Blue Spring (2004)

Seven short stories about high school boys with too much time and nothing to lose: petty delinquency, fights that go nowhere and a dangerous game played on a school rooftop. This is early Matsumoto, before the big cities and the big casts, and the line is at its rawest and most restless, which suits the material. It is the bleakest book here and the one to read once you already like him, because it shows the anger underneath the warmth of his later work. Viz's English paperback came out around the end of 2004, so a secondhand copy may be the easiest route.