The Man Without Talent

The Man Without Talent, by Yoshiharu Tsuge, is a semi-biographical manga, which shows part of the experiences and emotions of the author himself, with an introspective, realistic and melancholic vision. In the 1980s, when the manga was published, Japan was experiencing explosive economic growth, and the westernization process initiated in the post-war period was already at an advanced stage. As a result, a large part of the population began to live in large urban centers, adopting a Western lifestyle (which encompasses fashion, customs and consumerism linked to the American way of life), and leaving behind, frozen in time and restricted to some inland towns, theancient Japanese customs. That scar on Japan's history can be found very strongly in this manga. Sukezou, the main character, is a stone seller who has a small shop set up by the river. However, it doesn't make much sense to buy the stones from his stall, since anyone can collect them right there without paying anything. The idea of ​​selling stones came from an ancient Japanese art, Suiseki, which classifies stones according to aesthetics. According to this art, stones can represent landscapes, objects, people and even abstract concepts, however, like other elements of Japanese culture that will be mentioned later, interest in this art was in decline, with a small number of collectors, and even this small group wasn't interested in the stones that Sukezou sells. Therefore, Sukezou and his family leave for a journey in the interior of Japan, in search of rarer and more valuable stones. Before talking about the trip, it is important to talk a little about the protagonist. Sukezou was a talented mangaka, but due to disagreements with the comic market, he gave up his career and started investing in completely random businesses, which did not give any financial return. For example: buying and selling antiques that often turned out to be fakes, repairing and selling used cameras, in addition to the aforementioned sale of stones. All these jobs have aesthetic value, but they don't bring enough money to support his family. Sukezou has a son and a wife, who works distributing pamphlets, she is always arguing with him, as she knows of her husband's wasted talent in drawing manga, and blames him for the family living in poverty. It's as if Sukezou purposefully chooses to follow paths that will inevitably go wrong, it's as if he's in a melancholy cycle of self-sabotage, unable to recognize his own talents. During the journey, Sukezou and his family meet a Komusō (emptiness monk), a sect of Buddhist monks who live as beggars, this group flourished and was very strong during the Edo period. Sukezou then, talking to his wife, comments that these monks no longer fit in today's capitalist world, a comment that could go unnoticed but which is actually one of the pillars of this work. Another important passage occurs in the chapter where he meets the owner of a bird shop, who complains that people only want to buy the colorful and flashy foreign birds, without appreciating the beautiful and discreet Japanese birds. Sukezou, outraged by the futility of Japanese society, criticizes the fact that people are becoming more and more individualistic (very influenced by neoliberalism and all ideology coming from the West), and how this individualism is rotting Japanese society and creating spikes in rates of divorce. But soon after, this speech is mocked, due to the fact that both are in decadent marriages, which they hate. Despite the westernization of Japan being one of the central themes of this comic's criticism, nationalist, idealist discourses, which emphasize a supposed purity of eastern values, are also treated with sarcasm. During the journey, they pass through places that are practically frozen in time, on the margins of the frenetic development of Japan in the 80s. They are places that represent the memories of an ancient Japan, which refuse to disappear, and which are gradually being absorbed by capitalist modernity, becoming commodities through tourism. Between the final chapters of the manga, Sukezou imagines himself as the owner of an antique shop, surrounded by old objects, like a shadow, which is disappearing along with ancient Japanese values ​​and customs. Without a place in the sun, in this world that is being formed.