"Hallelujah, I'm a Bum!" - a Review of Disappearance Diary by Hideo Azuma

Disappearance Diary
Hideo Azuma
English edition, Ponent Mon S.L.
October, 2008


I wouldn't have thought myself to purchase a manga. Since the big anime/manga boom around the turn of the century turned off the quality filters and inundated our poor bookstores with crap, I've steered clear of the manga section and stuck with my old school tankoubans from the 80s and 90s. When selecting this week's review item, I had a few non-manga choices in my hand, all cheaper than the copy of Disappearance Diary by one Hideo Azuma sitting on the fronted display shelf. Like a man possessed by a demon with low standards, I picked Disappearance Diary up and paged through it. I liked the art--simple but not simplistic. Expressive without being overbearing. I've always been impressed with how some manga artists can convey more wealth of emotion in a single stroke than many American artists could in a flurry of over-detailed pen. But I'm on a budget. $22.95 was more than I wanted to pay that week. But I did have that $25 gift card. But...but... but...it's cheaper online...but...but...

Oh hell!

And so I brought home Disappearance Diary by Hideo Azuma, the English edition published by Ponent Mon S.L.

I'm not displeased.

I think I've seen Azuma's work before, but didn't recognize the name back then. He was something of a popular mangaka (manga artist) in the 70s and 80s, winning several awards for his work and often working on half a dozen stories each month. He was never as popular as folk like Mitsuru Adachi or Rumiko Takahashi, but he was a known name just the same.

Anyone who knows how manga artists roll know that they roll like squirrels on crystal-meth. They work a frantic pace, often producing over 16 pages of work a day with editors camped out at their front door insisting on changes and generally making life miserable. That was enough for Azuma to ditch family, friends, and his career in 1989, run away, and become homeless. That's the first part of Disappearance Diary--Azuma's life living in a small city near a forest, taking food from trash cans, drinking the dregs from sake bottles, picking up cigarette butts off the street, and nearly freezing to death while sleeping under a plastic sheet deep in the woods.

This sounds like it'd be a real bummer read, neh? Yeah. But it's not really. Azuma did something kind of subversive in Disappearance Diary in that rather than depict the horrible realism of his situation, he depicts it in a much more light cartoony manner. Being homeless can be fun! Wheeeee! Well, no. Not really, but Azuma purposely removed the "ugly" from the world so when we see him waking up to a world blanketed with snow, it's a beautiful scene. We don't see his knees cracking from the cold or the wetness that has seeped into his sleeping gear. We don't see his hunger or his desparate need for a cigarette. We see a world separated from misery. It's a very odd juxtaposition, and it makes for an interesting reading experience.

The second part of the book addresses the second time he ran away from the pressures of the manga world, and while starting out a homeless bum again, he quickly finds work as a pipe fitter. The drawing style is much the same as the first part, but rather than focus solely on his personal experiences, Azuma focuses a lot of material on the quirky, sometimes very unpleasant, characteristics of his co-workers. Again it's with that light, cartoony style--the ugliness excised out--so a thug pressuring Azuma into signing up for an insurance policy he doesn't want looks vaguely amusing rather than sad.

The third part is divided into two sections. One relates a lot of what his life as a mangaka was like and how it related to his problems with alcohol and an odd drive toward self-destruction, and the second part deals with his attempt at recovery.

In 1998, Azuma checked into a rehab clinic to treat his alcoholism which had run very rampant and was on the verge of killing him. This time the story relates life in the clinic--Azuma's experiences--the betrayal of his friends and family, and his treatment at the hands of the staff. We witness the the lives of his fellow inmates. The mysterious nun. The repeat offenders. The forced AA meetings and the puking. Really ugly stuff, really real stuff, served up with a light candy coating. Bittersweet, man.

What could possibly be the purpose of this style? I think it forces us to fill in the blanks a bit. And I think its light hand helps us see the Everyman in Azuma's depiction of himself, thus making the subject matter all the more accessible. I've never been homeless, but I've been desparate enough to see a small portion of myself in Azuma. I never went into rehab, but I was enough of an alcoholic once to see myself and others I know in Azuma. I've never run away from life, but lord knows we've all thought about it. We are Azuma. Welcome to it.

The surprise revelation that shows up early is Azuma's wife. Wife? He ran away and his wife had to go out and file missing person reports? What sort of nonsense is this? That detail, downplayed as it is, reveals the larger more selfish aspect of Azuma's personality. I suppose you could chalk this up to the alcoholism which tends to nurture very selfish attitudes. It shouldn't surprise me. And in reading Disappearance Diary I understand the flaws in Azuma's depicted self. Something I'm sure was not meant to be missed.

So the big question...is it a recommendation? Unless you really hate manga, I'd say it's a good recommendation. It's not your typical shonen/shoujou stuff. It's a very literate, mature story about real life. The fact that it's depicted in a non-threatening cartoony style doesn't make it less so. The book reads left-to-right and they did a pretty good job reversing order of panels without reversing any of the Japanese writing. I'm waiting for a friend in Kyoto to send me the Japanese version so I can evaluate the translation, but the English reads well and I suspect it was a fairly careful translation job that attends both the legitmacy of the original text and a well-written flow for English-language readers. With the exception of one or two panels, the word balloons read naturally as well. Bonus features include two interviews with the creator.

So yeah, I can recommend this. It's good story. Genuinely humorous in spots. Genuinely genuine in others. Yeah, that's right. I said genuinely genuine.

Sue me.

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