RED NIGHT by HANAWA KAZUICHI!!! Translated by RYAN HOLMBERG!

HOLY MOLY! WHAT A LEGENDARY COLLECTION!!! Stoked to have these in stock for a moment. Kazuichi Hanawa, though lesser known in the states, is a very pivotal artist amongst the blossoming of genre leaning elements of avant garde manga. You can see how two of his stories in this collection are indebted to Hideshi Hino, who had just had his breakout horror comic "Zoroku's Strange Disease" hit the stands, and at the same time many of Kazuichi's early works in this volume serve as the primary influence of Suehiro Maruo! WHAT AN INCREDIBLE CO-MINGLING OF INFLUENCE!

Translated by Ryan Holmberg

224 pages

“Hanawa’s comics, while linked intimately to the very foundations of culture and education, are imbued with the reality of nonsense.” - Akasegawa Genpei

Breakdown Press is honoured to publish another classic of underground manga in the shape of Red Night by Hanawa Kazuichi. A wild entry into a violent world of obsession, madness and the perversity of the gods. In Hanawa’s work cruelty and decadence go hand in hand, and desire is accompanied by a macabre twist.

Hanawa Kazuichi is one of the true pioneers of manga - his trailblazing work in erotic grotesquerie and folk horror has made him one of Japan’s most revered and imitated mangaka. Since his debut in the legendary alt manga magazine Garo in 1971, Hanawa has been skewering the morals of Japanese society through chilling tales of debauched medieval aristocracy, many of which are collected in this volume. First published in 1985, Red Night was Hanawa’s breakout book in Japan. This translation of the expanded edition is his first collection in English since his 2006 manga Doing Time, about the artist’s imprisonment for illegal possession of a firearm.