Japan is made up of thousands of sacred islands, artificial islands,industrial islands, resort islands, wild islands and exploding islands...butartist Florent Chavouet had only ever visited two of them. This graphicnovel is the story of one summer when he decides to get to know onemore-the tiny island of Manabeshima. This speck of dirt in the InlandSea, off the coast of Osaka, has a total population of 300, and he setshimself the task of recording everything and everyone he meets there inquirky detail on the pages of his sketchbook.Whereas Chavouet's other best-selling book, Tokyo on Foot, focuses onthe physical city, it is the local island inhabitants who form the heart of thisnew book.

The cast of characters who are lovingly depicted includes Ikkyu-san,owner of the island's only bar (and the bar's three regulars-skinny guy,Day-Glo cap guy and greasy-haired guy); the young Nakamura family andtheir five kids; the layabout Shimura-san, a living relic from the hippie1970s; Kurata-san the policeman; Reizo-san the island intellectual in hiselegant Meiji-era home; Rock the Neanderthal fisherman; and a chorus ofassorted grandmothers and cats-all of whom welcome Chavouet intotheir community as a kindred soul.

Against a backdrop of fireworks, summer festivals, fishing expeditions,and the constant hum of the cicadas, Chavouet depicts these charactersso vividly and sympathetically, and describes their rustic way of life insuch simple and appealing terms that we find it as hard to finish the bookas Chavouet found it to leave the island at the end of his enchantedsummer holiday.