeshima Island Japan is a graphic novel that depicts the colorful and entertaining picture of a particular place and time in Japan, focusing on the local island inhabitants who form the heart of the story. The author's sensitive drawings and insightful captions create instant portraits of incredible literary depth, and the cast of characters includes Ikkyu-san, Nakamura family, Shimura-san, Kurata-san, Reizo-san, Rock the Neanderthal fisherman, and a chorus of grandmothers and cats.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 144 pages
Publication date: 24 August 2023
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

More than just a Japan travel guide, Manabeshima Island Japan vividly portrays a specific place and time in Japan. Artist Florent Chavouet had only visited two of Japan's thousands of sacred, artificial, industrial, resort, wild, and exploding islands before this graphic novel. This story is about one summer when he decides to get to know one more—the tiny island of Manabeshima. This speck of dirt in the Inland Sea, off the coast of Osaka, has a total population of 300, and he sets himself the task of recording everything and everyone he meets there in quirky detail on the pages of his sketchbook.

While Chavouet's other best-selling book, Tokyo on Foot, focuses on the physical city, it is the local island inhabitants who form the heart of this new book. Chavouet's sensitive drawings and insightful captions create instant portraits of incredible literary depth. The cast of characters lovingly depicted includes Ikkyu-san, owner of the island's only bar (and the bar's three regulars: skinny guy, Day-Glo cap guy, and greasy-haired guy); the young Nakamura family and their five kids; the layabout Shimura-san, a living relic from the hippie 1970s; Kurata-san, the policeman; Reizo-san, the island intellectual in his elegant Meiji-era home; Rock, the Neanderthal fisherman; and a chorus of assorted grandmothers and cats—all of whom welcome Chavouet into their community as a kindred soul.

Against a backdrop of fireworks, summer festivals, fishing expeditions, and the constant hum of cicadas, Chavouet depicts these characters so vividly and sympathetically and describes their rustic way of life in such simple and appealing terms that we find it as hard to finish the book as Chavou.

Weight: 510g
Dimension: 254 x 191 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780804857215