A Single Match

by Ōji Suzuki, Jocelyne Allen (Translator)

A new author in D+Q’s acclaimed gekiga line

In this collection of hauntingly elliptical short stories, Oji Suzuki explores memory, relationships, and loss with a loose narrative style, filling each tale with a sense of unfulfilled longing. He plumbs the dissolute depths of human psychology, literally bathing his characters in expansive shadows that paradoxically reveal as much as they obscure. A young man catches a cold after being soaked in the rain and is tended to by his grandmother. He drifts, dreaming of a train trip with an older brother he doesn’t have. A traveling salesman comes across a boy lying in the middle of the road and stops to have a cigarette and tell a story that sifts through memories of faces and places before settling back on the boy and pretending to not look at the stars. A young woman walks along the river with her bicycle and a friend who is nothing more than a disembodied head—discussing past times together, memories they have of each other.

Although he touches on many of the same themes as his contemporaries in the field of postwar alternative manga—Yoshihiro Tsuge (L’Homme Sans Talent) and Seiichi Hayashi (Red Coloured Elegy)—Suzuki uses an ever shifting narrative approach and dashes of surrealist humor to distinguish his work from that of his peers.

Genres: Manga, Comics, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Comix, Short Stories, Graphic Novels Comics

272 pages, Hardcover

First published April 19, 2007

Reviews

[E. G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

--Color of Rain
--Highway Town
--A Single Match
--Tale of Remembrance
--World Colored Pants
--Evening Primrose
--Town of Song
--Crystal Thoughts
--Mountain Town
--Fruit of the Sea
--City of Dreams

[Luck]

cant give a rating cause i didn’t understand much. you probably need deep knowledge of japanese culture to understand whats happening, but I think it’d still be confusing. abstractly talking of relationships and passing of time

[Marc Weidenbaum]

A Single Match is surreal gekiga by Oji Suzuki. The Japanese manga realm of gekiga is often associated with a kind of brute realism, thanks in large part in the U.S. to the work of Yoshihiro Tatsumi, though that isn't really the case. In A Single Match, published in English by Drawn & Quarterly (also Tatsumi's English-language publisher), it's a series of increasingly peculiar dream-like states, presumably of the young boy who, in the opening chapter, catches a terrible cold and it left hallucinating under his grandmother's watchful care. There is a boy buying a radio with his father, who has some trouble with the mob; a woman submitting to a man sexually; a girl seeming to reenacting, really more to mime, the woman's deeds; a disembodied head asking to rest in a woman's lap. It's a beautifully drawn and often effectively disorienting quasi-story. The art changes frequently, from simply drawn faces to nearly abstract chiaroscuro, mirroring the narrator's state of mind.

One note: the book is "flipped," which is to say it reads left to right instead of right to left, as it was originally published. Some people prefer it this way. So be it. I do think it's unfortunate, though, that the sound effects were replaced with translated ones. Japanese sound effects are so visually evocative, especially in a setting as symbol-laden as this one -- anyhow, it seems like an unnecessary decision. That said, I haven't seen the original, so perhaps they were perfunctory in their presentation.

(One minor note: The book is titled A Single Match, though it's also reportedly known -- perhaps in Japan as the original title? -- as Red Kimono. In Goodreads it shows up in the database as Red Kimono, even though the cover clearly reads A Single Match.)

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Single Match is author Oji Suzuki’s first English story collection, published by Drawn and Quarterly in 2010. Translation is by Jocelyne Allen. Suzuki’s comics were first published in the avant-garde Japanese comics magazine, GARO. A Single Match is a book comprised of 11 short stories produced in the gekiga style, literally translated from Japanese for “dramatic pictures.” This term was coined by Japanese cartoonist, Yoshihiro Tatsumi and adopted by similar artists who wanted to distinguish their works from manga. A Single Match flows like surrealistic poetry, where contrasts between narratives, vast shadowed landscapes, memory, and nostalgia weave together to express deep and complicated emotions and ideas. Many mature themes are touched on in this book including rape, gambling, loss, depression, death, and alcoholism. The black and white illustrations add to the poetic feel of the work, haunting the mind with feelings of the loneliness, despair, and sadness, punctuated throughout each story. The stories are often told in a non-linear fashion, relying on flashbacks and memories, which at first reading can create some confusion. A Single Match is by no means an easy read, but it is unique in its surrealistic narrative style, and worth the experience of witnessing the level of depth the format of the graphic novel is be taken to by a master.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite is "Evening Primrose", where the drawing style shifts from the typical cute manga figures of the earlier pieces in the collection, to a more "adult" look. It's also probably the most surreal piece in the book, with the protagonist engaging with a disembodied head.

[Jacob Trueman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kinda vague and dreamy, which sometimes works and sometimes fails to cohere or leave any impact. The title story was wonderful, and quite moving.

[Tío Coyote · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you've read Yoshiharu Tsuge (particularly his dreamy and psychedelic stories, like "Nejishiki"), well, this book is just like that, but without the talent. The book lacks of prologues or epilogues that help to understand what the hell is going on here, it doesn't even have the original publication years to try and give it some historical context, in short, it is a misstep by Drawn & Quarterly. The story of the woman with the flying head saved this book from a single star rating.

[Codepoetz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a collection of sad and depressing short stories told in a highly surreal style that relies on shadow and light. Most of the stories are about memory, relationships, and profound loss. Unfortunately, some of it was very abstract and utterly incoherent to me. I think you need a deep knowledge of Japanese culture to truly understand this book.

[Athénaïs Kahou · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lecture pénible. C'est étrange, spécial... mauvais selon moi. Je n'adhère pas. Je ne vois pas l'intérêt d'avoir regroupé ça dans un recueil et pourtant j'ai déjà lu plusieurs recueils racontant des instants de vies donc ce n'est pas un format qui me dérange .

[Alessandro Lise · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tratti incomprensibile – problemi di traduzione? –, inutilmente lirico, ma affascinante per segno e atmosfere. Dovete smetterla di ridisegnare le onomatopee, però.

[Oliver Ho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sad, dark, not-quite-linear stories—I liked how they captured the surreal nature of the children’s points of view and memories.

[BEEEAR · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Chels Patterson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really except for the first story, everything is forgettable, the images are too similar, the story lines too.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Strange stuff.

[doowopapocalypse · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of dark, desperately sad vignettes. Artwork was great but there were many stories I wished would have played out longer.

[pedro · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Drawn & Quarterly deserves a lot of praise for publishing Oji Suzuki in English for the first time, there's an obvious lack of contextual information in A Single Match. Besides the short bio on Suzuki's work and the synopsis in the back cover, nothing else will aid the common reader in understanding the creative process behind these short stories. There's no information on each entry's original release date (is this early work from the late 60s? does it comprise his work from the 70s and 80s?) or the magazine it was featured in (Garo maybe?), which is a really unfortunate decision.

This is an unlikely move from D&Q though, as other alternative manga publications such as Katsumata's Red Snow, Mizuki's Showa series or Tatsumi's three-volume short stories collection all include either an afterword, additional notes or an interview with the author. Not a lot of information can be found online regarding Suzuki's life and work either, making it all the more troublesome for those willing to delve into the author's surrealist yet fascinating stories.

[May-Ling · Rating 2 out of 5]

i think the concept of short stories in graphic novel form is an interesting idea, but there was only one story here that resonated with me. perhaps a lot is lost in translation, or simply suzuki and i don't see eye to eye.

illustrations are good and simple - black and white. the most irritating thing is how sound is used more than words. there is so much psssh and kakakaka and other sounds articulated throughout the stories. again, that might be a personal preference.

pick it up if you want an experience like a surreal mindf$%k, but otherwise, i wouldn't bother. if i was a psychoanalyst, my guess would be that the author has a sibling, some type of loneliness issues and probably some kind of trauma that happened to him, as they are reoccurring themes across stories.

[Joseph Young · Rating 1 out of 5]

Seemed melancholy, depressing, and mildly perverted or misogynistic at times. There didn't seem to be a point to most of the stories, and the characters all seemed kind of like different kinds of 'loser', though I hate using the term. I enjoyed perhaps one or two of the stories.

The art is interesting, but nothing about this is compelling. Was a struggle to get through the book just so I could mark it as read on GoodReads.

[Katie J Smyza · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is not a book to be read once. it requires multiple readings & even minimal outside research (writing that last part as a 3rd generation part Japanese kid who's no tangible connection to the stories, but earnestly wanted to understand them). but when you're able to get from the stories what Suzuki meant to convey, then the results can be profound and rewarding.

[Rachael · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wonderful illustrations, but was there a storyline?

[Candice M (tinylibrarian) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reviewed for Booklist

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

So beautiful and exciting. The stories are all based around memory and nostalgia. I definitely recommend this work.

[Kim]

Similar to Tsuge.

[Thuy Phan (Đại tá Cá Vàng) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Đọc giống đọc thơ vậy.

[Olga · Rating 2 out of 5]

The were sone stories I liked, but on the whole it was too strange for me and I couldn't understand what was going in.

[Charlotte (readwithchar) · Rating 3 out of 5]

it was very difficult to follow the stories and the characters.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Avant-garde manga. There are brief of moments of beauty, but each "story" is so fragmented and disorganized that any lingering profundity is killed. Frustrating.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm positive this reads much better in the original Japanese. the haiku-like tenor of the writing does make it a little used to penetrate in English though. that's just how it goes sometimes.