Border Town by Hillel Wright (Printed Matter Press)

The popularity of Japanese animation has grown exponentially since the time of Speed Racer and Marine Boy. Thanks to movies released by Studio Ghibli and directors Hayao Miyazaki, Makoto Shinkai, and Mamoru Hosada, the movies have not only helped the animation industry but the manga industry as well. Hillel Wright uses manga as a backdrop to his story which focuses on the life and loves of the fictional manga artist.

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Border Town revolves around the wife of a character only referred to as the Old Man who is currently in his fifties. Ten years ago he married a Japanese woman twenty years his junior. The couple met while the woman was studying massage therapy in Seattle. Together, they moved to Japan where they have been living for the last twenty years. They have a young son named Ichiro who is now seven-years old. 

The Old Man’s wife is Fumie Akahoshi. She worked as a massage therapist in a small clinic in Shin Maruko, a small town in Kanagawa Prefecture located along the bank of the Tamagawa River. Although she was making a decent living, her real passion was art. She was happiest when she was drawing. 

Fumie becomes a famous manga artist after creating her masterpiece Chibi Hanako-chan. She started the manga as “her own private satirical war against the abuses of public trust perpetuated by charlatans in the ‘massage” business when a young masseuse, increasingly forced into more and more explicitly sexual acts at work, takes over the business from her quack of a boss, who she turns into her sex-slave and object of constant humiliation”. 

Fumie feels there are only so many corrupt massage parlors she can write about and has her character Chibi Hanako-chan evolve into “a kind of free-lance Erin Brokovich”. Her books shows Hana Chibiko-chan “taking on a panoply of Japanese social types - corrupt politicians, subway rush-hour gropers and grabbers, crooked business executives, doping athlete heroes, militarist goons, gay male fashion czars” and more. 

Fumie becomes even more famous than her husband who had gained fame by creating and writing a series titled We’re No Angels which he based on the Five Book of Moses. Fumie’s manga is adapted into an anime series and a full-length feature film, and later Chibi Hanako-chan becomes a video game character. 

The book that finally gets her in trouble is when she satirizes the entire Imperial family including the Emperor himself. The story angers many right wing militants who hire a yakuza assassin to terminate her. We follow Fumie as she stays one step ahead of the assassins and finds more romance abroad even though her life is in danger.  

Border Town has all the elements of a love story gone amok. Wright writes with a rye sense of humor. His story is full of craziness and absurdity with a good dose of realism to keep you interested in how all the characters are interrelated. If you love Japanese manga, have a twisted sense of humor and enjoy books by Tom Robbins or Thomas Pynchon, Border Town will be right up your alley. ~Ernie Hoyt