Week 3 | Gekiga

Cigarette Girl

Cigarette Girl is a collection of various self-contained (minus Happy-chan) short stories by gekiga artist, Masahiko Matsumoto. The stories take place in Japan during the early 1970s and tell the tales of people living their everyday urban life in a time when Japanese people felt increasingly insecure about their financial outlook due to a lull in the economy, rising urban housing costs and lower standards of living. Nothing quite gets resolved with the characters, but just like life, sometimes things don't get the pleasant closure like they do in books and movies. Rather than thinking of these stories as depressing (though that doesn't mean I'm going to call them happy), they are simply quiet stories of life being life. It's kind of like the feeling of sitting outside alone on a mild day and letting the wind blow your way while listening to the leaves rustle. 

Matsumoto does a pretty good job with conveying that while things might not happen how you want or expect them to, life simply goes on, we move on. A lot of the stories end with the main character simply walking the streets alone as the sounds of the city surround them, but it doesn't feel particularly sad, it simply feels like the character's story will continue even after the last panel. Perhaps it's a bit uplifting to see these characters do their best in an unforgiving environment, but nonetheless the things that happen to them still suck.

The simplistic art style of the manga plays a big contrast to the topics, making the weight of the unfortunate events seem more subdued then they would actually appear when presented in real life. It helps sell the overall tone Matsumoto hoped to achieve, but it still feels pretty jarring and makes it hard to really step into the shoes of these characters. 

So while Cigarette Girl was not a page-turning thriller like Ayako, it has its value for exploring a more hushed, adult subject matter, especially as a contrast to the more "cute" style stories Tezuka was producing at the time (I don't really know if can say anything anymore though after reading Ayako).

I rate Cigarette Girl with 16 guys whose lips are popping right out of their heads.