Hikobae

Hikobae is a book collection of comic works on the border between the genres of sociological comics and comics with a poetic value on the theme of everyday life in Japan. The project is a follow-up to the comic book Iogi (2022), in which the same team focused on ordinary life in Tokyo’s Suginami district. Iogi was presented at related exhibitions in Japan and the Czech Republic and won several prestigious awards (a bronze medal in the Japan International Manga Award, the Muriel Award for Best Screenplay, Art Award of the City of Pilsen).

In the loose sequel entitled Hikobae, each story focuses on a different region of Japan: from the northern island of Hokkaido to Shimane Prefecture in the southwest of the archipelago, from the mountain peaks of Gunma Prefecture to the seashore of Shikoku Island. The stories deal with the theme of everyday life, far from the stereotypical ideas of the Land of the Rising Sun. The key focus of the book is on the tradition and its transmission: some comics deal with contemporary forms of traditional Japanese crafts, customs or ceremonies (pottery, fishing, the tea ceremony, blueprinting, the traditional saké bio-production).

Hikobae is a result of an exceptional collaboration between the author of the script, Jean-Gaspard Páleníček, who brings the perspective of his experience with life in Japan, and students of the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen under the supervision of Václav Šlajch. The afterword was written by Pavel Kořínek, an acclaimed comic expert and researcher at the Centre for Comics Studies of the CAS.