Media Release -- Takashi Murakami (not to be confused with another artist with the exact same name) toiled comfortably for many years as a humor manga artist. One day he decided he'd had enough and needed to tell a full length story about a man who has not fully kept up with society's rapid pace of change and how it sidelines him brutally as a result.
What happened next was unexpected: he hit a deep nerve with frazzled, stressed out Japanese and his graphic novel, Stargazing Dog, became a smash bestseller with over 560,000 sales and a movie that opened this summer.
Daddy is that main character in this remarkably simple, unassuming and yet very poignant little manga.
He is down and out, his wife has left him, his daughter rebellious, he's even been laid off. And so, suddenly even homeless, he decides to take off to wherever.
As Murakami explains in the back of the book: "As a going-away gift for Daddy's journey, I tailor-designed a lovely road trip on the coastline and a wonderful partner to go along with it. Without calculation or ulterior motive, the dog loves him with such pure earnestness it puts us humans to shame."
And it is this very element that makes this story so compelling. Dogs are indeed the most unquestioningly loyal of our pets. Daddy at least has his stargazing dog, one who looks to the heavens wistfully, innocent devotion his only key in life.
The story is craftily divided in two. The 1st part tells of Daddy's journey as 'narrated' by the innocent Dog. The 2nd narrates the point of view of a social worker who must investigate what happened to him. He himself has vivid memories of his dog when he was young and how he took his devotion for granted, even found it somewhat pathetic after a while. As we see him working his way through Daddy's story, his last recollection of his own dog on its last leg, playful and devoted to the last, haunts him.
This is about innocence in front of a cruel world and the Dog is cathartic.
6x9, 128pp., B&W trade pb., $11.99, ISBN 918-1-56163-612-9, publication: November '11.
