By Kanta Ishida / Yomiuri Shimbun Senior Writer
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The manga this week
Oya-san to Boku (My landlady and me)
By Taro Yabe (Shinchosha)
Comedian Naoki Matayoshi won the Akutagawa Prize for literature for his first novel. More recently, Taro Yabe, also a comedian, won the short manga award of the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize, which is almost equivalent to the Akutagawa Prize in the world of manga, for his first published work. An incredible feat for Yoshimoto Kogyo Co., the entertainment agency to which these two comedians belong.
I knew that Yabe’s manga, “Oya-san to Boku” (My landlady and me), had sold well since it was published in October 2017. I chose to ignore it because I thought it would have been a waste of time and money if it was not entertaining. And even if it was a good read, that would have been somewhat irritating, too, because Yabe’s current profession is stand-up comedian, yet he managed to win a manga award on his first attempt. However, I was no longer able to overlook it after it won the Tezuka prize. And I was indeed very irritated.
The protagonist is an obscure comedian who is not a confident public speaker. He rents a second-floor section of a house where an 86-year-old lady lives by herself. The landlady appears to have been born into a wealthy family. She is elegant with a polite demeanor, but has some idiosyncratic tendencies. The lodger and landlady gradually get to know each other, building up a relationship akin to family, and sometimes even like a loving couple. (261 words)
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