• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Comment Policy
    • Disclosures & Disclaimers
  • Resources
    • Links, Essays & Articles
    • Fandomology!
    • CLAMP Directory
    • BlogRoll
  • Features & Columns
    • 3 Things Thursday
    • Adventures in the Key of Shoujo
    • Bit & Blips (game reviews)
    • BL BOOKRACK
    • Bookshelf Briefs
    • Bringing the Drama
    • Comic Conversion
    • Fanservice Friday
    • Going Digital
    • It Came From the Sinosphere
    • License This!
    • Magazine no Mori
    • My Week in Manga
    • OFF THE SHELF
    • Not By Manga Alone
    • PICK OF THE WEEK
    • Subtitles & Sensibility
    • Weekly Shonen Jump Recaps
  • Manga Moveable Feast
    • MMF Full Archive
    • Yun Kouga
    • CLAMP
    • Shojo Beat
    • Osamu Tezuka
    • Sailor Moon
    • Fruits Basket
    • Takehiko Inoue
    • Wild Adapter
    • One Piece
    • After School Nightmare
    • Karakuri Odette
    • Paradise Kiss
    • The Color Trilogy
    • To Terra…
    • Sexy Voice & Robo
  • Browse by Author
    • Sean Gaffney
    • Anna Neatrour
    • Michelle Smith
    • Katherine Dacey
    • MJ
    • Brigid Alverson
    • Travis Anderson
    • Phillip Anthony
    • Derek Bown
    • Jaci Dahlvang
    • Angela Eastman
    • Erica Friedman
    • Sara K.
    • Megan Purdy
    • Emily Snodgrass
    • Nancy Thistlethwaite
    • Eva Volin
    • David Welsh
  • MB Blogs
    • A Case Suitable For Treatment
    • Experiments in Manga
    • MangaBlog
    • The Manga Critic
    • Manga Report
    • Soliloquy in Blue
    • Manga Curmudgeon (archive)

Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

July 9, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

Swallowing the Earth

swallowingearthcoverNineteen sixty-eight was a critical year in Osamu Tezuka’s artistic development. Best known as the creator of Astro Boy, Jungle Emperor Leo, and Princess Knight, the public viewed Tezuka primarily as a children’s author. That assessment of Tezuka wasn’t entirely warranted; he had, in fact, made several forays into serious literature with adaptations of Manon Lescaut (1947), Faust (1950), and Crime and Punishment (1953). None of these works had made a lasting impression, however, so in 1968, as gekiga was gaining more traction with adult readers, Tezuka adopted a different tact, writing a dark, erotic story for Big Comic magazine: Swallowing the Earth.

Like MW (1976-78), which was also serialized in Big Comic, Swallowing the Earth is an overripe, overstuffed period piece that’s both entertaining and frustrating for modern readers. The basic plot is simple: seven beautiful young women seek to avenge the untimely death of their mother by wrecking havoc on the political, social, and economic systems that robbed Zephryus of her money and her home. The only thing standing in their way is Gohonmatsu, a perpetually drunken longshoreman who’s immune to their charms.

Tezuka’s presentation of the story, however, is anything but straightforward, as he employs flashbacks, subplots, and red herrings galore to sustain the reader’s interest. Some of these gambits are so ridiculous and nervy they work. Zephyrus’ daughters, for example, team up with a female scientist to produce Dermoid Z, a synthetic skin that can completely transform a person’s appearance. From a manga-ka’s standpoint, Dermoid Z is a brilliant device, as it allows him to plausibly conceal his characters’ identities from the reader and the other actors in the drama, giving him latitude to do just about anything.

Other gambits flat fall, as they rely on outdated notions of gender and race for their dramatic impact. When Dermoid Z arrives in the United States, for example, African-Americans begin buying white “skins” in vast quantities, donning them to commit crimes, enjoy privileges that had been denied them, and exact retribution on their oppressors. White retaliation is swift and brutal, plunging American cities into a race war that destroys the very fabric of society. Lacking a deep understanding of American history, or the underlying causes of the 1968 riots that erupted after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, Tezuka’s subplot feels like a crude attempt to be topical. He’s grasped the basic injustice of segregation, yet he never humanizes his black characters; they remain a violent, faceless mob throughout this unfortunate episode.

Tezuka’s treatment of women is likewise muddled. He clearly recognizes that men have treated women as property throughout human history, a point he illustrates both through Zephryus’ story (which unfolds in Nazi-occupied France) and through an interlude in the South Seas, where a tribal chief barters with Gohonmatsu for a downed airplane, offering his two daughters in exchange for the machine. Yet Tezuka’s own notions of female sexuality frequently undermine his critique of male privilege. He depicts Gohonmatsu’s South Seas brides as sexual grotesques, with bodies as roundly deformed as the Venus of Willendorf’s and libidos that verge on nymphomania. Women from the developed world don’t fare much better, as Tezuka neatly divides them into two camps: man-hating hysterics (e.g. Zephyrus’ daughters) and tormented victims (e.g. a beautiful aphasiac who lost her ability to speak after she was raped).

However dated Swallowing the Earth‘s racial and sexual politics may be, it’s hard to deny the sheer exuberance of Tezuka’s artwork. His imagination yields some stunning — and stunningly weird — images. Zephyrus’ palace, in particular, is a marvelous creation, an Art Deco ziggeraut filled with enormous cat statues that look like they were swiped from Cleopatra’s tomb. Tezuka frequently experiments with the layout, varying the shape of the panels to suit the pace and intensity of the action, or to suggest the simultaneity of two events. One of the best examples occurs early in the story, when Gohonmatsu duels a handsome Spanish count on the deck of a tugboat:

fightscene

Tezuka uses diagonal panels to mimic the rocking motion of a ship anchored in choppy water. The shape of the panels also demonstrate just how difficult it is for both characters to find their footing on the slippery deck — a small but tricky detail that isn’t easy to capture in a static image.

In an excellent companion essay to the English-language edition, manga scholar Frederick Schodt acknowledges Swallowing the Earth‘s myriad flaws — its surfeit of plotlines, its racial caricatures — while celebrating the almost anarchic way in which the story unfolds. He encourages readers to enjoy Earth as a “wild ride” and a window into a critical period in Tezuka’s development, showing us “how he began to make the transition from a children’s artist to someone who could push the manga medium in every genre, even for adult readers.” It’s in this spirit that I recommend Swallowing the Earth, as testament to Tezuka’s fertile imagination, and his ability to grow as an artist and a storyteller.

SWALLOWING THE EARTH • BY OSAMU TEZUKA • DMP • 516 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Share this:

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Reddit
  • Tumblr
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

Filed Under: Manga Critic Tagged With: Classic, DMP, Osamu Tezuka

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Laura says

    July 11, 2009 at 10:24 am

    I just love the layout, look, and organization of your site Katherine!

    There’s something for you on my blog ….

  2. derekpm says

    July 12, 2009 at 6:43 pm

    Rather interesting. Has few times re-read for this purpose to remember. Thanks for interesting article. Waiting for trackback

Trackbacks

  1. Liev Schreiber » Kaspersky Lab says:
    July 10, 2009 at 4:21 am

    […] The Manga Critic » Blog Archive » Swallowing the Earth […]

  2. Where the boys (and girls) are « MangaBlog says:
    July 10, 2009 at 7:23 am

    […] on vol. 1 of Sarasah (Kuriousity) Brad Rice on Sayonara, Mr. Fatty (Japanator) Kate Dacey on Swallowing the Earth (The Manga Critic) Lorena on vol. 2 of With the Light (i heart manga) Connie on vol. 1 of […]

  3. Picks for Right Stuf’s DMP Sale! | Manga Bookshelf says:
    October 21, 2009 at 11:13 am

    […] they were/are highly anticipated releases, and not just by me. Kate Dacey, in her review of Swallowing the Earth outlines beautifully both what is great and problematic in the Tezuka classic, ultimately […]

  4. The Manga Critic » Blog Archive » Review Redux: MW says:
    March 1, 2010 at 10:18 pm

    […] a boy at the time of their first encounter. Similar stereotypes abound in Apollo’s Song and Swallowing the Earth, yet in MW, Tezuka’s decision to focus exclusively on the problems of Japanese society […]

  5. The Manga Critic » Blog Archive » Manga Movable Feast: Andromeda Stories, Vols. 1-3 says:
    May 31, 2010 at 12:09 pm

    […] a secure perch. It’s a technique that Tezuka perfected in works like MW, Ode to Kirihito, and Swallowing the Earth, where he gooses very basic components of the layout — especially panel shapes — to […]

  6. Osamu Tezuka Appreciation Week « The Manga Critic says:
    December 14, 2010 at 7:00 pm

    […] Swallowing the Earth […]

  7. Review Redux: MW says:
    December 27, 2011 at 2:59 pm

    […] and Yuki a boy at the time of their first encounter. Similar issues dog Apollo’s Song and Swallowing the Earth, yet in MW, Tezuka’s decision to focus exclusively on the problems of Japanese society […]

  8. PR: Kickstart the Publication of Osamu Tezuka’s Barbara says:
    January 15, 2012 at 1:40 pm

    […] to use Kickstarter. Their project: raising funds for a new edition of Osamu Tezuka’s Swallowing the Earth, which quickly went out of print after it was published in 2009. Though manga pundits debated the […]



Before leaving a comment at Manga Bookshelf, please read our Comment Policy.

 | Log in
Copyright © 2010 Manga Bookshelf | Powered by WordPress & the Genesis Framework
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.