A review by 600bars
Fallen Words by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
4.0
After my disappointing experience reading the Push Man, I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue reading the other Yoshihoro Tatsumi book I had on hold. But I figured it is in my possession and it is not going to take very long to read so I might as well. This is very very different from Push Man. It’s an attempt to do Rakugo in graphic novel format. Rakugo is an Edo period storytelling method that seems similar to stand up comedy where someone is kneeling in the middle of the room and tells a comedic story. These stories have been passed down orally since the 1600s but I thought they translated very well to this format. The Push Man had been reversed so that it read the same direction as a normal western book, and they had to rearrange all the panels and change so much. For this volume they trusted the audience enough to be able to read it the Japanese way. Most of the stories feature a poor man pretending to be rich or hoping for a lucky windfall or deceiving someone etc. Similar to the Push Man, many of the men are deadbeat alcoholics, and often have nagging wives, and many of the women are sex workers (Oiran). But it doesn’t have the viciousness and hatred of the Push Man. My favorite story was the one about the painting where the birds come to life, but then on the last page I realized the entire thing was a set up for an elaborate pun! Many of the stories end abruptly before it seems like a moral or lesson is about to be imparted, but after I read the bird story I realized that probably all of these are set-ups for a punchline. The joke is just lost either to translation or I do not understand the context from the 1600s. I am sure these killed with Edo audiences. Some I could still get a little bit of the humor, like the irony of the Grim Reaper story that ends with the dude sneezing on the candle that will extend his life.
The story about the annoying child made me sad… what a sad downward spiral where you don’t like your kid because you accidentally raised him to be a brat who always gets what he wants but then you like him less and then he behaves worse because he feels the lack of love and so on and so forth… The shopkeepers had no tact!! At my job we have stuffed animals for sale in the kids section and parents get mad when their kids want the stuffed animals instead of books. To avoid meltdowns, they’ll say things like “These aren’t for sale, this is only for display”. I’ve entertained the thought of what if I had no social intuition and I went up to the poor parent trying to avoid a temper tantrum and said “These are totally for sale!”. These shopkeepers kept doing exactly that and I can’t tell if they had no social understanding or were just being a dick to get the sale.
Though I’m sure I missed a large portion of the jokes and meanings of these stories, there was still enough that is the same today for me to enjoy the tales of luck, fortune, and difficult customers.
The story about the annoying child made me sad… what a sad downward spiral where you don’t like your kid because you accidentally raised him to be a brat who always gets what he wants but then you like him less and then he behaves worse because he feels the lack of love and so on and so forth… The shopkeepers had no tact!! At my job we have stuffed animals for sale in the kids section and parents get mad when their kids want the stuffed animals instead of books. To avoid meltdowns, they’ll say things like “These aren’t for sale, this is only for display”. I’ve entertained the thought of what if I had no social intuition and I went up to the poor parent trying to avoid a temper tantrum and said “These are totally for sale!”. These shopkeepers kept doing exactly that and I can’t tell if they had no social understanding or were just being a dick to get the sale.
Though I’m sure I missed a large portion of the jokes and meanings of these stories, there was still enough that is the same today for me to enjoy the tales of luck, fortune, and difficult customers.