Tokyo Is My Garden
Script by Benoit Peeters and Frederic Boilet
Art by Frederic Boilet
Fanfare/Ponent Mon, $18.99
Christopher Butcher mentioned recently that he really enjoyed this book, but he didn’t elaborate, so I figured I would.
Tokyo Is My Garden is two love stories in one: it’s the story of a man and a woman who meet and fall in love, but it’s also the tale of a man who has fallen in love with Japan—and may have to leave.
The main character is David Martin, a French man who was sent to Japan to promote a brand of cognac but instead has been slowly going native: He works at the Tokyo fish market, navigates the subway system with ease, and studies kanji in his spare time. He even takes earthquakes in stride, and his Mahjong skills are the envy of the locals.
As the story opens, things are looking pretty bad for David: His girlfriend throws him out and his French boss faxes that he is coming to Tokyo to discuss how the cognac thing is going. This fills David with dread, because he hasn’t sold a single bottle. A co-worker from the fish market sends David to two parties where he can peddle his wares, but he gets so drunk that on his way to the second one, he leaves his sample bottle of cognac on the subway.
An unobservant person might think the story really gets going at the second party, where David meets Kimie, a Japanese woman, and they fall in love, just like that. In fact, the romance at the center of this book is one of its least satisfying elements, as there is no obvious chemistry, no push and pull, just two people enjoying themselves. They eat some ramen, they go on picnics, they put on kimonos and watch the summer fireworks. It’s pretty, but there’s not much conflict or struggle, other than David’s anxiety about his job.
(An observant person, who pays attention to the title pages of the chapters, will see that the story really started with the lost bottle.)
Things get more interesting when David’s boss, Mr. Heurault, arrives. Boilet and Peeters do a nice job of quickly sketching his personality: Heuralt is an idealist who isn’t quite as staid as he first appears. His idealized image of Japan comes from classic films, and he is surprised and horrified by the realities of modern Japan, but he also sees David’s deep affection for the place. Still, business is business, and Heurault reluctantly tells David he will have to cut him loose—which means David will lose his visa. A violent storm clinches Heurault’s desire to get out of Japan, and he decides to leave rather abruptly.
At this point, Boilet and Peeters deftly twist together a number of narrative threads that have been running through the book to confect a satisfying surprise ending. David and Kimie’s romance, Mr. Heurault’s faded desires, the lost bottle of cognac, all come together in a neat little package. It’s all rather improbable, but enjoyable nonetheless.
For a fairly short book (152 pages), Tokyo Is My Garden devotes an awful lot of space to things that don’t move the story much. There’s little depth or tension to David and Kimie’s relationship, for instance; once in a while you think something dramatic is going to happen and then… usually they just make love again. And there’s a scene at the French embassy that seems to serve little purpose other than to depict the French as racist clods (although the authors may have intended to draw a contrast with the more refined Heurault, who makes his appearance a few pages later). On the other hand, it’s fun to watch David take Heurault to see the sights—bars, a calligraphy exhibit, even a naughty video game—and it’s clear that Boilet had fun drawing those scenes.
While the story arc is gentle, to say the least, the authors weave a number of unifying threads through the story: The kanji that David is studying, his inane parodies of “My Way,” even his glasses, which people keep telling him are ugly. And there are a lot of symmetries and concordances in this book: David, who is French, loves Japanese culture, while Kimie, a Japanese woman, works for a French designer. Heuralt’s love of Japanese cinema is mirrored by Kimie’s mother’s love of French cinema. David wows the ladies with his Mahjong skills at a party and later gets a cartoon woman to doff her top in a computer Mahjohng game. And so on.
Boilet’s depictions of Tokyo are interesting and complicated and really convey a sense of place: The chaotic pre-dawn fish market, a nearly empty train on a Sunday morning. And if you squint, the characters look good too; he has a good sense of form and gesture, and the faces are distinct and expressive. The biggest problem with the art, actually, is Boilet’s penchant for using black blobs to indicate shadows and contours in the characters’ faces, which makes everyone look like they are breaking out with the plague. The toning, done by Jiro Taniguchi, helps reduce the impact, but it’s still distracting.
Although it does have a plot, Tokyo Is My Garden is best enjoyed as a slice-of-life manga, a loving meditation on the joys of young love in an exciting, complex city. It does not offer high drama or nonstop action; the story is simple but told with wit and elegance. In the end, it’s a love letter to Tokyo, written by someone who loves the city’s flaws as much as its beauty.
(This review is based on an untoned digital copy provided by the publisher.)