News
Jiro Taniguchi's Hometown Plans Chichi no Koyomi Film
posted on by Egan Loo
Tottori, the hometown of acclaimed manga creator Jiro Taniguchi, is organizing a film commission and an executive committee in May to plan a film adaptation of Taniguchi's Chichi no Koyomi (Father's Calendar) manga. Taniguchi's many works include Benkei in New York, Distant Neighbourhood, Icaro, and The Ice Wanderer. However, Chichi no Koyomi is Taniguchi's first manga which is set in his own hometown in southwestern Japan.
In the story, a family is devastated by the Great Tottori Fire of 1952, but the family comes to terms with the disaster and breaks free from the bonds holding them back. Taniguchi calls upon his childhood memories of Tottori's streets, the nearby Kyūshōzan mountain, and the local Ōchidani Park to color the manga's backdrops.
Taniguchi serialized the manga in Shogakukkan's Big Comic men's magazine in 1994. The award-winning story has since been translated and published in Germany, France, Spain, and Taiwan. However, unlike several of Taniguchi's other works, there is no English edition yet.
Director Sam Garbarski (Irina Palm) is adapting another Taniguchi manga, Distant Neighbourhood (Harukana Machi e ), into a film in Europe with a budget of US$13.9 million. The original Distant Neighbourhood manga is actually set in Kurayoshi, a town in Tottori province near Tottori city. The citizens of Kurayoshi established a non-profit organization last year and are holding a symposium on March 28 to call for a separate film project set in the original locale.
Fanfare / Ponent Mon has been or will be publishing several of Taniguchi's manga in English, including Distant Neighbourhood, Quest for the Missing Girl, and The Ice Wanderer. In the past, Viz published Benkei in New York and Hotel Harbour View, and Simon & Schuster released the Icaro collaboration between Moebius and Taniguchi.
Source: Yomiuri Shimbun
