If you like: Murphy Brown, Akiko Higashimura, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation.
While trying to come up with an American comparison for “Will I Be Single Forever?” it was sitcoms that came the closest: “30 Rock,” “Murphy Brown” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
I was trying to think of stories about single women that bring to mind more than romance; stories about self-sufficiency. At least, self-sufficient women who aren’t in jail or taking up professional wrestling.
The title of this comic book -- “Will I Be Single Forever?” -- sounds like one of those books about how to find a husband. It’s actually based on an essay by writer Mami Amamiya about her experiences as a single professional woman.
As Amamiya says in the endnotes, turning an essay into a series of comic book short stories doesn’t sound like it should work, until you see how Okazaki pulls it off. As advertised, Okazaki brings “gorgeous designs and a delicate touch.”
“While I was drawing this manga, I kept feeling like it was okay for people to not get married,” she says in an interview at the end of the book. “Of course, I’d tell people who wanted to get married to go for it, but there’s no reason you have to do it. I wanted to make that clear in the manga.”
Each story focuses on one moment in life -- a freelance writer attending a family funeral, a woman meeting up with an ex-boyfriend for dinner, a designer called into work late to meet a sudden deadline, and then back again to the freelance writer who is given a proposal.
It’s not a matter of saying "marriage makes people miserable" or that these women aren’t open to falling in love or don’t recognize the pitfalls. It’s about self-sufficiency and the idea that it’s possible to be lonelier sharing a home with someone than on your own.
I’m not sure about the word in Japanese, but in English, it’s hard to use the word self-sufficiency. It sounds a lot like selfish, a word that gets lobbed at single women. Even writing this review, I have an awareness of all those words, trying to dodge them. Does it come off as too selfish? Bitter? Frigid? In denial?
But still, that’s why this manga was a relief. “There’s justice in the things you write,” Okazaki said to Amamiya. It’s not trying to divide women, to say one way of life is better than another, as long as you’re into it. There’s a recognition, too, there’s happiness in getting things through your own power.
In the beginning story, the writer is talking on the phone to her mom, who says she feels sorry the writer lives in such a nice apartment but has no husband.
“I’m working so hard at this job that I love. I’m finally starting to get some recognition for it. And I can use the money to do the things that I want to do. I’m finally capable. But she feels sorry for me,” she thinks.
“A flower that people pity once it blooms.”
The title, as I see it, can be read two different ways. It’s the protagonists asking themselves, not desperately, but reflectively. Then there’s the way others can ask you that, with the implication that something is missing if you have no boyfriend.
“But being single isn’t a crime. There’s no reason to launch an investigation.”
This character study does retain some essay-like elements. It’s built on moments of revelations.
While eating with her ex-boyfriend, thinking she’s going to rope him into a trip she doesn’t want to take on her own, a woman realizes “That’s right...That’s right...There was a reason that we broke up.”
And she has to decide what happens next. But even the clearest roads have dangers.
Or there’s the designer who throws herself into work while her former classmates tell her she should be trying to have it all.
“You know, I really love my job. I pull all-nighters constantly, and a lot of my efforts don’t pay off. I have regrets, I get sad, I feel powerless...but it’s, like, all of that just makes the beer taste better in the end. Or makes you look forward to concerts more. (It’s like life itself) That’s why...I don’t think work is a trade-off for love. (It’s my life after all)”
The interview between Okazaki and Amamiya in the end is pretty interesting, too.
Amamiya read Okazaki’s series Suppli (bring back an English translation!), which was adapted into a television show. Amamiya was outraged by the show being described as “a working woman’s romance,” when she thought there was so much more to the story than that. She wrote a blog post about it and that’s when their paths first crossed.
On a side note, if it seems weird there’s a comic book about the lives of ordinary women, the Japanese comic book industry has a refreshing amount of variety. You can get everything from a series about a single father who is finally confronted with his own prejudices when his brother’s husband visits (My Brother's Husband) or about a girl and giant spider living peacefully together in a post-apocalyptic world (Giant Spider & Me).
I see some manga translation publishers experimenting with releasing women-centric stories about more ordinary problems than supernatural threats or superstardom, and I hope to see that open doors.
"Will I Be Single Forever?" by Mari Okazaki, based on the essay by Mami Amamiya; Viz Media; July 2018.
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