無能の人

MUNOU NO HITO

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
1
RELEASE
December 1, 1986
CHAPTERS
6

DESCRIPTION

The Man Without Talent is an unforgiving self-portrait of frustration. Swearing off cartooning as a profession, Tsuge takes on a series of unconventional jobs—used-camera salesman, ferryman, stone collector—hoping to find success among the hucksters, speculators, and deadbeats he does business with. Instead, he fails again and again, unable to provide for his family, earning only their contempt and his own. The result is a dryly funny look at the pitfalls of the creative life, and an off-kilter portrait of modern Japan.

(Source: New York Review Books)

CAST

Sukezou Sukegawa

CHAPTERS

RELATED TO MUNOU NO HITO

Cover Art for Munou no Hito, Hi no Tawamure

MANGA DramaMunou no Hito, Hi no Tawamure

MANGA DramaTsuge Yoshiharu Taizen

REVIEWS

Trdzi
100/100
Manga that narrates it's own biography from a nostalgic and pessimistic look.
"Japan survives the Second World War and faces a new society, consumerist, nihilist, with marked western influence, which tries to overcome the deep trauma of the postwar period; accommodating misfits sensitivities like Munou no Hito from Tsuge. Manga that narrates it's own biography from a nostalgic and pessimistic look. The manga is composed of six chapters without any waste, full of a tragic look, with stories as crude as hilarious.

It is complicated to separate the life of Tsuge from that of the man in Munou no Hito that stars in his manga of the same name. It's difficult because our mangaka left clues here and there to be conveniently linked, in the same way above the story is the tone, that sad color, that black on white that leaves all things in the air. The mangaka didn't lead an easy life and ended up retiring soon after his appearance as a book. The eighties came to an end and with them, of his own volition, his career. He abandoned everything and disappeared.

This mangaka is the architect of the most singular works of the manga, incorporating surreal, philosophical and purely poetic elements. Perhaps Tsuge is representative of the average Japanese man who, suddenly, had to deal with a political and social transformation of great significance.

This work is the story of a mangaka who does not trust his work too much. Actually, nothing. He thinks he has nothing to say in a world that is talking about other things. And also that nobody is interested in him. That leads him to try other paths, increasingly utopian, more disconnected from his time, turned into a mere abstraction. Repairs cameras and sell them, think about setting up an antique shop in his own house, finally selling river stones. His days as a seller of stones pass by the channel, hidden in a precariously assembled store. Nobody buys anything. Who can want to buy what is within reach a little further? As much as he thinks that in the choice of those stones and not others there is an artistic component, people do not want to know anything. Not even the stone collectors: his stones comes from a place without value.

His wife is still waiting for something from him, plunged in despair. Still waiting for him to return to his manga at least, to abandon those dreams built on nothing, on emptiness. His son goes to look for him after each episode, after each fragment of lost existence. But he no longer belongs to that world that surrounds him insistently, but to a world made of dreams. He is not a man without talent, but a man who refuses. He is not a man who refuses, but a man permanently dissatisfied and installed in that dissatisfaction.

In the germ of all creation it can be find that feeling of dissatisfaction. One creates to overcome that state, that confrontation with the world. One creates to destroy something: a fear, a feeling, a suffocation, a life. One creates to build something: a hope, a feeling, a breath, a life. The work of our mangaka delves sweetly into these reasons, without being free of anger, because anger and helplessness between what we want and what is, are part of that process. Its protagonist has renounced the action, has renounced the search to indulge in a process of dissolution from which he intends to leave splashing awkwardly in a river that drags him.

Although he may understand, at some point of lucidity, that he needs to cross that fog that surrounds him, all that silence that surrounds him, that peace that grips him, everything that seems right but that will not allow him to go further. That business of stones, in which has nothing to invest, is also that lack of risk. Without risk there is no creation. Without risk there is nothing authentically new. Without risk, Tsuge would never have created his own work, and refusing to assume it, his character will never be able to escape from his cage of river stones, from all that heavy inaction.

Now, I will give my interpretation of the chapters which I will divide so that each philosophical section can be appreciated. All the chapters were originally published separately, and assembled in a single volume.
1- Selling rocks. 2- A worthless person. 3- The bird expert. 4- Out searching for rocks. 5- Selling cameras. 6- Disappearing into the fog. _“Selling rocks”_
In the first chapter, entitled "Selling rocks", we find our character, who after the failure as mangaka, decides to forget everything to devote himself to the art of "Suiseki", this is, a discipline that seeks natural beauty in the stones. He pretends to sell them in a small place near the river where he finds them, although he is ignored by tourists and fails miserably. Our colorful character suffers a depression and a certain pessimism, far from surrendering to the passive state of hilism, he faces the tedious existence with a stoic countenance as an active nihilist...
_“A worthless person”_
In the second chapter, entitled "A worthless person", our protagonist reflects on this and confesses that a perfect stone encloses a mountain within itself, teaches us the valley, suggests the wind and clouds. Reveals the universe. Indeed, suiseki refers to the art of admiring a single stone, which represents a whole landscape with mountains and rivers, thus highlighting the natural beauty.

It is here a delimitation of the beauty of nature and the beauty of the work of human art, namely, the stones that have been modified by human hands can never equal the natural beauty, being this a perfect beauty, since it is impossible to reproduce the shape or color that nature has created. But... is it not the aesthetic sense of man that distinguishes a beautiful stone from another that is not?

In this sense it is necessary to mention the esthete Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who proposes a "Delimitation and justification of Aesthetics" in his "Lectures on Aesthetics"; realizing that the artistic beauty is higher than nature, since artistic beauty is a product of the spirit, namely, of reason and freedom. Thus, the higher the spirit, the greater will be its productions compared to the natural creation that always happens in a necessary way (such as the sunset or sunrise) that is not, in effect, free or self-conscious. Strictly speaking, as I said before, even the natural beauty is a reflection of the beauty of the spirit, since freedom surpasses natural production that is always limited in comparison with the infinite imagination of the spirit, indeed, in something finite - namely, the beautiful work of art- the infinite is found.

For his part, prior to Hegel, Immanuel Kant in his "Observations on the feeling of the beautiful and sublime" (Caps. I, II) makes a distinction between beauty and the sublime. Being that, for our philosopher, beauty stands as a calm and pleasant contemplation, while the sublime agitates, moves and is only found in the greatness of nature. If I am allowed to observe, I am sure that the sedentary and routine German would be delighted with the sight of a mountain (whose snowy chasms rise above the clouds) and the complete description of an angry tempest of all nature, reproduced in one stone, thus creating pleasure together with terror, to lead to a touching feeling of the sublime... and of course, without having to leave his room.
_“The bird expert”_
The third chapter, entitled "The bird expert", introduces us to the question of useless art and its relation to consumption, using the metaphor with Japanese birds, which with their discreet colors, are delicate and elegant animals, with a touching and humble beauty, but that do not attract people, even though they inspire deep feelings, since the public only cares about the appearance... It is so that all the traditional Japane was displaced by the western eccentricity, even though it is much more inferior, superficial in comparison. The success is due to being modern and claiming egocentric tendencies, a television society that prefers reaffirmation rather than reflection for the essence of things. After all, who cares about depth? Of what avail is it to?

In this sense, both Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Schelling, appeal to the useless character of art... in appearance, since the worthy end corresponds to it, since, although art can be used as pleasure and distraction would be neither independent nor free otherwise, it would be an auxiliary art and it would not be fulfilling its purpose: to develop rationality, since art is the sensible materialization of the idea. And here, far from Plato, the reproach of Art is not materialization but the illusion, the appearance, it is "the way I give ideas".
_“Out searching for rocks”_
We introduce ourselves in this way in the fourth chapter, entitled "Out searching for rocks", leads us to another encounter with failure, between a torn and unhappy existence, and the reflection for the unfit and useless. This time the metaphor is a komuzo monk, that is, monk of nothingness or emptiness, of Zen Buddhism, a concept that does not exist in Buddhism but refers to a beggar, due to its contingent and useless nature, in a consumer capitalist society.
_“Selling cameras”_
Another opportunity to reflect on the useless is presented in the fifth chapter, entitled "Selling cameras" that have no value if they do not work, but once fixed they become luxury, in this section, in addition, our protagonist confesses why he abandoned the manga world: being mangaka will never be considered as an artist, since in this world art is not appreciated, it is considered superfluous and useless.

And so, how does this existential vagabonding of an tiring, unrecognized artist culminate, this questioning of creation in a consumer society? During the whole journey of Sukezo's life, between vignettes and drawings, with pessimistic stories and an acid look at the consumer society, as well as reality, they go around sketching questions without answers. Where is the art in the industry? What does the artist create? And it surrounds us with a certain nostalgia feeling until the last chapter...
_"Disappearing into the fog"_
With a beautiful Japanese poem entitled "disappearing into the fog", which comes to give meaning (at least poetic) to this unnoticed existence in the midst of artists seeking fame and recognition... The final chapter encourages to vanish, to abandon everything, to exist and not exist at the same time, to move away from society.

Is the Suseki choice coincidental? What is the artist's task in choosing a stone? The artist chooses a capricious form of nature but... To what extent is the creator of something? It is nothing more than a mere intermediary between the forces of nature and the buyer, a simple interpreter who contributes only an idea to what is already done. Is art that? Does art really exist then?

And so we find a deep questioning of the proprietary logic in works of art, it should be noted that already in the fifth century BC, in Ancient Greece, Plato, in "Ion", referred to the work of art as divine creation, and the artist was no more than an interpreter who served as a means for the gods to express themselves through the muses.

An authentic creative delirium, punctuated by dreamlike and surrealist dyes, that bothers us; but that also invites us to reflect on life, art and madness. Like the great works.

Munou no Hito hides a deep reflection on the act of creating, on the author, on the artist. Our author hid between his pages, between those lives adrift with silly flashes of hope, an overwhelming journey surely to the bottom of his fears. After it had reached a turning point and maybe it would be good to ask about the answers that came out of it. But he retired. And maybe that was his answer. He chose the stones. This is: the nothing."
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