ChurchHatesTucker ☑#MangaMonday 90 “My Picture Diary” by Fujiwara Maki
This is a haunting work of a cancer survivor struggling with raising a small child while married to a husband who is usually emotionally absent and occasionally abusive.
But is it even a #manga? Not in the traditional sense, although this edition (Drawn and Quarterly, print only) did win an Eisner. This is what it says on the tin; a diary, with pictures on the facing pages, of a year (1981) in the life of Fujiwara Maki and her family.
Of particular interest to manga readers is that Fujiwara’s husband was Tsuge Yoshiharu (all names are rendered Given Name last) an important manga creator from the fifties to the eighties. If you don’t know who that is translator Ryan Holmberg has your back, contributing 21 pages of text and pictures that place this diary into context. Learning that Fujiwara had been a major actress in Japan’s avant garde theater scene only makes this domestic story that much more poignant.
