Very freely inspired by the “Journal of Anne Frank”, this manga is as subtle as it is overwhelming.
Born in 1980, the mangaka Machiko Kyō grew up with the fear of war, which she used to create cathartic books where her fragile line, sometimes barely sketched, make up the violence of her stories. For the overwhelming Cocoon, Posted in France last year and soon adapted in anime in Japan, she was inspired by the Himeyuri squadron, this group of 460 young girls from Okinawa sent to the front as nurses in 1945.
Hanako’s Journal turns out to be even more ambitious and poignant, since it is very free of Journal the Anne Frank, With a more vague and offbeat historical context: it is here a “new empire” which persecutes and eliminates the “oriental”. Obliged to hide above offices, Hanako’s family gets used to living a life as clandestine; As for the girl, she escapes by writing her diary and falling in love.
Precisely, the cutting of the boards, with very narrow boxes sometimes resembling a sigh, and the minimum representations of the decorations subtly reflect confinement, fear, paranoia. Even sweet and sleek, Machiko Kyō’s graphics do not lend the growing horror, and Hanako’s naivety in the last part is heartbreaking. The mangaka chooses in any case the camp of the oppressed, putting in the mouth of a character a sentence unfortunately timeless: “In times of crisis, when everything looks blocked, we bring the hat to the minorities.”
Hanako Vol’s journal. 1 by Machiko Kyō (Imho editions), translated from Japanese by Aurélien Estager, 216 p., 14 €. In bookstores.
