Anxiety and longing suffuse incisive portraits of postwar Japan
Nazuna Saito began making comics late. She was in her forties when she submitted a story to a major Japanese publishing house and won an award for newcomers. She continued to work through the 1990s until she stopped drawing to take care of her ailing parents. In her sixties, she took a job teaching drawing at Kyoto Seika University and became inspired by her talented students. When she returned to teaching, her storytelling interests had shifted. Before suffering a stroke she drew -In Captivity- (2012) and -Solitary Death Building- (2015)-both focused on aging and death. Offshore Lightning collects Saito-s early work as well as these two recent graphic novellas.
Stories like -Buy Dog Food and Go Home- and -Offshore Lightning- focus on middle-aged men caught in a cycle of self pity and self reflection. Saito gently pokes fun at their anguish and self-involvement while capturing the pathos of t
