So last week I posted about Essay Manga and introduced 2 series that I really like. I decided to introduce the 3rd series in its own post because it really deserves its own bit of attention.
This series is called ダーリンは外国人 or My Darling is a Foreigner.
It’s about a Japanese cartoonist (漫画家）living in Japan named Saori who is in a serious relationship with a foreign (ie: non-Japanese) man named Tony. She chronicles their relationship and their cultural differences in her works.
The very first manga that was put out in this series has very fortunately also been released in a bilingual version! You can read the text in both English and Japanese.
My Darling is a Foreigner (in English) (Darling ha Gaikokujin)
Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, none of the other books have been released in a similar way, and are only available in Japanese.
Here’s what the Japanese version of the first book looks like:
My Darling is a Foreigner 1 (Darling ha Gaikokujin – Gaikokujin no kare to kekkonshitara dou naru ka)
I find the series interesting for a lot of reasons – of course, the cultural differences between Saori who is Japanese and Tony who is American is interesting to read. The first and second books focus mainly on this aspect.
My Darling is a Foreigner 2 (Darling ha Gaikokujin)
Also, Tony is a linguist and terribly interested in foreign languages and languages in general, and he gets to geek out sometimes. Saori even devoted 2 whole books to what goes on his mind, subtitled “Inside Darling’s Mind”
Later on they have a baby, and there’s a whole book chronicling the decision to conceive, Saori’s pregnancy, the birth, and the first few months with their baby.
My Darling is a Foreigner 3 (With Baby) (Darling ha Gaikokujin 3 (with baby))
I liked this book in particular, as someone who has pondered having a baby at some point.
I also recently discovered a whole new set of books in this series where Saori, Tony, and sometimes Baby all travel together to different countries or places and chronicle their adventures there. They have books about trips to Italy, France, Australia, and Hawaii.
My one complaint about this installment in the series is that instead of them talking about some casual trip to these countries, and thus using easy language explaining the sights, the sounds, the food, whatever, they tended to do more structured activities there – wine tasting, jewelry making, glass making, mosaic making, a short acting class, talking with renowned chefs, etc etc, such that a lot of the terminology is really technical and quite a slog to get through in Japanese. It felt like more of a chore, personally, than a divertisement when reading these (I bought the Italy and France ones).
But, of course these books are not aimed at a foreign audience, but rather at a Japanese one that does like technical details and facts and can understand Kanji and technical words just fine. Though, in all honesty, I do feel the need to say that through reading these books I’ve gotten more interested in Italy specifically (I’ve been to France before) and want to try and make it over there some day now! It wasn’t on my list of places to visit before. Though I can’t give it all the credit, because the book Eat Pray Love is what first piqued my interest in Italy.
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
Going back to this series though, there’s also been a movie made based off of the first book of My Darling is a Foreigner but I do NOT recommend it. I think it’s pretty lame. Why? Because they totally emasculated Tony and made him more palpatable for Japanese viewers (who are used to their men skinny, well dressed and well groomed).
Here’s the movie poster:
This is a nice poster in that you can see the characters along with their cartoon counter parts. But the actors are a lot younger than the actual couple. Also, in the cartoon you may notice that Tony is rather shaggyand depitcted as having a wide face, whereas the actor Tony seems more clean-cute and streamlined (styled hair and everything). I admit, they did seem to make an effort to approximate them. Perhaps I’m judging too harshly.
For a comparison, here’s what the couple actually looks like:
The thing that bothers me though is the personality of Tony in the movie. I don’t know what the real Tony is like in terms of mannerisms and whatnot, because I’ve never met him or even seen video of him. He is indeed described as being a sensitive person in the books, but still, I feel like they made the Tony in the movie far too quiet and unassuming like a Japanese person might be like, and it seems to remove all tension between the couple because of a lack of “foreignness” between them. Still, if you’re interested, go ahead and see the movie anyway. Just don’t have too high expectations of it.
Let me end this post with an article in English from the Japan times that talks about the manga, so those of you that don’t read Japanese or can’t get access to the books can still get an idea of what this series is like!
Enjoy.
Sporadic Happiness (in Japan!) 