“Taut and cinematic”: Abandon the Old in Tokyo and Good-Bye

I never knew comics could attain the power of great literature until I came upon the work of Yoshihiro Tatsumi. The Japanese artist pioneered a realistic, socially conscious style of manga, called gekiga, in the 1960s and ’70s. His two collections, “Abandon the Old in Tokyo” and “Good-Bye,” often explore the inner crisis of working-class men amid Japan’s postwar economic boom. Taut and cinematic, Tatsumi’s stories are about things people don’t want to admit to themselves, yet you can’t look away. – Jingnan Peng, multimedia producer