At the beginning of the year, due to the epidemic situation, I lived a life where I couldn't get out of the door. At that time, I only had one thought when I opened the window every day: I really wanted to go out for a walk.

It was also at that time that I came into contact with Mr. Jiro Taniguchi's cartoon "Go for a Walk". From The Lonely Gourmet, I learned about Mr. Jiro Taniguchi, appreciated his quiet and peaceful life scenes, and became interested in this cartoon. Opening the book really feels like a brief encounter.

Jiro Taniguchi, the author, is a very famous cartoonist. He came from an ordinary family and began to learn comics at the age of 19. He is a late bloomer, and his painting style is unpretentious, and he is famous for his accuracy and realism. He won the Tezuka Tezuka Culture Award for comics twice, won the title of "Comic Master" at Lucca Comic Festival in Italy, and was awarded the French Arts and Literature Medal, which is regarded as a representative figure of Japanese comics in the world.

I thought this cartoon was a strong and vivid typical Japanese cartoon style, but to my surprise, it was a typical Japanese painting style and Japanese literature style, but it was not a Japanese cartoon style. Japanese cartoons are usually characterized by contrasting pictures, personalized and colorful images, and distinctive characters. But every article in "Go for a Walk" is like a haiku: a short story, beautiful realistic scenery, interspersed with subtle plots.

Just like every ordinary and even boring day in our life, it is a trivial and boring narrative novel in reality, but it is shown in comic books with light and carefree language and pictures, which will make people feel sad-the other side of life is full of romance, and the birds, rain and snow and strangers you meet on the walk are all exciting.

Just like Jiro Taniguchi's signature on the title page-"There are things in my comics that can't be conveyed without careful taste".

An unnoticed miracle in everyday life

The story background of the cartoon takes place in the town of Anle, where the protagonist moved for work reasons, and a * * * depicts eighteen short stories about walking. The prototype of the hero of the cartoon is the author himself. He walks while looking for everyday things that can be drawn into cartoons, and what we read as readers are those memorable things that really exist and may have happened to us.

Someone once described daily life as "the so-called daily life we spend day by day may actually be a series of miracles". These are eighteen stories and eighteen unnoticed miracles in daily life.

The middle-aged hero has gained fun in a small town, which is different from that in a big city. He sometimes watches birds, sometimes climbs trees, sometimes dives into the swimming pool naked, gets caught in the rain, skips work, and once competed with an elderly walking friend while walking, and followed a black cat into a strange place.

What impressed me deeply was the fifth story "It's raining". The hero was walking when it started to rain. Wearing a leather shoes suit and tie and carrying a briefcase, he walked up the mountain road with his head held high in the rain. When he came back, he said to his wife, "I climbed Mount Fuji" and "There is one in this town". He took off his glasses and looked at the sky after the rain. I only saw the clouds depicted on the paper. I don't know how magnificent and beautiful the "Mount Fuji" he climbed was in his eyes.

In a small town near Tokyo, there will be some models imitating Mount Fuji. Perhaps the hero climbed this small "Mount Fuji" in a short time. But "Mount Fuji" has become synonymous with romance at this moment, just like a rockery and a gazebo we met while walking. Maybe we can give them a name, and a beautiful day can replace fatigue.

In the eighth story "Up the River", there is a narration of the hero-that day, I can't say why ... I got off at the previous stop of the company. Maybe it was because the weather was so good that spring should be like this.

I think everyone once had the idea that the hero decided to get off the bus in advance to find out where the source of the river was. The limited state of life often binds the beating heart the most, and the idea of escape always emerges at a tight moment.

The weather was fine that day, the bus arrived late that day, and the cinema tickets were 21% off that day ... These small opportunities were the beginning of an escape from the present life. There's nothing wrong with running away. A happy-go-lucky walk without knowing where to go may wash a tired mind.

Alice Munro wrote, "The essence of life is to live in this world with excitement." In comic books, short and chubby villains meet miracles worth looking forward to in their walks, but in reality, we may not even be willing to walk for two kilometers, but we complain day after day that life is inconceivable and pathetic.

repeating the monotonous life every day is the strongest pessimistic catalyst, which slowly erodes the fresh impulse inside. Even if you meet a strange puppy while walking, it is a brand-new encounter in life. I believe that walking can give people a persistent sense of freshness and enhance their adaptability to life.

If you haven't discovered those trivial daily routine, you will miss many miracles.

Beautiful Everyday, Fantasy World

In the 1991s, Go for a Walk was published in France, which immediately caused quite a stir. European readers have questioned the world constructed in comics.

First, I wonder about the grotesque behaviors that the protagonist in the cartoon sometimes makes: swimming naked in an empty swimming pool after reading, climbing a tree to get a paper kite for a child while walking, staying in a tree for a whole day, and being taken to another time and space by a black cat in an alley ...

These hearty things happen to this middle-aged man as if he had three meals a day, while being contaminated with realistic fireworks and full of fantasy.

is this a freak? Does this world really exist?

my understanding is that maybe it's not a freak, but something that ordinary people are embarrassed and can't do, and the hero does it. Perhaps this is indeed a fantasy world, floating like a utopia that can never be realized, but it is undeniable that we yearn for such a world. What you want to do is the ultimate dream of life.

Second, I am puzzled by the different pace of life between the hero and the real world. In the 1991s, Japan was still highly industrialized, and people were busy creating social values. The middle-aged man who slowed down was obviously out of step with the times. Why did the hero of the comic take a leisurely walk?

from 1985 to 1991, Japan's "bubble era" began. Due to the expansion of investment, the rapid development of Japanese society from the 1961s suddenly went backwards for several decades. Everyone is swallowed up by the "bubble" of the inflated economy, and the pressure of the economy and society forces people to live in fear all day long.

As the author said, "Humans and animals are originally very quiet creatures. After living together intensively, I began to protect myself. People are shouting and crying loudly, and this kind of scene can hardly be seen in daily life ... "

Perhaps such a work appeared in such an era, just to awaken people to feel the passage of time and emotional experience, and bring a quiet, cool and unexpected surprise to the busy fast-paced life.

I don't know when the beautiful daily life has become a fantasy world. Modern people are busy making money, living and supporting their families, but they only forget to give themselves a chance to be alone, and forget to walk out of the cage of reinforced concrete to create their own ideological value.

Walking has become a "waste of time" in some people's eyes, but in fact, it is because there is time to waste that people feel that time belongs to them and feel the real life. There are mountains and rivers, urban gardens, stars all over the sky and moonlight flashing in this world. I'm just afraid that you won't take a walk alone and have a look at these beautiful things.

Feeling comes first, replacing words with sound

In the past, most of the comics that flowed in the market were stories first, and the storyline formed the main line of the whole comic development, but the feelings of the characters were in a less important position. But "Go for a Walk" is a typical cartoon that feels first.

Jiro Taniguchi added a rule to himself when he was creating: Try to reduce the emotional expression words such as exclamations and adjectives. Therefore, the whole cartoon mostly relies on pictures to express stories and emotions, rather than characters' lines, which is almost a work without dialogue.

even when expressing such situations as "it's really comfortable" or "it's really beautiful", the author tries to describe all the details of the scene, the atmosphere of the picture and the expressions of the characters with paintings.

However, such an expression is not popular at present, and naturally, it has been criticized that "feeling comes first and the story is not fully expressed".

However, artistic creation always goes hand in hand with Xialiba people, and the degree of artistic acceptance often lies in the quality of works. In the market where comic books are flooded with characters first, the quiet "Go for a Walk", which is mainly based on landscape description, is still gradually accepted by readers with delicate description, in-depth observation and moving stories.

What's more worth mentioning is that the sound of cars, wind, rain, birds singing and dogs barking in this work are not matched with any adjectives, and all the scenes are represented by onomatopoeia, which undoubtedly makes the picture more vivid and reaches the realm of "told even more in silence than they had told in sound".

Going for a Walk is as simple and poetic as the "walking" itself, no matter from the perspective of comic book analysis or the use of words. Such a comic book may be a brand-new experience for busy modern people.

Time flies. It has been 21 years since the publication of Go for a Walk. I don't know whether the people lucky enough to open it have been cured by the quiet comic world in these twenty years, and whether they have planned to take a walk.

Occasionally, people walking in twos and threes will be seen on the road. They are often self-possessed, self-satisfied, steady in pace, stop-and-go, and even gentle and lovely in the lingering wind.

I often think that there are billions of people in this world, and how many people can walk in the streets or country lanes with no distractions at this moment, without worrying about their jobs or being greedy for money, and feel the vicissitudes of the four seasons with their eyes full of eyes.

Stop feeling that life is boring and boring. As the postscript says, "After reading this, put down Go for a Walk and go for a walk".

I'm glad to meet you. Welcome to pay attention to more wonderful articles from the media: nothing lives forever, and multiple platforms have the same name.