He Rolled Me Up Like a Grilled Squid

By the mid-1970s, Tsuge Yoshiharu was a man changed by circumstance—something his work from 1975 to 1981 boldly reveals. After settling into married life with fellow artist Fujiwara Maki (author of Eisner-winning My Picture Diary), Tsuge would return to the narrative formulas that he knew best: tall tales exchanged between fellow travelers, macabre parables tinged with magical realism, and the enduring comedy of the domestic everyday in a Japan rebuilding itself in the decades following the Second World War.