Tadao Tsuge

Tsuge grew up in the Keisei Tateishi neighborhood of Tokyo, Japan. In Granta, Tsuge wrote, "...I would say that it was a red-light district and a plywood market and a town of hoodlums in one. I'll add one more thing: the whole place stunk of sewage." He continued, "In short, there was nothing special about Keisei Tateishi. It was a neighborhood like so many during the postwar recovery. What was it, then, about the place that left me with so many indelible impressions?"[6]

He is the younger brother of Yoshiharu Tsuge, a Japanese cartoon artist.[7]

In 2015, the graphic novel, Trash Market, was published by Drawn and Quarterly, and was edited by Ryan Holmberg. The book, a collection of stories focusing on post-war Japan, follows the gekiga style of manga. The majority of work in the book was originally published between 1968 and 1972 in Garo, an alternative manga magazine.[7]

The graphic novel Slum Wolf was published by New York Review Comics in 2018, with an introduction by Ryan Holmberg. The book primarily focuses on Tsuge's work published between 1969 and 1976 in Garo. The stories have a bleak and film noir quality, focusing on disenfranchised people in 1960s and 1970s Japan.[8] One main character, Kesei Sabu, was a trained kamikaze pilot, and he roams the streets of Tokyo, looking for fights with men and encounters with sex workers. Another character, Mr. Aogishi, is a relatively submissive business supervisor, who is traumatized by his experiences in World War II.[1] Many of the characters in the book live in precarious housing situations, including temporary homes and rundown buildings.[1]

As written in PopMatters, "One notable feature of these works is the absence of post-war progress or vision of the future. Tsuge creates an eternal present devoid of any benefits of an improving economy or possibility of climbing out of a landscape of ruin and defeat."[1]