Reading
Disappearance Diary by veteran creator
Hideo Azuma immediately brought to mind the
omake that occupy the very end of manga collections or the margins of manga pages. Most manga (the ones that get translated) are formula driven entertainment; so the omake are a way for creators to inject a personal element to their own works. These tend to be light and breezy in tone and usually reveal trivial details about the creator's personal life. Sometimes this produces some dissonance between the omake and the actual story, such as in the latter half of the series
Kare Kano: the harrowing events the characters experience are disconcertingly juxtaposed with creator
Masami Tsuda's pointless chatter about her tastes in classical music or her obsessions with Japanese cuisine. By contrast Disappearance Diary feels in some ways like an extended omake: Drawn in a cute, halfway
super-deformed style, the story consistently maintains a detached sense of humor even as it narrates the sordid details of Azuma's increasingly out-of-control life.
This deliberate choice to see the funny side of life begins with Azuma's own botched attempt at a suicide. The results as depicted are comic rather than tragic. The book then recounts the three stages of Azuma's downward spiral of self-destructive behavior: Twice when he attempted to drop off the grid, and his descent into alcoholism. Like an omake or
yonkoma, the story is rambling and episodic in structure as its focus is on minutiae of what it's like to be homeless, or the rehabilitation process of an alcoholic. The book's cute version of Azuma is like the castaway who learns to survive by mastering important life skills such as dumpster-diving or acquiring protection against the elements. After a while, the grimier aspects of living day-by-day fall away. Every little triumph pushes the reader to become more invested in his survival and welfare. The second time he runs off, he even gets a new job and acquires new skills as a pipe fitter. Of course it was his decision to live in this manner; but it's a lot easier to empathize with a short, cuddly, cartoon character than a smelly, middle-aged, homeless man. That's the power of
moe for you.
But when Azuma declares "This manga has a positive outlook on life and so it has been made with as much realism removed as possible..." what he leaves out is just as telling because it draws attention to a gaping hole in the narrative. Azuma doesn't go into great detail about the depression itself that caused him to run off. That would put a damper on the mood. Azuma simply avoids wallowing in his dark side to maintain his stated aesthetic goal of removing realism. But most perturbing is how he goes out of his way to avoid discussing the impact his actions have on other people. He does briefly acknowledge its negative effects on his colleagues and apologizes to his editors. But he's circumspect about the trouble it caused his family. His adventures with homelessness ends when the police arrest him and return him to his family. But these are glossed over "because none of this was funny." Later when he's rehabbing at a hospital, he worries that his wife will divorce him. These statements are made more provocative because they are made so rarely and tossed out so casually in the book. Azuma's sounds like he's aware of the hurt he's caused. He just doesn't want to talk about it. But those are the really interesting bits people would be curious to know more about.
What Azuma's doing is bucking certain conventions. Considering the serious subject matter, most readers would expect from autobiographical works a good deal of introspection or self-flagellation; even a moment of epiphany when the protagonist realizes how low he's sunk as a prelude to his road to redemption. That doesn't happen here. When Disappearance Diary ends, Azuma is still muddling his way through rehab. He's amusing and observant, but not necessarily any more emotionally aware than when he first arrived at the hospital. In short there's no catharsis at the end; and this will undoubtedly displease some readers. They will find the book version of Azuma morally repugnant. By sidestepping the more unpleasant details of his closest relationships, he still comes across just as big a jerk than if he went the opposite way and whined nonstop about his difficult life. It's hard not to be seen in a negative light when someone abandons his wife and kid. But the tactic serves to capture a character not fully recovered and still very much in denial.
A rather fascinating section of the book is when he goes off on a tangent and summarizes his entire career up to that point. Azuma is one of those important manga figures that's never received much attention abroad. As someone only vaguely aware of his reputation, his listing of his numerous manga projects is frustrating because it requires some familiarity with his work to understand him. Nonetheless there are some interesting tidbits of information about the enormous pressures placed on professional manga creators. There's also this one panel where he recounts a collaboration to create a
lolicon-themed fanzine with the intent to "drive
yaoi out of
Comiket" that alludes to dueling subcultures. I'm not sure how seriously to take the battle cry, but it raises all kinds of interesting questions about the differing fetishes of male and female fans in Japan; and leads back to Azuma's own individual hang-ups as the leading popularizer of the lolicon sub-genre.
Despite the problematic decision to treat a memoir about a particularly low point of his life as a lighthearted humor strip, Disappearance Diary is still in some ways a compelling read. It's probably compelling because of that odd decision.
