For Kamigami no itadaki, he hiked to Kathmandu, Nepal for research. He later received awards at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 20. He illustrated Baku Yumemakura’s works, Garouden from 1989 to 1990 and Kamigami no itadaki ( The Summit of the Gods) from 2000 to 2003. In the 1990s, he came up with several albums, among which were Aruku Hito ( 歩くひと), Chichi no Koyomi ( 父の暦), and Hitobito Shirīzu: Keyaki no Ki ( 人びとシリーズ「けやきのき」).įrom 1980 to 1983, he collaborated with Garon Tsuchiya for the manga Blue Fighter ( 青の戦士, Ao no Senshi ), Knuckle Wars ( ナックル・ウォーズ, Nakkuru Wōzu) and Live! Odyssey ( LIVE! オデッセイ). From 1987 to 1996, Taniguchi and Natsuo Sekigawa produced the 5-volume series Botchan no Jidai. He made his manga debut in 1970 with Kareta Heya (A Desiccated Summer), published in the magazine Young Comic.įrom 1978 to 1986, he created several hard-boiled comics with the scenarist Natsuo Sekigawa, such as City Without Defense, The Wind of the West is White and Lindo 3. Taniguchi began his career as an assistant of manga artist Kyuuta Ishikawa. Anstey's 'Vice Versa: A Lesson to Fathers' and 1733 for the time-travel of Samuel Madden's 'Memoirs of the Twentieth Century'.Extract from Aruku Hito ( The Walking Man) The body-swap and time-travel themes made me wonder about how long those have existed as fiction genres and I was surprised to find that it is as early as 1882 for the body-swap of F. I hope to track down further Taniguchi and I see that his 'Guardians of the Louvre' (Original Japanese 2014, English 2016) is another recent work that is available in translation. However the lack of colour didn't detract from the story itself. It was slightly disappointing that only a few initial pages were colourized, as Taniguchi's cityscapes and landscapes really come alive when painted in.

I enjoyed 'A Distant Neighbourhood' for its inventive multi-timeline story. Knowing the future as he does he has to choose whether to influence the path that a new timeline's future will take. 'A Distant Neighbourhood' is a combined body-swap & time travel story with a 40-some year-old man being catapulted back in time to his 16-year-old body but with his future memories intact. Taniguchi was knighted as a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts & Letters) in 2011. The French edition of 'A Distant Neighbourhood' titled 'Quartier lointain' seems to be the dominant one in print and the French certainly took Taniguchi to heart as the initial French publication in 2-parts was made in 2002/3 and a French film version was made in 2010. I first came across his gorgeous memoir-like 'Venice' (original 2014, English 2017) and then found that 'A Distant Neighbourhood' (originally from 1998/99 in Japanese) was also available in English translation. Jirō Taniguchi (1947-2017) had an almost-50-year career as a manga artist and writer but has only recently begun to be published in English translation.

Quartier lointain by Jirō Taniguchi