A Single Match - Recommendations

• Vol: 1; Ch: 11
• 1965 - 1966

Yoshiharu Tsuge is one of the most influential and acclaimed practitioners of literary comics in Japan. The Swamp collects work from his early years, showing a major talent coming in to his own. Bucking the tradition of mystery and adventure stories, Tsuge’s fiction focused on the lives of the citizens of Japan.

• Vol: 1
• 1970 - 1979

Tsurita’s early stories “Nonsense” and “Anti” provide a unique, intimate perspective on the bohemian culture and political heat of late 1960s and early ‘70s Tokyo. Her work gradually became darker and more surreal under the influence of modern French literature and her own prematurely failing health. As in works like “The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud” and “Max,” the gender of many of Tsurita's strong and sensual protagonists is ambiguous, marking an early exploration of gender fluidity. Late stories like "Arctic Cold" and "Flight" show the artist experimenting with more conventional narrative modes, though with dystopian themes that extend the philosophical interests of her early work.

• Vol: 1
• 1957

• Vol: 1; Ch: 13
• 2002

• Vol: 1; Ch: 13
• 2002

• Vol: 1; Ch: 3
• 2004

Enter the strange world of Imiri Sakabashira in which the denizens are zoomorphic creatures that emerge from one another as well as their equally bizarre environs. The Box Man follows its protagonists along a scooter trip through a complex landscape that oscillates between a dense city, a countryside simplified to near abstraction, and hybrids of the two; the theme of hybridity permeates throughout. One is unsurprised to encounter a creature that is half elderly man, half crab or a flying frog in this world where our guide apparent is an anthropomorphic, mollusk-like cat. Sakabashira weaves this absurdist tale in a seamless tapestry constructed of elements as seemingly disparate as Japanese folklore, pop culture, and surrealism. Within these panels, it becomes difficult to distinguish between the animate and the inanimate, the real and the imagined, a tension that adds a layer of complexity to this near-wordless psychedelic travelogue.

• Vol: 1; Ch: 14
• 1965 - 1984

• Vol: 1
• 1967

A nameless traveler comes across a young girl running an inn. While showing the traveler where the best fishing hole is, a bratty schoolmate reveals the girl must run the business because her alcoholic father is incapable. At the story's end, the traveler witnesses an unusual act of kindness from the boy as the girl suffers her first menstrual cramps—and a simple travelogue takes on unexpected depth.

• Vol: 1
• 1956

Two murder suspects are being transported aboard a train when a landslide suddenly occurs, derailing the train and allowing them the chance to escape. But long-time convict Shinpei handcuffs himself to the distraught pianist Susumu, and the fates of the two are bound together. With the police on their tails and the odds against them, what will happen to the unlikely pair?

• Vol: 1
• 1973 - 1974

A captivating portrait of mid-century Japan in its most unglamorous nooks and crannies. Glimpses of the artist reflecting upon his life, his work, and his contemporaries pepper the fictional landscape: a wife teases her husband about a former fling on a trip to the hot springs, a young cartoonist is aghast at the cavalier conduct of his seniors, while imperfect men grapple with the discomfort of their own honesty.