The Push Man and Other Stories (2005)

Yoshihiro Tatsumi coined the word gekiga for manga with grown-up subjects, and these stories from 1969 show why it needed a name. Each is a short, bleak snapshot of working-class Japan, built around companionship, self-worth and family, and the small magazine that ran them gave him only eight pages an issue. That compression works like good short fiction: stories end on an image rather than an explanation. Read a few at a time, though. The characters and situations repeat, and back to back the gloom can turn monotonous. Adrian Tomine edited and introduced this Drawn & Quarterly edition.