Tetsuya Chiba is a major japanese artist, mainly known for his now cult series “Ashita no Joe”, that started his career over 60 years ago. Now retired, he only aspires for a quiet life but still receives some call from Big Comics asking him to make a new series. Reticent in the first place, he still ends up convinced to make Hinemosu Notaru Nikki, a 4 page autobiographical manga, when he hears that some of his old friends like Shigeru Mizuki and Fujiko A. Fujio were still active in the medium but mostly by the fact that his editor is a young and beautiful woman !

This title is basically separated into two distinct parts :
the first is about his childhood in Manchuria after the end of WWII and the defeat of Japan, his family get caught in the middle of the civil war and has to face persecution while trying to get back to Japan safely. As much as it is a serious topic, it never falls into misery porn and instead shows us the candid perspective of a child who can’t really process what is happening around him. As a 4 pages manga, the events are told in burst of memories but manages to be poignant nonetheless, from the time they had to eat his adopted rooster to survive, how his father left them, drafted by the army and how he perceived his return as a weakened man, the time where they had to hide in an attic for 3 whole weeks and was only able to draw to pass the time and entertain his younger brothers by making picture book, his time on the steamboats and on crowded trains where he saw some of his friends die in front of him ;all that to end on his return into his father’s birthplace, seeing the joy on his grandmother’s face to see them alive again.

“Here is a safe place where I don’t have to worry anymore did I tell myself while letting my spirit get completely relaxed. I was listening to the voices of adults, sometimes far, sometimes close, with an indescribable gentleness. Like that, we fell in a deep sleep… It had been so long”

The second part of it is set in present time and is more light-hearted. We see Shigeru Chiba being a simple old man and it is very refreshing to see him that way and destroys the myth of these legendary authors that are just like everyone. Some of these stories are just daily events like going to the hospital to take his pills, him taking the train or making food. But the most interesting parts are the ones where he gets reunited with his old friends like Takao Saito, Go Nagai, Jiro Tsunoda, Leiji Matsumoto, Fujiko A. Fujio and many others. From how he lived the death of Shigeru Mizuki and remembers his last moments with him, the commemoration of the death of Osamu Tezuka who was a major aspiration for him, to going golfing or going to the hot springs with them. And this in these parts that I think Hinemosu Notari Nikki is a must-read as it is touching and allows us to get a completely different side of the personality of these legendary artists who remains clouded in mystery and inaccessible for us : seeing Mizuki making fun of Chiba’s baldness or Saito showing off after making a hole-in-one is one of the best treats you could get after following these people for so long.