Word: comicalities
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Though it delves into serious subjects, "Four Immigrants" always remains true to its comic strip nature, telling its stories with charm and good humor. Originally a bilingual text, dialogue spoken between Japanese characters appeared in Japanese, but any interaction with the "whiteys" has been written in the Pidgin English of the non-native speaker. A good deal of credit for the book's readability goes to its translator, Frederik L. Schodt, who has been writing about Japanese comics since the 1980s, and rediscovered "Four Immigrants." Wisely leaving the English as-is, Schodt makes the original Japanese dialogue seem natural without...
...Western culture. Japanese men who studied by day and worked as house "boys" in the morning and evening were called "schoolboys," and this arc provides a fascinating glimpse at turn of the century domestic life. All of the guys try their hand at being a "schoolboy" but in classic comic style they all repeatedly get the "go home" treatment after screwing up through misunderstandings like removing the stove to clean it or accidentally teaching the parrot to swear in Japanese. The pleasures of the "Schoolboys" arc, and the entire book, come as much from its richly detailed minutiae...
...laws. (Japanese immigrants were not allowed citizenship until 1952.) One episode focuses on the San Francisco initiative to ban all Asians from public school. Years later, in 1994, California's proposition 187 (later found unconstitutional) banned illegal immigrants from receiving publicly funded services such as schooling. In another semi-comic retelling of an actual incident, Charlie and Frank, working on a farm outside the city, get herded out of town by angry, armed white locals. Another fascinating sequence involves Charlie's decision to arrange for a "picture bride," a woman from Japan who arrives to be married based only...
...Combining an account of actual lives in the context of world history, yet told with the charm and humor of a Sunday comic strip, Yoshitaka Kiyama's "The Four Immigrants Manga" should not be missed. A book to be enjoyed by readers of history and comix, this once-lost artifact works as both a delightful read and a reminder of where Americans come from...
...statistics save this from being the ribald comedy the name might cause one to expect, but either way you can anticipate upwards of twenty of your lecture- and section-mates participating in this frank talk, which Athena representative Tulita Papke claims “runs the gamut from comic to tragic and everything in between, in a way that can entertain and teach both men and women.” She went on to confess: “This show is very close to my heart. Each time I’ve been involved I’ve gained something...