I originally became interested in studying Japanese thanks to anime and manga. As my Japanese ability hit the upper-intermediate level, however, I began to drift away from both. My reading turned more towards books, which I found more complex and challenging.
But as I try and balance Unseen Japan with…well, the rest of my life, I find books too demanding. So I was excited by Komazaki Hiroki’s write up for Huffington Post Japan. Komazaki highlighted five manga titles featuring, not superheroes or magical girls, but people tackling hard social issues in contemporary Japan. For those who are interested, I posted English descriptions of each featured title on Twitter last month.
Despite their enormous value, I’ve hesitated to talk about these titles on Unseen Japan. Manga about social justice issues in Japan aren’t at the top of most English manga fans’ reading lists. As of this writing, not a single series on Komazaki’s list appears to have an official English translation. (Indeed, not a single one of the authors listed appears to have a single English translation.) Which is not surprising. The titles all fall well outside of the genres that tend to be popular in the West. In addition, they often involve issues, tensions, and sub-plots that are specific to the mores and structure of Japanese society.
But for those with an interest in daily life in contemporary Japan, such series can be fascinating. They provide a window into how various systems and structures play out in Japanese society, making them real in a way that a news article or Wikipedia page never could. They paint in living color the stories of people who struggle most – and how Japan, as a society, responds.
Those Most In Need
One such series recommended by Komazaki is 健康で文化的な最低限度の生活 (kenkou de bunkateki na saiteigendo no seikatsu), or A Healthy Life at the Cultural Baseline by author Kashiwagi Haruko. I’ve been calling this Head Above Water in my mind, which I think captures its essence nicely in English. For the rest of this article, I’ll refer to it by its official short name, Kenkatsu.
Published in 2014, Kenkatsu is Kashiwagi’s 11th and most recent series. As of this writing, it is still running in Big Comic Spirits. It’s enjoyed critical acclaim in Japan, and even a single season TV drama run starring Yoshioka Riho.
The story takes place in the fictional Higashi Ward of Tokyo. Our protagonist is Yoshitsune Emiru (義経えみる), a new worker at the ward office assigned to the Public Welfare Department. The office enacts Article 25 in Japan’s Constitution, which “grants every Japanese citizen the right to receive a healthy lifestyle at the minimal cultural baseline.” (The manga’s title comes from this article.)
Emiru and the others have no background in the work done by the office. Nevertheless, supervisors throw them right into answering calls from beneficiaries. In one scene, Emiru pours through a law book as a beneficiary asks why her April benefits are off. The woman gets so frustrated she screams at Emiru, “Get my old case worker on the line!!”
But Yoshitsune soon faces even harder questions. She receives a phone call from another beneficiary, Hirakawa, who tells her: “I’m going to die.” Taking advice from a colleague, Emiru calls the man back. When he doesn’t answer, she leaves a phone message and resolves to follow up in the morning.
Unfortunately, the morning is too late. As she walks in, her boss tells her that Hirakawa leaped to his death from a neighboring building the previous night. Emiru processes her guilt over Hirakawa’s death as she and her mentor, Handa, work to wrap up the man’s affairs. For Emiru, it’s a stark lesson that her work can have life or death consequences.
Humanizing Those Who Need Help
In the remainder of Volume 1, the characters struggle in the face of an impending audit to get as many beneficiaries as they can back to work. At the end of each day, everyone in the office is physically and emotionally spent. Through Emiru, we see how the multiple stresses of this job exact a heavy toll.
One of the cases is a young single mother of two, Iwase Tomomi, who’s struggling to support herself after leaving her abusive husband. But her motivation dissolves when her day job boss sees her working a second job at a restaurant, and fires her. In a well-illustrated and harrowing scene, Tomomi returns to the office after avoiding her case worker, Shichijo Ryuichi, for weeks. She excuses herself to go to the bathroom – where another employee watches as she flings open a window and looks out with with despondent determination. A question from the employee breaks her out of her reverie…and prevents her, perhaps, from making an irreversible decision.
Another case is Akusawa Masao, who tries to hide from Emiru that he’s struggling to pay off a debt; she only discovers it because he’s eating so little that his health deteriorates, and he developed an incessant cough. In these and other cases, the caseworkers at the Higashi Ward Public Welfare Office are not only forced to balance the needs of the Japanese taxpayer with the needs of their charges. They’re also forced to find innovative solutions when anger, depression, health issues, or, in some cases, simple pride prevent people from seeking help.
A Former Individualist
Kenkatsu has an interesting genesis. Its creator, Kashiwagi, told Asahi Shinbun in an interview that she used to be “a proponent of self-responsibility,” and was generally opposed to public assistance programs, but that her thinking was changed by people such as social activist Yuasa Makoto (湯浅誠) and author Amamiya Karin (雨宮処凛).
例えば、漫画家になれなかった人は頑張らなかった人みたいな気持ちが昔はあったんですけど、うまくいかなかった人に対して「自己責任だ」って言っていいのかなっていうのが引っかかるようになってきて。漫画家というのはどうしても世間知らずになりがちなので、今の社会を自分なりに把握したいなっていうのがありましたね
For example, I once felt like people who didn’t succeed at becoming manga authors just didn’t work hard, but I started to wonder, is it right to tell people who couldn’t make it, “that’s on you”? Manga authors have a tendency to be blind to how the world works, so I wanted to understand our modern society in my own way.
Kashiwagi had no prior experience in Public Welfare or social work, and says she based the work on extensive interviews with case workers, beneficiaries, and supporters. Kashiwagi was struck by how many beneficiaries were laboring under a heavy tragedy, such as illness, disability, or abuse. She also learned how important it is for people to ask for help early. “There are so many cases…where people go for public assistance at the last instant. Cases where something could’ve been done if they’d asked for help earlier.”
I’m only an issue into the series currently, but expect to rip through the remaining issues within the next week. On its surface, Kenkatsu is a typical “ganbare” story – a tale of a fresh young face in the workforce getting her first taste of what it means to work for a living. But it’s more than that. Kashigawa drives home just how exhausting and demoralizing life in a public assistance program can be. What’s more, her storytelling skills bring depth and humanity to a class of people whom most people in Japan (and, I dare say, America) would dismiss out of hand as lazy losers.
I tell anyone who’ll listen what a wonderfully diverse art form manga can be. Kenkatsu proves that point in spades. My hope is that such titles eventually wend their way into English, in some form. They may never become top sellers, but the information conveyed – and the humanity portrayed – makes them a cultural treasure.
