It was also at that time that I came into contact with Mr. Jiro Taniguchi's cartoon "Walking". From The Lonely Gourmet, I got to know Mr. Jiro Taniguchi, appreciated his quiet and peaceful life scene, and became interested in this cartoon. Opening a book really feels like a brief encounter.
The author Jiro Taniguchi is a very famous cartoonist. He came from an ordinary family and began to learn comics at the age of 19. He is a late bloomer, and his painting style is unpretentious, and he is famous for his accuracy and realism. He won the Osamu Tezuka Comic Culture Award twice, won the title of "Comic Master" in Lucca Comic Festival, and was awarded the French Art and Literature Medal, and was regarded as a representative figure of Japanese comics in the world.
I once thought this cartoon was a typical Japanese cartoon style, but to my surprise, it was a typical Japanese painting style and Japanese literature style, but it was not a Japanese cartoon style. Japanese cartoons are usually characterized by contrasting pictures, personalized and colorful images and distinctive characters. But every article in "Walking" is like a haiku: short stories, beautiful realistic scenery and subtle plots.
Just like every ordinary or even boring day in our life, it is a trivial and boring narrative novel in reality, but it will make people feel sad if it is expressed in a cartoon with light and leisurely language and pictures-the other side of life is full of romance, and the birds, rain, snow and strangers you meet on the road are all exciting.
Just like Jirguchi's signature on the title page-"There are some things in my comics that can't be conveyed without careful taste".
Unknown miracles in daily life.
The story background of the cartoon takes place in Anle Town. The protagonist moves for work reasons, and a total of 18 short stories about walking are depicted. The prototype of the comic protagonist is the author himself. As he walks, he looks for everyday things that can be drawn into comics, while what we read as readers are those memorable things that really exist and may happen to us.
Someone once described daily life as "the so-called daily life we spend day after day may actually be a series of miracles". These are eighteen stories and eighteen unknown miracles in daily life.
Middle-aged heroes have fun in small towns, which is different from big cities. Sometimes he watches birds, sometimes he climbs trees, sometimes he dives into the swimming pool naked, gets caught in the rain, and skips work. Once he competed with an elderly friend for a walk and followed a black cat into a strange place.
What impressed me deeply was the fifth story "It's raining". The hero was walking when it began to rain. Wearing leather shoes, a suit and tie, carrying a briefcase, I walked up the mountain road with my head held high in the rain. When I came back, I said to my wife, "I went to climb Mount Fuji" and "there is one in this town". He took off his glasses and looked at the sky after the rain. I only see the clouds depicted on the paper. I wonder how magnificent the "Mount Fuji" he climbed is in his eyes.
In a small town near Tokyo, there will be some models imitating Mount Fuji. Perhaps the hero climbed this small "Mount Fuji" in a short time. But "Mount Fuji" has become synonymous with romance at this moment, just like the rockery and gazebo we met while walking. Maybe we can give them a name, and a beautiful day can replace fatigue.
In the eighth story "Up the River", there is a narrative about the protagonist-that day, I can't say why ... I got off at the previous stop of the company. Maybe it's because the weather is so good that spring should be like this.
I think everyone once had the idea that the protagonist decided to get off early to find out where the source of the river was. The finite state of life often binds the beating heart best, and the idea of escape always comes out at tight moments.
The weather was fine that day, the bus was late that day, and the movie ticket was 20% off that day ... These small opportunities were the beginning of escaping from the present life. There is nothing wrong with running away. Careless strolls that don't know where to go can wash tired hearts.
Alice Munro wrote, "The essence of life is to live in this world with excitement." In the cartoon, the short and chubby villain met a miracle worth looking forward to while walking. In reality, we may not even want to walk for two kilometers, but we complain day after day that life is incredible and sad.
Repeating the monotonous life every day is the strongest pessimistic catalyst, which slowly erodes the fresh impulse inside. Even if you meet a strange puppy while walking, it is a brand-new encounter in your life. I believe that walking can give people a lasting freshness and enhance their adaptability to life.
Those trivial daily lives, if you haven't discovered them, you will miss many miracles.
Beautiful daily life, fantasy world
In the 1990s, Going for a Walk was published in France, which immediately caused quite a stir. European readers question the world constructed in comics.
First, I am curious about what the protagonist in the cartoon sometimes does differently from ordinary people: swimming naked in an empty swimming pool after reading a book, climbing a tree on the way to get a kite for children, staying in the tree all day, and being taken to another time and space by a black cat in an alley. ...
These hearty things happened to this middle-aged man as if he had three meals a day. On the one hand, he is contaminated with the reality of fireworks, on the other hand, he is full of fantasy.
Is this a freak? Does this world really exist?
My understanding is that it may not be a freak, but something that ordinary people are embarrassed to do and can't do, and the protagonist has done it. Perhaps this is indeed an illusory world, floating like a utopia that can never be realized, but it is undeniable that we yearn for such a world. What you want to do is the ultimate dream of life.
Second, I am puzzled by the different pace of life between the protagonist and the real world. Japan was still highly industrialized in the 1990s, and people were busy creating social values. Middle-aged people who slow down are obviously out of step with the times. Why does the protagonist of the cartoon take a leisurely walk?
1985- 1990 Japan's "bubble era" has begun. Due to the expansion of investment, the rapid development of Japanese society since the 1960 s has suddenly gone backwards for decades. Everyone is swallowed up by the inflated economic "bubble", and economic and social pressures force people to live in fear all day long.
As the author said: "People and animals are originally very quiet creatures. After living together intensively, I began to protect myself. People shout loudly, which is basically invisible in daily life ... "
Perhaps such a work appeared in such an era, just to awaken people to feel the passage of time and emotional experience, and bring a quiet, indifferent and unexpected surprise to the busy and fast-paced life.
I don't know when the beautiful daily life became a fantasy world. Modern people are busy making money, living and supporting their families, but only forget to give themselves a chance to be alone, forget to get out of the cage of reinforced concrete and create their own ideological value.
Walking has become a "waste of time" in some people's eyes, but in fact, it is precisely because there is time to waste that we feel that time belongs to us and feel the real life. There are mountains and rivers, urban gardens, stars all over the sky and shining moonlight in this world. I'm just afraid you won't walk alone and look at these beautiful things.
Feel first, use sound instead of words.
In the past, most of the comics circulating in the market were stories first, and the plot of the story constituted the main line of the whole comic development, but the feelings of the characters were in a less important position. But "Walking" is a typical comic book with feelings first.
Jirguchi added a rule to himself when he was creating: try to reduce emotional expressions such as exclamations and adjectives. Therefore, the whole cartoon mostly relies on pictures to express stories and emotions, rather than characters' lines, and it is almost a work without dialogue.
Even when expressing "really comfortable" and "really beautiful", the author tries to describe all the details of the scene, the atmosphere of the picture and the expressions of the characters with paintings.
However, such an expression is not popular at present, and it is naturally criticized by "feeling is supreme and the story is not fully expressed".
However, artistic creation has always been in parallel with the Xialiba people, and the degree of artistic acceptance often lies in the quality of the works. In the market where comics are first filled with characters, Quiet, which focuses on landscape description, is still gradually accepted by readers with delicate description, in-depth observation and moving stories.
What's more worth mentioning is that the car sound, wind, rain sound, bird singing and dog barking in this work are not matched with any adjectives, and all the scenes are represented by onomatopoeia, which undoubtedly makes the picture more vivid and reaches the realm of "more silent than vocal".
"Walking" is as simple and poetic as the "walking" itself, both from the perspective of comic analysis and from the use of words. Such cartoons may be a brand-new experience for busy modern people.
Time is in a hurry. It has been 20 years since the publication of Go for a Walk. I don't know if those lucky enough to open it have been cured by the quiet comic world in these twenty years and whether they have planned to take a walk.
Walking on the road, I occasionally see people walking in twos and threes. They are often very cultured, complacent, steady, stop-and-go, and even the lingering wind is gentle and lovely.
I often wonder how many of the billions of people in this world can walk in the streets or country lanes without distractions at this moment, without worrying about their jobs or being greedy for money, and feel the ups and downs and the four seasons with full eyes.
Don't feel that life is boring, as the postscript says, "After reading this, put down" go for a walk "and go for a walk".
Nice to meet you. More exciting articles are welcome to pay attention to the media: nothing is eternal, and multiple platforms have the same name.