Product details
- ISBN 9781419786297
- Dimensions: 149 x 210mm
- Publication Date: 26 Nov 2026
- Publisher: Abrams
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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From award-winning author who manga-adapted Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs comes a quirky poetic literary drama. Meet Forrest Gump, if he were a bearded carpenter! Follow a clumsily gruff carpenter’s attempt to keep his family business afloat amidst a romance with a childhood friend
After a fire burns down his family business and claims the lives of his parents, the young heir and master carpenter Shigetsugu vows to rebuild the failing venture with his late father’s words in mind: “No matter how things change, there are two things people value the most . . . compassion and stubborn pride.”
And then Ritsu, a housemaid with no relatives to rely on, comes rolling into his life with a group of children from a welfare facility who have nowhere to go, thus begins the dramatic last-ditch way-of-life story of a shaggily bearded carpenter!
This bold and ambitious reinterpretation of Shugoro Yamamoto’s classic historical novel Chiisakobee is brought to life with the full flourish of Minetaro Mochizuki’s bohemian brush!
Minetaro Mochizuki is a prolific, celebrated manga author-illustrator known for manga titles Dragon Head, Zashiki Onna, and the manga adaptation of the Wes Anderson film Isle of Dogs. His works Bataashi Kingyo, Dragon Head, and Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl have been adapted into pulp films. He received a Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize Award for Excellence, Award for General Manga at the 21st Kodansha Manga Award, and for Chiisakobee, he received an Excellence Award at the 17th Japan Media Arts Festival in 2013 and the prestigious Fauve D’Angoulême: Prix de la Série at the 2017 Angoulême International Comics Festival. He cites heta-uma styles as an influence and follows the cult legacy of popular alternative-manga magazine Garo. Mochizuki’s own distinct New Wave style has had profound influence on manga authors succeeding him. He is an avant-garde trendsetter in the manga world. Shimizu Satomu, better known by the pen name Shugoro Yamamoto, is a Japanese novelist and short-story writer prolific during the Showa period of Japan. Despite the Yamamoto Shugoro Prize being named after him, he modestly refused prestige in his lifetime, noting that his writing for a popular audience should not be considered literature. His works may be known for adaptation such as the Akira Kurosawa film Sanjuro, an adaptation of the short story Nichinichi hei-an (Peaceful Days), and Dodes’ka-den, an adaptation of the book Kisetsu no nai machi (The Town Without Seasons). Cult director Takashi Miike also adapted the novel Sabu into a film.
