Ayako
Manga
奇子
1972/01/25
Character count80,087
Word count36,201
Unique words5,342
Words (1-occurrence)3,205
Unique kanji1,332
Kanji (1-occurrence)308
Difficulty beta
Hard
Volumes3

Opening a few years after the end of World War II and covering almost a quarter-century, here is comics master Osamu Tezuka’s most direct and sustained critique of Japan’s fate in the aftermath of total defeat. Unusually devoid of cartoon premises yet shot through with dark voyeuristic humor, Ayako looms as a pinnacle of Naturalist literature in Japan with few peers even in prose, the striking heroine a potent emblem of things left unseen following the war. The year is 1949. Crushed by the Allied Powers, occupied by General MacArthur’s armies, Japan has been experiencing massive change. Agricultural reform is dissolving large estates and redistributing plots to tenant farmers—terrible news, if you’re landowners like the archconservative Tenge family. For patriarch Sakuemon, the chagrin of one of his sons coming home alive from a P.O.W. camp instead of having died for the Emperor is topped only by the revelation that another of his is consorting with “the reds.” What solace does he have but his youngest Ayako, apple of his eye, at once daughter and granddaughter? (Source: Kodansha USA)

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Subdecks
Volume 1
Character count25,113
Word count11,292
Unique words2,827
Words (1-occurrence)1,775
Unique kanji911
Kanji (1-occurrence)308
Difficulty beta
Hard
Volume 2
Character count24,838
Word count11,077
Unique words2,858
Words (1-occurrence)1,828
Unique kanji959
Kanji (1-occurrence)344
Difficulty beta
Hard
Volume 3
Character count30,136
Word count13,832
Unique words3,222
Words (1-occurrence)2,044
Unique kanji1,011
Kanji (1-occurrence)333
Difficulty beta
Hard