Kamimura Kazuo (2009) Lorsque nous vivions ensemble (Bruxelles: Kana, 51)
Kazuo Kamimura, who died in 1986, is known primarily in the West for having co-created the ronin series Lady Snowblood. However, his Lorsque nous vivions ensemble (同棲時代, which could apparently be translated as “Cohabitation period” or “Living together”), published serially between 1972 and 1973, is a very different work, chronicling the love life of a couple of young artists, Kyôko and Jirô, in contemporary Japan. The work is romantic in tone, erotic at times, and often verges on the melodrama as the unmarried couple faces the reprobation of society and their families.
On page 51 of the second French volume, Kyôko is sitting in the psychoanalyst’s office after having experienced a serious anxiety attack. She is processing the analyst’s claim that she should leave Jirô or marry him, if she does not want to be “lost for good”. While the sexual politics of the passage and the analyst’s depiction would make for an interesting analysis, aligned with the general problematic of the melodrama, the graphical treatment of the last pages of the episode is what interests me here.
The two panels on page 51 are very similar, displaying Kamimura’s technique of placing characters delineated in thick but supple brush strokes in front overtly geometrical backgrounds. The caption boxes contain Kyôko’s internal monologue, and read “Lost”/”I’ll be lost”. They are vertically aligned and serve to anchor a general vertical downward movement through the page. This downward movement also leads us to comparing the two versions of Kyôko, and the change in her position as she bows her head to cry, also echoes this movement.
The rain seen through the window seems at first designed to block out part of the space within each panel, in order to emphasize Kyôko’s isolation. The storm itself is a romantic cliché, conveniently apt to stand either for the psychoanalyst’s wrath or for Kyôko’s inner landscape. The banality of the symbol and its unappealing graphical representation (while the book contains some stunning landscapes) do draw the attention toward Kyôko’s figure. However, the rain is also a part of the general downward vertical movement, as the erratic rain lines of the first panel cohere into an array of vertical lines in the second one.
Kamimura, Kazuo (2009) Lorsque nous vivions ensemble (Bruxelles: Kana, 52-3)
After the page break, this verticality is taken to its limit, as the following two pages contain nothing but vertical lines. Although it is entirely abstract, the rain is understood as such because of its inscription within a sequence. However, the image is so dense, so simple and so unfamiliar that it cannot be reduced at once to its narrative function. It creates a visual shock, coinciding with a sudden change in the mode of representation and with a reversal of the graphical hierarchies established in the previous page. Since the rain is aligned with the fold, the very notion of a sequence is cast in doubt, as there is no way for the reader to determine whether the pages contain one or two panels. Kyôko’s fear of getting lost is thus realized as even the narrative framework dissolves.
In a way, this is exemplar of what is achieved in Lorsque nous vivions ensemble, as Kamimura relies on established symbolism (winter/spring, the animals as metonymy, the sea as a repository of memories) used without irony. The numerous graphical disjunctions call the reader’s attention to these symbolic moments, but their treatment is in most cases efficient and striking enough to restore the efficiency of the clichés.
In this case, the disruption of ordinary perception can only be likened to Kant’s notion of going beyond beauty to attain the sublime, a notion closely associated with austerity. Kant’s words apply both the dryness of the graphical representation in these two pages, but also to the elating shock which they bring about:
[The feeling of the sublime] is a pleasure that arises only indirectly; viz, it is produced by the feeling of a momentary checking of the vital powers and a consequent stronger overflow of them […] Hence it is incompatible with charms; and as the mind is not merely attracted by the object but is ever being alternately repelled, the satisfaction in the sublime does not so much involve a positive pleasure as admiration or respect, which rather deserves to be called negative pleasure. (Kant, 2007 §23: 61-62)
Indeed, the reading of this passage yields this kind of negative pleasure, as one of the main charms of Kimamura’s graphical work, his treatment of the human figure, is temporarily displaced by an abstract yet awe-inspiring rain.
The scene does not end there. Having recovered from the shock, the reader is invited to literally cross the rain, following a horizontal trajectory from the right-hand caption to the left-hand one.“Kyôko was convinced that Jirô, nice as he was, would come to fetch her.” /“She thought she glimpsed his figure through the rain.” The text thus invites the reader to peer through the abstract verticality in order to catch a glimpse of Jirô as well, but to no avail.
Kamimura, Kazuo (2009) Lorsque nous vivions ensemble (Bruxelles: Kana, 54-5)
Only after another page-break are narrativity and denotation reestablished. In these last two pages of the episode, the panel borders are reestablished, and Kyôko is again the graphical focus. The word balloon is located in the top-right corner, where the reading of the page starts, and the reader is thus treated to a series of comforting narrative devices (panel border, balloon, text), which confirm that Kimamura’s aim is not to replicate the shock effect.“I don’t care if I’m lost, Jirô.”
Significantly, the trajectory from the ballon to Kyôko is roughly vertical and the reader’s gaze flows down with the rain instead of crossing it horizontally. A sense of reconciliation is thus inscribed in the structure of the page, mirroring once more Kyôko’s state of mind.
The very last page, however, qualifies this optimism, as the reader’s gaze wanders through the abstract rain, contained within the panel border, yet carrying echoes of the narrative shock of the previous pages.
REFERENCES
Kant, I. (2007) Critique of Judgment (trad. John Henry Bernard) (New York: Cosimo)
Kamimura, K.(2009) Lorsque nous vivions ensemble (Bruxelles: Kana)
I really enjoyed this post, Nicolas. It’s great to see your work featured here!