A massive, 1200 page anthology gathering one-shots from every Garo mangaka up until 1984.

It is 1969, and famed artist Seiichi Hayashi has decided that his comics, having flirted with pop, need some heart and soul. He turns to the moody graphics of old kashihon gekiga and the sentiments of Japanese enka blues. "Because of you, my long life will be withered with frost. This fading shadow of an empty shell … our love." So laments the heart-broken bar hostess of Flowering Harbour, one of the classic works of the legendary alternative manga magazine Garo.

Seiichi Hayashi was a leading figure in the hotbed of avant-garde artistic production of 1960s and early 70s Tokyo. He is best known for his lyrical and experimental manga for Garo, the famous alternative comics magazine. This volume collects a selection of Hayashi’s most important manga from this period, including Red Dragonfly and Gold Pollen. Published here in their original full color, these stories mix traditional Japanese aesthetics with Pop art sensibilities, and range in topic from the legacies of Japanese rightwing nationalism and World War II, to the pervasive influence of America over 1960s Japanese youth culture. This first color reprinting of Hayashi’s work captures the vivid experimentation of Japanese art at this time. In addition, Hayashi’s youth and beginnings as an artist are illuminated by an autobiographical essay from 1972, translated here for the first time into English. Art historian Ryan Holmberg discusses Hayashi’s place in postwar Japanese art and manga, as well as his wider contributions to the Tokyo avant-garde as a designer and experimental animator.