Yoshio no Seishun, Betsuri

Yoshio no Seishun (Yoshio's Youth) and Betsuri (Parting) are seminal works by the avant-garde manga artist Tsuge Yoshiharu, primarily published in the influential literary manga magazine Garo during the late 1960s. These stories emerged from the gekiga movement, which shifted manga away from purely juvenile entertainment toward introspective, surreal, and deeply personal narratives that reflected the anxieties and disillusionment of postwar Japan.

Tsuge is widely recognized for his pioneering role in the watakushi-manga or 'I-manga' genre, where he utilized minimalist line work and haunting, dreamlike imagery to explore themes of alienation and memory. The design and narrative structure of these pieces were intentionally stripped of the embellishments common to the era's mainstream manga, prioritizing a raw, stream-of-consciousness aesthetic that earned him critical acclaim among intellectuals and helped redefine the artistic possibilities of the medium.