#MangaMonday 77 “Red Snow” by Susumu Katsumata

A young boy teases a prostitute’s daughter. An itinerant blind musician travels with the bastard daughter of a vengeful spirit. A brewer’s apprentice steals some yeast.

While Katsumata drew from his life in rural Japan in the 1940s/50s to create these stories, they’re almost outside of time. There’s little evidence of modernity, and creatures of legend are accepted as part of life. There’s an obvious affection for these people, and compassion for their often harsh lives. Sex, assault, and the ambiguous ground between them are frequent topics.

These stories were originally published in the seventies. This #manga collection was published by Drawn & Quarterly in 2009, four years after the Japanese edition and three years after Katsumata’s death. The art has been flipped so it reads left-to-right, but the few signs and un-anglicized sound effects have been redrawn so they read correctly.

#RedSnow