Latvian comic strips arrive to Japan / "UZO"

Author - Kaspars Groševs

In Japan, where people read mangas more than newspapers, a healthy environment of alternative comic strips has been created in parallel with the popular mangas. One of the most beautiful publications of comic strips is UZO issued by Rokudai Tanaka since 2005. Its latest issue contains works by five Latvian artists.

The authors, whose works have been regularly published in kuš!, surprise the Japanese audience with a different approach to the medium of comic strips. Ingrīda Pičukāne offers a story, earlier published in the Slovenian magazine of comic strips Stripburger, about a sad potato that is looking for its love instrument. The comic strip by Anete Melece tells a traditionally depressive Latvian story about an old man who bakes cookies from tears. This story also echoes the situation in Japan. (Published also in Stripburger).

Oskars Pavlovskis, the well-known author of stories about ghastly monsters, has published his work previously included in the crazy Finnish Kutikuti. Mārtiņš Zutis is offering two comic strips – one of them, published in kuš!, tells readers about a rat which is always cheated by someone during a cards game. The second one is a new comic strip about dying kittens. Kaspars Groševs has created a special comic strip just for the Japanese UZO about the first concert of a duet of musicians in Tokyo.

In order to familiarise Japanese readers with the culture of the new Latvian comic strips, the last pages of the magazine contain a brief overview by Dāvids Šilters and Zane Zajančkauska about the short history of Latvian comic strips.

Works by foreign authors are not often published in Japan. Most probably because the country has its own excellent artists of comic strips who create their works for a living. Therefore surprise and pleasure are even greater, as so many works by Latvian authors have been published in one magazine. Rokudai Tanaka says that Latvian comic strips are very different from the style of Japanese mangas, therefore it is very exciting for the Japanese to read them.