Honjitsu mo Kyuushin

Mikawa is a doctor living in the mountains of the small Nasu village, his clinic is the smallest in all Japan and barely anyone comes to visit it. What he likes to do is to go fishing and taking a stroll which is why he often closes his little shack early and go wherever his feets may take him.

The series has Dr Mikawa accompanying the elderly to the afterlife, seeing some of the younger people go off to the big city or remembering events that happened to him in his early days in the village. Every chapter is episodic and while the format stays pretty simple all the way through, it's not to say it doesn't have its qualities: it does a good job at showing life in rural Japan and there are efforts to bring out its naturalistic side with the landscapes that are more detailed than the rest and bring a feeling of tranquility. One thing that's different compared to other similar slice of life series is that it's also rather crude concerning topics such as the sexual pulsions or graphical imagery of wounds and deaths but it ends up blending quite naturally into the overall narrative. There are a lot of chapters that made me think of Yoshiharu Tsuge with people living in complete autarky outside the norms of society and some others offering a glimpse into the life of mentally disabled and how they can be perceived in these remote areas, I also like because it is similar to another of Ishikawa Saburou's manga "Gabai" which is also about life in the countryside but this time through the eyes of a little boy in a time where Japan is only just recovering of WWII, they both manage to represent misery but in two completely different registers.

It's important to know that Honjitsu mo Kyuushin is based on stories written by Mikawa Taizan, a doctor who liked to visit small island and villages rather than the big cities and worked in the Nasu village for quite a time, just as the main character of this manga. He later reconverted into a writer and chronicled his experiences into books. This particular one was also adapted in a tv series in 1979, it has autobiographical elements into it but it's hard to tell which parts are real and which ones are fictional or if there are any changes between the different versions.

While it's probably not the most essential read, Honjitsu mo Kyuushin manages to be short and comfy and takes an approach that's pretty distinct from the rest of the production with characters that are easy to feel empathy with and exude a certain warmth as it is the case with most of Saburou Ishikawa works.