Review: ONWARD TOWARDS OUR NOBLE DEATHS

 Of course, sometimes historical manga is made to record actual history (or at least a somewhat fictionalized version of it) straight from the source.  Shigeru Mizuki made many manga like that over his lifetime, but few were as personal to the man as this.

ONWARD TOWARDS OUR NOBLE DEATHS (Soin Gyokusai Seyo!), by Shigeru Mizuki.  First published in 1973 and first published in North America in 2011.

PLOT:

In 1944, a faction of the Imperial Japanese Army is sent to New Britian, a tiny island off the coast of Papua New Guinea.  They are meant to repel Allied forces, but instead their days are mostly filled with a regular routine of starvation, tropical disease, and abuse from their superior officers.  Eventually, one of the captains insists that the unit perform a suicidal march to the coast to save face, even if doing so comes at the expense of the soldiers themselves.

STORY:

It's easy to find manga where the moral is 'war is bad,' delivered in varying degrees of quality and grace.  Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths has a slightly more novel take on things, though.  It's written not from the perspective of the post-war generations but from someone who experienced the war first-hand.

With the exception of the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan doesn't like to discuss World War II in its media.  For many who survived, it was a time that was simply too traumatic and shameful to reflect upon.  The only thing that Japanese media dislikes more than discussing WWII is critiquing it in any fashion, thanks to a right-wing contingent that continues to make this a hot-button topic.  That's part of what makes Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths so unique.  Mizuki chronicled a barely fictionalized part of his life (a later author's note describes it "90% true") and he harbors absolutely no illusions about it.

In Mizuki's retelling, the Pacific theater isn't a glorious battle but instead a cycle of hunger and boredom, punctuated only with regular beatings by their commanders and the occasional burst of bombings.  Mizuki and his fellow soldiers are portrayed as just ordinary schmucks trying to survive.  Meanwhile, the officers are shown to be motivated less by sensible, real-world military tactics and more by a toxic combination of fascist propaganda, antiquated upper-class notions of nobility and honor, and a desperate need to prove their usefulness to their own bosses.  This presentation is incredibly effective, though.  It demonstrates both the terror and futility of the war, not in word but in action.

ART:

Like most of Mizuki's works, the artwork here is a combination of child-like caricature and gritty realism.  The characters are squiggly caricatures, but all of them are distinct.  Even if you can't keep track of all the names, it's easy to distinguish between characters visually.  Of course, it also helps that Mizuki provides a quick reference guide of each soldier and officer portrayed.  In comparison, the lush jungles of New Britain and the few glimpses we see of the Allied forces are loaded with detail and shadow, to the point I wondered if they were rotoscoped.  You'd think such a combination would mix like oil and water, but Mizuki makes it work well.  It also helps that Drawn & Quarterly published this in a large format to better show it off.

PRESENTATION:

There's an excellent essay up front by noted scholar and translator Frederick Schodt that not only serves as a cursory biography of Shigeru Mizuki as well as providing context about this particular portion of World War II.  There's also an afterward from Mizuki himself, along with a Q&A.

RATING:

Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths isn't the sort of anti-war story that feels the need to preach to its audience.  Instead it portrays the horror and mendacity of war in a matter-of-fact and humanizing way, getting the message across in just as effectively.

This book is published by Drawn & Quarterly.  It is currently in print.