Sakura Namiki

Sakura Namiki (さくら並木) is a S romance shōjo manga by Macoto Takahashi, published in 1957 for the kashihon market. Takahashi is regarded as the most influential shōjo mangaka during the 1950s decade thank to his stylistic contributions; Sakura Namiki may not be his most notable manga, but it is his most accessible one for non-Japanese readers. Nonetheless, this manga should be of interest to people who enjoy shōjo manga, yuri manga, or simply fine comics.

For people who don't know, S stories were the ancestors to modern yuri stories, about relationships between girls not quite romantic but far stronger than close friendship. A S relationship is an exclusive and intimate relationship between two girls, who become "sisters" ("S" stands for "sister"); if there is usually no kiss shared, it follows the same dynamic than romantic relationships, with dates, love-triangles, jealousy, et cætera. This genre was popular in shōjo fictions during the first half of the 20th century, but it declined steadily during the 1950s and 1960s decades; it is nowadays an anecdotal subgenre of yuri fictions.

#Context
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Macoto Takahashi, beside being a mangaka, is a famous illustrator. He started at age 19 to draw manga in 1953 with works such as Dorei no ōjo (奴隷の王女) or Akai kutsu (赤い靴). Most of his works were for the shōjo market, both rental (akahon, then kashihon) and magazine markets, although he did contribute a little to the gekiga scene too, with some stories inside the magazine Kage. I am not sure when exactly he stopped to draw shōjo manga; the last traces of his story-works I managed to find are in 1970 inside magazines like Shōjo Comic or Shōjo Friend; he thereafter focused on illustrations only for the rest of his life.
According to manga scholars, his most influential works were made a little after Sakura Namiki, published in Kōbunsha’s magazine Shōjo with ballet manga such as Arashi o koete (あらしをこえて) in 1958 or Petit rat (プチ・ラ) in 1961 for example.

Takahashi was heavily influenced by the jojōga illustrator called Jun'ichi Nakahara, famous for his illustrations inside pre-war shōjo magazines, full of flowery S stories.

Illustration by Jun'ichi Nakahara, in magazine Shōjo no tomo, 1937.

According to the author, Sakura Namiki was specifically conceived as a tribute to Nakahara's world, most notably to Nakahara's own (postwar) shōjo magazines tilted Himawari and Junia soreiyu.

#The manga
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Yukiko (right), Maki (center) & Ayako (left).

Macoto Takahashi's manga aren't known for their complex stories; Sakura Namiki features a simple and straightforward love-triangle inside a girls' school table tennis club: Yukiko, the protagonist, is in love with Maki, but Ayako is jealous and spreads mean rumors about Yukiko in an attempt to discredit her in the eyes of Maki. After some slight drama and a flashback, Yukiko eventually manages to clear the misunderstanding with Maki, and the story reach an happy ending with Yukiko and Maki being together.

Really, it is a simple, innocent, sentimental and almost nostalgic story, with nothing much happening; a gentle echo of a shōjo era slowly fading away. It is the art and storytelling which makes this manga standing out; Takahashi is an illustrator after all.

Beside manga and standalone illustrations, Takahashi drew emonogatari, a form of picture story that was popular in the 1950-60s decades: Sakura Namiki starting pages are pure emonogatari, they serve at establishing an atmosphere and a setting for the manga. Whereas when the story properly starts, the narration switches to a more conventional manga grammar. But even then, the storytelling relies heavily on an external narrator, while the frames are large and feel very much like illustrations, the fact that Takahashi signs some of them tells this much. In addition, the frames contains a lot of non-naturalist elements with decorative and emotional elements such as backgrounds, shadows, stars, flowers, musical notes and mental images; frequently the scenery is not drawn and the characters are symbolically laid out within the frame. The page composition is also quite dynamic with a lot of white spaces, diagonal lines and few unframed panels and layering.

In short, we see the nascent stylistic conventions of shōjo manga; it is not polished yet, but it is still quite beautiful and skillfully executed.

The character designs are in the direct lineage of jojōga stylistic conventions: they are pretty, tall and slender, with big and detailed eyes, cute clothes and stylish hairstyles. Everything is done to transport the reader in a dream-world rather than trying to depict the real world. This manga is in a quite interesting position inside shōjo history: with its setting and its S story-line, it provides a fond glimpse of prewar shōjo culture. While at the same time it foreshadows the direct future of shōjo manga, both thematically with the big focus on a ballet scene, and stylistically, where we start to see the character design and the decorative and emotional elements that will give shōjo manga its identity.

Takahashi will continue to develop his style in the following years, joined by other mangaka like for example Miyako Maki or Eiko Hanamura, for laying the foundations of shōjo manga stylistic.