View source for Abandon the Old in Tokyo

{{Short description|Collection of gekiga short stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi}}
{{Infobox animanga/Header
| name            = Abandon the Old in Tokyo
| image           = Abandon the Old in Tokyo cover.jpg
| caption         = The cover of the paperback edition of ''Abandon the Old in Tokyo'', showing a panel from "The Washer"
| alt             = A woman's flushed face is shown upside-down, with a speech bubble in Japanese indicating screaming
| ja_kanji        = 東京うばすて山
| ja_romaji       = Tōkyō Ubasuteyama
| genre           = [[Slice of life]]<ref name="Otaku USA"/><!-- Note: Use and cite reliable sources to identify genre/s, not personal interpretation. Please don't include more than three genres (per [[MOS:A&M]]). -->
}}
{{Infobox animanga/Print
| type            = manga
| author          = [[Yoshihiro Tatsumi]]
| publisher       =
| publisher_en    =  [[Drawn & Quarterly]]
| demographic     =
| magazine        = {{flatlist|
* ''[[Weekly Shōnen Magazine]]''
* ''[[Garo (magazine)|Garo]]''
}}
| published       = August 1, 2006
| volumes         = 1
}}
{{Infobox animanga/Footer}}
{{nihongo|'''''Abandon the Old in Tokyo'''''|東京うばすて山|Tōkyō Ubasuteyama}} is a collection of {{transl|ja|[[gekiga]]}} short stories by [[manga]] artist [[Yoshihiro Tatsumi]]. It collects eight stories by Tatsumi from 1970, which were serialized in various manga magazines including ''[[Weekly Shōnen Magazine]]'' and ''[[Garo (magazine)|Garo]]'', and was published by [[Drawn & Quarterly]] on August 1, 2006.
The manga won the 2007 [[Harvey Award]] for Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material, sharing it with the first volume of [[Tove Jansson]]'s ''[[Moomin comic strips|Moomin]]''. It was also nominated for the 2007 [[Eisner Award]] for Best Archival Collection/Project – Comic Books.
== Plot ==
;{{nihongo|"Occupied"|はいってます|Haittemasu}}
:An ailing author of children's manga finds out that his serial is being cancelled. Feeling sick after eating, he throws up on the wall of a bathroom stall and finds offensive graffiti. He finds himself unable to forget about the graffiti. Inspired after receiving an offer to draw for an adult magazine, he rushes to the bathroom and draws a nude woman. However, as he had entered the woman's bathroom instead, a woman sees him and calls for help.
;{{nihongo|"Abandon the Old in Tokyo"|東京うばすて山|Tōkyō Ubasuteyama}}
:Kenichi Nakamura, a garbage hauler, takes care of his bedridden and guilt-inducing mother. Because his fiancee wants to see his apartment the next time they are together, Kenichi finds a separate apartment for his mother. He takes his fiancee on a trip but abandons her in the train, returning to his mother's apartment only to find that she overdosed using [[Brovarin]].
;{{nihongo|"The Washer"|洗い屋|Arai-ya}}
:A [[window cleaner]] observes a company president's affair with his secretary, who is the cleaner's daughter Ruriko. When he sees her throwing up in their house, he strips her and forces her to shower while scrubbing her, causing her to move out. While cleaning again, he watches her have stomach pains. He is next shown watching a new affair by the president while carrying a baby on his back.
;{{nihongo|"Beloved Monkey"|いとしのモンキー|Itoshii no Monkī}}
:A factory worker, who keeps a pet monkey, is forced off a packed train at the wrong stop. He visits the [[Ueno Zoo]], where the monkeys get agitated at him. One day, in a fit of anger, he writes a resignation letter. However, as he is about to hand it in, he loses his arm in a machine. He releases his monkey in the zoo, but it is killed by the other monkeys. Because of his arm, he is unable to find employment. As a crowd approaches him at a street crossing, he runs away in fear.
;"Unpaid"
:The president of the failed Yamanuki Inc. still shows up to its abandoned office, where he is hounded by debt collectors. After seeing a flyer, he visits a dog appreciation club and has sex with one. At a creditors' meeting, he is unable to recognize any of the men and his ¥7&nbsp;million [[Collateral (finance)|collateral note]] blows out of the window.
;{{nihongo|"The Hole"|あな|Ana}}
:A lost hiker asks for directions from a woman at a hut. However, she leads him to fall into a trap and the woman refuses to let him out. His wife comes searching for him and discovers that the woman suffers deformities from failed cosmetic surgery. When his girlfriend finds him, she wants him to tear up his divorce notification, but leaves when he agrees too readily. The next day it rains heavily and the man drowns.
;{{nihongo|"Forked Road"|わかれみち|Wakaremichi}}
:Ken drinks too much at his friend Yoshio's bar, so he is put to sleep upstairs. He reminisces on his childhood, including a traumatizing experience where he walked in on Yoshio's mother having sex.
;{{nihongo|"Eel"|うなぎ|Unagi}}
:A sewer cleaner's wife has a miscarriage. Discontent, his wife leaves him to return to work as a [[Host and hostess clubs|hostess]]. He takes a pair of eels from the sewer, grilling and eating one of them, but releases the other back into the sewer.
==Production==
According to Tatsumi, the stories "marked a breakthrough and rekindled [his] passion in {{transl|ja|gekiga}}".<ref name="tatsumi-197">{{cite book|last1=Tatsumi|first1=Yoshihiro|title=Abandon the Old in Tokyo|url=https://archive.org/details/abandonoldintoky00yosh|url-access=registration|date=August 1, 2006|publisher=Drawn & Quarterly|isbn=978-1-77046-077-5|page=[https://archive.org/details/abandonoldintoky00yosh/page/197 197]}}</ref> His approach was to use a "bleak story" {{transl|ja|[[gekiga]]}} style without the gags and humor in the mainstream manga.<ref name="tatsumi-197"/> However, due to his background drawing [[Yonkoma|4-panel]] and 1-panel humor manga, his works still used straight humor.<ref name="tatsumi-198">Tatsumi, p. 198</ref> Tatsumi wanted to depict postwar Japan, where he felt that the [[Japanese post-war economic miracle|focus on economic growth]] was given precedence over the lifestyles of its people.<ref name="tatsumi-198"/> Regarding his archetypical character, he used him to "[project his] anger about the discrimination and inequality rampant in our society".<ref name="tatsumi-198"/> The idea for the story "Unpaid" came from a "trashy magazine" he had read.<ref name="tatsumi-197"/>
== Release ==
The collection consists of stories by Tatsumi published around 1970. Tatsumi wrote "Abandon the Old in Tokyo" and "Beloved Monkey" for ''[[Weekly Shōnen Magazine]]''; "The Hole", "Forked Road", and "Occupied" for the [[alternative manga]] magazine ''[[Garo (magazine)|Garo]]''; and "Unpaid" for a "cheap adult magazine".<ref name="tatsumi-197"/> [[Drawn &  Quarterly]] collected the stories, with cartoonist [[Adrian Tomine]] as designer and editor, and published it on August 1, 2006.<ref name="Publishers Weekly"/> The stories "Beloved Monkey"—which director [[Eric Khoo]] felt was too similar to "Abandon the Old in Tokyo"—and "Occupied" were included as segments in ''[[Tatsumi (film)|Tatsumi]]'', the 2011 film adaptation of Tatsumi's ''[[A Drifting Life]]''.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Gravett|first1=Paul|title=Yoshihiro Tatsumi: The Man, The Manga, The Movie|url=http://www.paulgravett.com/articles/article/yoshihirotatsumi|website=Paul Gravett|accessdate=30 January 2016}}</ref>
== Themes ==
Scholars have drawn parallels between the story "Abandon the Old in Tokyo" and the [[Ubasute]] folk tale about the elderly being left to die on a mountain. An essay in ''Mangatopia'' calls it a projection of "the modern problem of caring for aged parents" onto the Ubasute tale and notes the usage of "aspect-to-aspect transition" effects in the story, such as the one showing a garbage dump, which "emphasizes outrage and regret over the throw-away mentality of modern society".<ref name="Mangatopia">{{cite book|editor1-last=Perper|editor1-first=Timothy|editor2-last=Cornog|editor2-first=Martha|last1=Shamoon|first1=Deborah|title=Mangatopia: Essays on Manga and Anime in the Modern World|chapter=Films on paper: cinematic narrative in Gekiga|date=2011|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=9781591589099|page=29|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VOYk_PtqMjQC&q=%22Abandon+the+Old+in+Tokyo%22&pg=PA29}} ([https://www.academia.edu/10380534/_Films_on_Paper_Cinematic_Narrative_in_Gekiga._ academia.edu])</ref> According to the author, these transitions provide visual variety for a story that would otherwise be talking heads.<ref name="Mangatopia"/> In ''Aging and Loss'', Jason Danely remarks that the story "presents the dull, drudging work of elder care as hopeless; whether in life or death, Kenichi's mother will continue to haunt"; also relating cases of abuse due to [[caregiver stress|caregiver exhaustion]], concluding that the story visualizes the "intently affective, visual, and visceral context of abandonment".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Danely|first1=Jason|title=Aging and Loss: Mourning and Maturity in Contemporary Japan|date=2015|publisher=Rutgers University Press|location=Abandon the Old in Tokyo|isbn=9780813572697|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JbjQBQAAQBAJ&q=%22Abandon+the+Old+in+Tokyo%22&pg=PT157}}</ref>
Tom Gill of the Hooded Utilitarian finds connections between various stories by Tatsumi: likening "Eel" to the story "Sewer" from ''[[The Push Man and Other Stories]]'' as well as [[Yoshiharu Tsuge]]'s "Sanshōuo" ({{lang|ja|[[:ja:山椒魚 (漫画)|山椒魚]]}}; "Salamander")—each dealing with abandonments in sewers—saying that fetuses are "casually discarded by a dehumanized society" and that "unborn babies, like old people in the title story of ''Abandon the Old in Tokyo'', will be discarded if not needed". He views both the utterance of his daughter's name by the protagonist at the end of "The Washer" and the scream at a disco by the protagonist of "Sewer" as signals of "an emotional breaking-point". He also notes misanthropy by the protagonists, but sympathy for animals such as the protagonist keeping a pet monkey in "Beloved Monkey" or the man having sex with a dog in "Unpaid".<ref name="gill">{{cite web|last1=Gill|first1=Tom|title=Fetuses in the Sewer|website=The Hooded Utilitarian|date=15 March 2011 |url=http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2011/03/fetuses-in-the-sewer-2/|accessdate=30 January 2016}}</ref> Gill concludes that the key themes of Tatsumi are:
{{quote|Sexual humiliation, often accompanied by economic inadequacy, so that a woman cannot be satisfied either sexually or materially; lowly occupations that involve cleaning up the mess created by mainstream society (sewer worker, incinerator, window cleaner); and a visceral disgust about the biological processes of sex and reproduction that parallels a disgust about the inhumanity of modern urban mass society&nbsp;– often shading into downright misanthropy, with a corresponding sympathy for animals.<ref name="gill"/>}}
== Reception ==
Joseph Luster of ''[[Otaku USA]]'' said that Tatsumi's art style and character designs reinforce the stories and that they linger in the reader's mind long after being read.<ref name="Otaku USA">{{cite web|last1=Luster|first1=Joseph|title=Abandon the Old in Tokyo|url=http://www.otakuusamagazine.com/Manga/News1/Abandon_the_Old_in_Tokyo_1106.aspx|website=Otaku USA|date=10 June 2008|accessdate=6 April 2016}}</ref> Carlo Santos of [[Anime News Network]] found "greater depth and variety" than in ''The Push Man and Other Stories'' due to the larger number of pages available, complimenting their simple layouts and executions, but disliked the endings as well as the repetitive character designs.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Santos|first1=Carlo|title=Right Turn Only!! - Freshly Baked|url=http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/right-turn-only/2006-08-22|website=Anime News Network|accessdate=6 April 2016}}</ref> Greg McElhatton of Read About Comics praised Tatsumi's characterization and found the stories to be memorable, but found fault in the same look of the characters.<ref>{{cite web|last1=McElhatton|first1=Greg|title=Abandon the Old in Tokyo|url=http://www.readaboutcomics.com/2008/06/23/abandon-the-old-in-tokyo/|website=Read About Comics|date=23 June 2008 |accessdate=15 January 2016}}</ref> In a starred review, ''[[Publishers Weekly]]'' called the stories "a bit more ambitious and sure-footed" than those in ''The Push Man and Other Stories''.<ref name="Publishers Weekly">{{cite web|title=Abandon the Old in Tokyo|url=http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-894937-87-0|website=Publishers Weekly|accessdate=10 January 2016}}</ref> Daryl Surat of the Anime World Order podcast felt that the longer stories in the manga allowed for more development than Tatsumi's earlier stories.<ref>{{cite podcast| url=http://www.awopodcast.com/2007/01/anime-world-order-show-45-this-episode.html| title=This Episode Contains More Dead Babies Than Usual| website=Anime World Order| host=Daryl Surat| time=54:42 | access-date=14 January 2016}}</ref> Ng Suat Tong of The Hooded Utilitarian was critical of Tatsumi—feeling that the stories marked his transition into a rigorous artist, but disliking his repetitive themes and characters, concluding: "These tales are neither close enough, true enough, sad enough nor vile enough to shock us from our modern stupor".<ref>{{cite web|last1=Tong|first1=Ng Suat|title=Reconsidering Tatsumi|url=http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2011/02/reconsidering-tatsumi/|website=The Hooded Utilitarian|date=21 February 2011 |accessdate=15 January 2016}}</ref> In ''[[Manga: The Complete Guide]]'', [[Jason Thompson (writer)|Jason Thompson]] did not find the collection as powerful as ''The Push Man and Other Stories'', but remarked that "Tatsumi is a great storyteller and his pessimism is profound."<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |title=Abandon the old in Tokyo|encyclopedia=Manga: The Complete Guide|edition=Unabridged|date=3 July 2012|publisher=Random House Publishing Group|isbn=9780345539441|url={{Google books |GvEFDD4rdWMC|page=PT58|plainurl=yes}}}}</ref> Dan Polley of Manga Life noted a departure by Tatsumi from his previous stories in ''The Push Man and Other Stories'' and called the stories "Abandon the Old in Tokyo" and "Beloved Monkey" the "shining stars of the volume", concluding that his stories are timeless and have substance.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Polley|first1=Dan|title=Abandon The Old In Tokyo|url=http://www.mangalife.com/reviews/AbandonTheOldInTokyo.htm|website=Manga Life|accessdate=29 March 2016|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20091006225902/http://www.mangalife.com/reviews/AbandonTheOldInTokyo.htm|archivedate=6 October 2009|url-status=dead}}</ref> Richard Rayner of the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' described the manga as "remarkable, amazing", adding that "the style is spare, elliptical and it's sometimes necessary to read two or three times to appreciate the full nightmarish power".<ref>{{cite web|last1=Rayner|first1=Richard|title=Opposites attract|url=http://articles.latimes.com/2006/oct/15/books/bk-rayner15/2|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150919155249/http://articles.latimes.com/2006/oct/15/books/bk-rayner15/2|url-status=dead|archive-date=September 19, 2015|website=[[Los Angeles Times]]|accessdate=15 January 2016}}</ref> Austin Ramzy of ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine noted that the manga remains relevant, calling it "a revealing time capsule and a strangely moving portrait of survival in a land where everything is changing".<ref>{{cite magazine|last1=Ramzy|first1=Austin|title=What's Unavoidable, Unmissable and Uncovered This Fall|url=https://www.drawnandquarterly.com/press/2006/09/abandon-old-tokyo-reviewed-time-magazine|magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]|accessdate=15 January 2016 |via=[[Drawn & Quarterly]]}}</ref> ''[[Kirkus Reviews]]'' felt that the strong illustrations made the manga relatable and that it did not feel dated.<ref>{{cite web|title=Abandon the Old in Tokyo|url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/yoshihiro-tatsumi/abandon-the-old-in-tokyo/|website=Kirkus Reviews|accessdate=5 April 2016}}</ref> Gordon Flagg of ''[[Booklist]]'' said that Tatsumi's "powerful drawing style depicts the characters with a starkness and simplicity that matches what is presented of their lives and conjures a convincing urban milieu through detailed backdrops".<ref>{{cite web|last1=Flagg|first1=Gordon|title=Abandon the Old in Tokyo|url=https://www.drawnandquarterly.com/press/2006/09/abandon-old-tokyo-reviewed-booklist|website=Booklist|accessdate=15 January 2016}}</ref>
The manga won the 2007 [[Harvey Award]] for Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material, sharing it with the first volume of [[Tove Jansson]]'s ''[[Moomin comic strips|Moomin]]''.<ref>{{cite web|title=Abandon the Old in Tokyo Manga Wins Harvey Award|url=http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-09-11/abandon-the-old-in-tokyo-manga-wins-harvey-award|website=Anime News Network|accessdate=8 January 2016}}</ref> It was also nominated for the 2007 [[Eisner Award]] for Best Archival Collection/Project – Comic Books.<ref>{{cite web|title=Your 2007 Eisner Award Nominees|url=http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/your_2007_eisner_award_nominees/|website=The Comics Reporter|accessdate=8 January 2016}}</ref> ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' listed the manga, along with Tatsumi's ''The Push Man and Other Stories'', as second place in its Top 10 Comics of 2006.<ref>{{cite magazine|last1=Arnold|first1=Andrew D.|title=Top 10 Everything 2006 {{!}} Comics|url=https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2011254_2015325_2015316,00.html|magazine=Time|date=20 December 2006|access-date=14 May 2016}}</ref>
== References ==
{{reflist}}
==External links==
* {{ann|manga|7025|noparen=true}}
{{Yoshihiro Tatsumi}}
[[Category:Manga anthologies]]
[[Category:Drawn & Quarterly titles]]
[[Category:1970 manga]]
[[Category:Harvey Award winners]]
[[Category:Slice of life anime and manga]]
[[Category:Yoshihiro Tatsumi]]
[[Category:Gekiga]]