Hanami – You, Me, and 200 Sq Ft in Japan
Writer and Artist: Julia Cejas
Translator: Holly Aitchison
Publisher: Humanoids
It is easy for an autobiographical slice-of-life comic to go wrong. Make your story too specific and personal, it risks coming off as self-indulgent. Focusing on the mundane or unremarkable too closely, without mining drama or humor, you can end up with a boring slog. Hanami, by Spanish cartoonist Julia Cejas and published by Humanoids, avoids both of these pitfalls, making for a comforting, funny, and optimistic perspective on travel, finding home away from home, and struggling through the growing pains of living with a partner cooped up in a small space.
In Hanami, Julia Cejas recounts her six months living in Tokyo with her husband Marc. Flush with cash through a grant and a severance package from her husband’s civil engineering job, the couple decides to fulfill a lifelong dream to live in Japan, the home of their various inspirations in gaming, comics, and music. Throughout Hanami, Cejas recounts those six tightly-budgeted months with honesty, humor, and nostalgia.
Julia Cejas’s work in this comic is so enjoyable because it celebrates the joy of discovery and exploration without being precious or overly romantic about it. Culture clash is fodder for self-deprecating humor, and the small victories surrounding the ins and outs of everyday life in a foreign country (such as taking out the trash) are celebrated like the dramatic climax of a manga story. The artist’s comic timing and ability to construct a page are outstanding. The way she uses small panels to set up a gag and half a page for the punchline lets us as readers build anticipation through the rapid-fire setup and then bask in the sprawling dramatic moment. She constructs these absurdly inconsequential moments like a superhero artist would construct their big wham-bam fight scenes. The visuals are filled with homage and pastiche to Cejas’s influences, including Junji Ito and Hayao Miyazaki. The book avoids romanticizing the cultural differences, instead focusing on the couple’s personal foibles and joys.
Hanami is not broken down into chapters or even constructed with much of a narrative. Rather, it comprises various vignettes of Julia and Marc’s brief time in Tokyo. No scene is particularly long, and most scenes flow one into the next without much fanfare. It allows each moment to read like a standalone comic strip. As she jumps from one day to the next, you can almost feel the author trying to capture the memories as they blur together into an indistinguishable mass. The fleeting nature of time and memory is made tangible.
The art by Cejas is gorgeous. The softness of her lines and brushstrokes make the figures and the city of Tokyo inviting and approachable. The limited colors—mostly black, white, and gray tones accented with splashes of red throughout evoke the manga that inspires her. The presence of the red helps small, important details to pop off the page and by limiting the detailing to the colors of the Japanese flag, the artist embraces the nation that welcomed her for a brief time. Just as importantly, the varying shades of red–often nearly pink– evoke Japan’s iconic cherry blossoms. The book’s title is derived from the Japanese tradition of enjoying the brief blooming season of those cherry blossoms. The Hanami-mania, like the foliage mania that bears down on New England states in the US, is the subject of just one of the book’s vignettes. But the spirit of Hanami permeates the entire project. Hanami is a celebration of the fleeting beauty of the blossom season. In her Hanami, Julia Cejas revels in the fleeting beauty of her experience in Tokyo, inviting readers to join her in that joy of discovery and inspiration. It’s a touching reflection on treasuring brief, unremarkable moments in life and filling each with beauty and meaning.
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