Manga Bookshelf review of Tono Monogatari

Tono Monogatari | By Shigeru Mizuki | Drawn & Quarterly – In 1910, folklorist Kunio Yanagita published Tono Monogatari, a collection of legends from Japan’s Tono region as conveyed to him by a local storyteller, Kizen Sasaki. Nearly a hundred years later, many of the stories found in this pivotal work were adapted as short manga by Shigeru Mizuki. A folklorist in his own right, there couldn’t have been a more perfect match between creator and subject matter—Mizuki’s love for these supernatural tales and their place of origin is readily apparent from his pages. Similarly, another scholar of Japanese folklore, Zack Davisson, has now translated Mizuki’s Tono Monogatari into English, writing additional supplementary material and essays to accompany it. The volume is a treasure. Mizuki’s beautifully detailed landscapes establish Tono as the real place that it is even while the stories themselves focus on the uncanny. Reaching through time, the chilling tales are often short fragments, but effective in their brevity. – Ash Brown