Now this looks interesting! Baxter Burchill has dug up and scanlated a one-shot manga by “forgotten master” Masako Yashiro, Keep This a Secret From the Laughing Kookaburra:
Manga artist Taro Minamoto mentions (in an article recommending various kashi-hon) how much he admired her work around this time when he was a young seventeen year old, imagining her as a seasoned manga veteran, a master who had already spent years in the industry, and the earth-shattering shock he felt when he finally met her and saw that oh god, she’s the same age. He also mentions how clear and strong Yashiro’s influence was on the early works of Moto Hagio, one of the defining figures of the Year 24 Group shoujo movement, a fact which Hagio herself freely admits.
That influence is crystal clear in today’s manga, “Keep This a Secret From the Laughing Kookaburra”, Yashiro’s second entry in her series of shorts for COM, the experimental manga magazine founded by godfather of the medium Osamu Tezuka that would become her home for several years, published in the July 1968 issue, when she was only twenty-one. It’s an astoundingly interior, reflective title, mining a deep well of thought and feeling in its short 20 page run; a powerful exploration of art, creation, gender, identity and anxiety that hasn’t aged a single day since its initial release.
No Comments