XPost: rec.arts.anime.misc   
   From: bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com   
      
        Showa:1944-1953 A history of Japan by Shigero Mizuki   
   Volume 3 - Another 530 pages of Mizuki's sensei masterwork.   
        This covers the horrors of the end of the war as Japan's   
   military machine is battered into uselessness.  The folks at   
   home are starving and so are the men in the field.   
        Shigero comes down with malaria which is seen by the   
   officers as an attempt to evade duty and he is mercilessly punished   
   for being ill and for surviving.  He is sent for water and his group   
   are annihilated, but he survived so he must be a coward in the   
   estimation of the Bushido inspired Officer Corps.   
        Hi right arm becomes infected and is amputated in the field   
   by friendly medico, He makes friends with aborigines against the   
   express orders regarding fraternization with the native.   
        After endless horrendous action with the reduction of the   
   Japanese fleet and the Conquest of Okinawa, the adoption of the   
   Kamikaze expedient.  The civilian members of the Government   
   and the Emperor are pleading to make peace but Tojo swears he   
   can recover the initiative.   
        Then the bombs fall and the previous objections of the   
   militarists are pushed aside.   
        It takes us thru the struggle of Shigero after the war amid   
   the black market and schemes to get enough money and food to   
   eat.  He has more operations on his arm and goes to school to learn   
   to draw with his remaining arm.   
        The Korean War starts and Japan profits.  Things get a bit   
   better.   
        He becomes a Kamishibai artist drawing panels for a   
   performer who narrates the action and moves the panels but   
   toward the end of the volume that entertainment form is losing   
   popularity.  He has created the characters that will later come to   
   populate his manga and the anime made from them.   
        In 1953 with his art tools and a few rice balls he moves to   
   Tokyo and the beginning of his career as a mangaka.   
      
      
        I borrowed the volume from the San Francisco Public Library,   
   about 9:50 AM and started reading it on the Streetcar then later on   
   the bus and I got home and started reading it again.   
        So it made me laugh and it made me cry.  If I had the space   
   I would live on cheap food for some months and buy every one of   
   these volumes.   
        Thank you Shigeo Mizuki and thank you Drawn and Quarterly   
   for publishing this great work.   
        I hope that I get to read Volume 4 of this series.   
      
        bliss   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)