Rikon Club

-The streets of Ginza are filled with puddles formed by the tears that drip from the butterflies of the night. On the Winter nights, they become small icy patches. But I won't cry!- If you go into the 6th district of Ginza, go behind a luxurious gallery and further on the left into a back alley, you might find a small bar held by a divorced young woman, in fact, all of the women working there have experienced divorce and have gathered to achieve their independence. Despite what one could think about them, they don't live in opulence and aren't living an easy life either, butthey can count on each other as moral support and to be as tight-knitted as can be. It is in the Rikon Club that you will find these women, heartbroken and melancholic at their core, but doing their best to pretend everything's okay. "A story where nothing happens", that's how Kazuo Kamimura would come to describe this manga. While he was at the peak of his career, producing intense and scandalous works like Aku no Hana, Rikon Club chose to express the triviality of life in the city of Tokyo. It doesn't try to glorify it nor make it into some sort of big tragedy, it simply follows Yuko, the owner of this club, as she tries to forget her old husband and work hard enough to take care of her 3 year old daughter and spend as much time as she can with her. Representing scenes of day-to-day life is exactly where Kamimura excels though, and his depiction of the city and the people living in it is extremely reminiscent of what he's done with Dousei Jidai, but just as brilliant. Of course the clients coming to and fro in this small bar are very telling of the state of society and Kamimura does not hesitate to use some mise and abyme, often picturing himself or gekiga writers spending time in it, but the clients aren't the main focus here, the main strength of this manga resides in the complex link it weaves between the characters and how skillfully it shifts between their perspectives. Not only does it focus on the owner Yuko, but also on Ken-chan, the barman who's in love with her but has to be patient to conquer her heart and also acts as a sort of a bodyguard when clients gets too aggressive or clingy, Sachiko who's a bit lunatic and is on the verge of suicide each time she gets her heart broken, there's also the more calm and mature that hides a big secret for herself as well as Tokiko who comes from a noble lineage but ended in this club by unfortunate circumstances. The way it handles the family matters is also told in very intricate manners.Yuko's mother has to take care of Sachiko (Yuko's daughter) most of the time and acts more as a mother towards her than Yuko really does, and she constantly blames her and takes a moralistic stance each time they get to meet. Sachiko has a lot of troubles considering Yuko as her real mother, she refuses to eat her cooking and the atmosphere between them is often very tense, she even clearly makes it known that she loves her father Michio above her mother and will take the shinkansen by herself to get to see him once more. Michio is also an incredibly complex character, he's only seen as a nuisance, someone everyone wants to get rid of despite still bearing love for his old wife and for his daughter and insisting for giving her a pension, but he's refused every chance to see his daughter or to bring her any gifts. It's as if he had to forget everything that happened between him and Yuko just because they got divorced. Sure he's got his flaws, he's jealous and a bit overbearing but he doesn't seem any worse than any other men. I love the fact that nothing is clearly explained about their separation, it just happened at one point, everything is merely suggested get told in slight amount throughout the manga and that's the same for the ending, softly diluted through numerous abstract standpoints contributing to its thematic depth. It can be seen as frustrating to not have a clear resolution by those who are not used to this type of narration but it's the sum of all his mastery and shows how ambitous and confident Kamimura has grown over the years. Rikon Club is one of the most personal, realistic and accurate manga Kamimura has produced in his career and that perhaps has to do with the fact that it's loosely biographical and based on his real experiences. Kamimura spent a lot of time in bars and got to experience the kind of situations he would illustrate here but most of all there's the fact that he was always immersed in this kind of environment since he was a child: his own mother had to work in a bar after the death of her husband in order to raise her 4 children. It's easy to tell how his mother is directly projected into Yuko and how seeing these places at a very young age affected him. Rikon Club suffered a fate similar to Shinanogawa and only a single book compiling the first 11 chapters was released at the time and it is only recently that it has become fully accessible. It never gained any real critical success but I would say it is one of his hidden gems, only ranking second next to Dousei Jidai and would have no problem qualifying it as another true masterpiece.