New Year's party with "Books to read in the new year" as the theme for 2017 - Part 2
~Monosus' "Reading Club" #10~

I would like to introduce you to a collection of poems by Ishigaki Rin called "Nameplates and Such." I first encountered her poems in an elementary school textbook, and was so moved by the poem "Shijimi" that I have never been able to forget the name "Ishigaki Rin."

-- Reciting the poem "Shijimi" for a while -- (A poem about how, late at night, a clam that has been soaked in water to remove sand makes the "Oni Baba laugh.")

Thinking back now, I was able to buy things from the supermarket and live normally, but I never had any sense of taking the life of a clam, for example. But this person was conscious of the fact that he was taking a life, and I think I was surprised by the world of the poem.

This also makes me stand up straight. It's not a New Year's resolution, but it's a phrase I want to keep in my heart.

I read the "Hyouge Mono" series that I had been meaning to read for a while. I ended up reading all the way through to the latest volume, volume 23, over the New Year holidays.

I started reading it after it was introduced on " This Manga is Amazing! " a few years ago, and according to Wikipedia it is "a historical manga that depicts the life of Furuta Oribe, a warlord who supported Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi during the Sengoku period."
The synopsis when it was published in a magazine introduced it as, "This is the story of Furuta Oribe, a warlord of the Sengoku period who struggles daily with the conflict and agony between his two desires: success and material things."

Furuta Oribe was a disciple of Sen no Rikyu, and after Rikyu was ordered to commit seppuku, he took over as the head tea master of the Toyotomi clan. Along the timeline of the Warring States period, the tastes of the times change from formal beauty to "kabuku," "suki," "wabi-sabi," and other "hyo-geru" that Oribe liked. The interactions and conflicts with the warlords of the Warring States period are skillfully depicted.

Last year's historical drama "Sanadamaru" was really interesting, so I thought I'd read Shotaro Ikenami's "Sanada Taiheiki" in one go over the New Year holidays, but then I remembered that it had been piling up. By the way, the way the characters are portrayed in "Sanada Taiheiki" and the drama "Sanadamaru" are very different. There is a famous manga called "Sou Ten Kouro" based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and it's interesting to see how the characters are portrayed differently when the perspective is different, even though it's the same story.
This New Year, I thought the images of the various warlords depicted in "Hyouge Mono" were interesting in their own way.

I brought along a copy of "In This Corner of the World," which has been made into a movie and is currently a hot topic. I also saw it twice at the cinema at the end of last year.
The original is a manga by Fumiyo Kono, which I read in one go while traveling back to Ehime at the beginning of the year. That's why I brought it with me as a New Year's book (laughs).

The story is set in Hiroshima over a period of 12 years, from 1934 to the end of the Pacific War. The story begins with the protagonist, Suzu-chan, a third or fourth grade elementary school student, going to deliver the seaweed she makes at home to a customer.
Even though she was still small, she had to carry a heavy package on her back to deliver it, and that's when she met her future husband, Shusaku.

Later, when Suzu was 19 years old, Shusaku found her and said, "I want to marry that girl I met that time," and he married her off to a place called Kure.
Kure was a naval port with a military shipyard, and was an area of Hiroshima that was particularly subject to frequent air raids. As rations were reduced and the people became poorer, Suzu-chan went about her daily life happily cooking with the few ingredients she had, making monpe work pants, and doing laundry.
It is a story in which the accumulation of everyday occurrences actually brings to light the strangeness of war.

What's interesting is that Suzu-chan is very good at drawing, and the world she sees is expressed so richly through her paintings.

For example, in a middle school sketching class, classmate Tetsu-kun sits on a hill overlooking the sea and refuses to go home without drawing a picture. His brother has just been killed in the war and he doesn't want to go home. So Suzu-chan draws for him, but in her field of vision, she sees the real Tetsu-kun as a character in the picture. It's really interesting to see how the world as seen by Suzu-chan is interpreted through her drawings.

Also, this might be a bit of a spoiler.
Suzu-chan and Harumi (my sister-in-law's daughter) were walking hand in hand near a time bomb that was dropped during an air raid, and they were blown away.
Harumi dies as a child, and Suzu-chan loses her right hand, but the flashback scene is depicted as an abstract inner world, and it's fantastical. The strange feeling of having your everyday life suddenly destroyed is conveyed powerfully through the picture.
Eventually, they gradually regain their normal lives, and it's amazing how resilient they are.

Although it seems like a comedy manga with a heartwarming, laughing protagonist living an ordinary life, there are some darker moments here and there.
The balance is very interesting.