cover image Gold Pollen and Other Stories

Gold Pollen and Other Stories

Seiichi Hayashi, edited by Ryan Holmberg. Picturebox Inc., $27.50 (176p) ISBN 978-1-939799-07-4

Hayashi, a celebrated avant-garde Japanese cartoonist of the 1960s and ’70s, is given an introduction to English readers with this collection of some of his most notable work. Hayashi’s art is vivid and striking, colorful and bright, with a strong line that veers easily from the serious to the whimsical. His work is filled with fragments of adventure stories, myths, and personal memoir. Strange battles featuring robots, demons, and a masked man on horseback are spread across intricate pages, and also feature the occasional poetic aside, along with boatloads of erotic imagery. To a Western reader, these stories can be at times near incomprehensible, but thanks to editor Holmberg’s thorough and thoughtful analysis, the true scope of Hayashi’s work is revealed. His comics are full of references to Japanese folklore (including a giant skeleton), pop culture, and Japanese fascists like the infamous Ikka Kita. Mothers, especially Hayashi’s own mother, Momoko, are frequently mentioned, both in fascinated and frustrated terms. Holmberg also delves into Hayashi’s personal background, noting that Hayashi’s father and sister died in Manchuria in the waning days of World War II, giving readers a beautiful and fascinating window into another world of comics and culture. (Dec.)