The Push Man and Other Stories

Plot

"Piranha" (人喰魚, Hitokui Sakai)

A worker who cuts sheet metal in a plant loses his arm so that his spouse can use the million-

yen payout to open her own club. Spending his days idly, he purchases a tank of piranhas

. One day, after spotting her outside a hotel with another man and getting criticized by her, he submerges her wrist in the tank and she is bitten. She leaves him and he returns to work at another sheet metal plant.

"Projectionist"

A traveling projectionist of pornographic films is sent to the countryside by his employer. On his return, he sees lewd graffiti in the bathroom and this revitalizes his libido.

"Black Smoke" (焼却炉, Shōkyaku)

An infertile

incinerator

operator burns the aborted fetus of his unfaithful wife. When she leaves the clothes iron on while falling asleep, he leaves and watches their house burn from a hill.

"The Burden" (余計者, Yokeimono)

A

sign holder

has sex with a homeless prostitute, later advising her to stand knee-deep in water to abort her child. When his pregnant wife enters labor, he strangles her to death, but the baby is born. When he comes back in six months, he is arrested and sees the prostitute carrying a baby.

"Test Tube" (試験管, Shikenkan)

Koike, a

sperm donor

, becomes infatuated with the recipient of his sperm. When it fails to make her pregnant, she requests a different donor. He becomes obsessed, attempts to rape her, and is subsequently thrown into jail, confused as to why he took that course of action.

"Pimp"

Tetsuji, a husband of a prostitute, lives listlessly, spending his time playing slots or getting into fights. He decides to move to the countryside with a noodle shop employee.

"The Push Man" (押し屋, Oshi-ya)

Kizaki, a

push man

, helps a woman after her shirt rips. She has sex with him, and later brings him to a "date", where instead two of her friends rape him. The next day, while attempting to push during a particularly chaotic rush hour, he is pushed inside the train himself. He yells to be let off, but slowly relaxes.

"Sewer" (下水道, Gesuidō)

A sewer cleaner stumbles upon an aborted fetus, which his coworker strips a cross from before disposing of. When his girlfriend's pregnancy starts to show, he helps her get an abortion. The next day when he disposes of it at work, his coworker finds it and laments the lack of jewelry before throwing it away.

"Telescope" (望遠鏡, Bōenkyō)

A disabled man spends his time on the rooftop of a department store. One day he looks through a telescope just used by an older man and watches a nude woman. The older man later tries to have sex with the woman but is unable to consummate. He requests the disabled man to watch him again and is able to perform anew. The disabled man commits suicide by jumping off of the roof.

"The Killer" (殺し屋, Koroshi-ya)

Tamiya gets an adverse reaction after seeing a personal in a newspaper requesting that he contact someone, tying his wife up and throwing up on her. After observing people from Tokyo Tower and watching a documentary about Hitler, he calls the person and receives a job to kill someone. He shoots a woman driving a car and receives payment in a coin locker. Before he returns home with gifts, his wife thanks his employer on the phone for giving him contract killings.

"Traffic Accident" (事故死, Jikoshi)

Shibata, an auto mechanic, stays up to watch the

Brovarin

pills.

"Make-Up"

A cross-dressing man who lives with a cocktail waitress rejects his coworker. He meets a woman at a café while disguised and the two start going out. The waitress remarks to him that he seems "more alive".

"Disinfection" (消毒, Shōdoku)

A disinfector works on the side as a secretary for three call girls. While disinfecting, he receives a call, but the caller hangs up. While walking on the sidewalk, a payphone rings, but the caller also hangs up. He calls one of the business cards which propositions a date and pays a pimp. He discovers that the women is one of the call girls called Naomi who he had a crush on. Instead of having sex with her, he opens his disinfecting bag, causing her to leave. He receives a call for Naomi and cleans the handset instead.

"Who Are You?" (あんた誰や？, Anta Dare ya?)

Matsuda, an ex-convict working at an automobile parts plant, has a boss who dislikes him and made one of his workers pregnant. When Matsuda's wife lies to him that she will be going to visit her home, he puts his pet scorpion in her bag, killing her and a company president. When he goes on a date with the coworker and she tells him she will abort the baby, he embraces her. Remembering his attempt to get inside an American military base to steal a gun, he constantly repeats to himself the questions the soldier asked him: "Who are you? What are you doing here?" He plans to kill his boss with a knife, but loses his nerve, instead having an identity crisis.

"Bedridden"

Fukuda, a

sex slave immobilized due to foot binding

, he suffocates Fukuda to become her ninth master.

"My Hitler" (おれのヒットラー, Ore no Hittorā)

Shoji lives with a bar hostess, wondering what it would be like to have a child with her and whether the child would grow up as a Napoleon or Hitler. Their apartment is frequented by a large rat, but he finds himself unable to kill it because it is pregnant. This causes the hostess to stay at her friend's place. When Shoji visits her bar, he tells her that none of the rat's six babies came out like Hitler, and leaves her.

Production

While writing the stories in the collection, Tatsumi was running a publishing house for

In a 2007 interview, Tasumi described Gekiga Young—the magazine his works were being serialized in—as an erotic "third-rate magazine" with low pay, which gave him freedom with the types of work he could create. Because the other stories in Gekiga Young were sexual with passive women, Tatsumi decided to take the opposite approach with his stories to interest readers. At the time he was also feeling "anxiety and fear of women" which influenced their depiction. He also did not feel that the aggressive men in the other stories reflected reality so his own male characters were able to be weak or passive. Because of his low page count and the resulting need for many panels, Tatsumi's editor suggested that he forgo speech bubbles to help focus on the art, which led to his silent protagonists. Tatsumi's editor had a good understanding of comics and got along well with Tatsumi, so when the magazine wanted to stop running his work, the editor quit as well because he only worked there due to Tatsumi's work.[4]

Release

The shorter stories in the collection were published in a bi-weekly manga magazine Gekiga Young (劇画ヤング, Gekiga Yangu) in 1969.