Yoshibo’s Crime by Tsuge Yoshiharu (ヨシボーの犯罪/つげ義春)

Salamander by Tsuge Yoshiharu (山椒魚/つげ義春)

Tsuge Yoshiharu was an artist whose work needs more exposure here in America. We’re just now starting to get every last thing Tezuka ever did, but there have only been a handful of Tsuge stories officially released in different magazines — The Comics Journal translated his seminal work “Screw-Style” (ねじ式), and RAW released both “Red Flowers” and “Oba’s Electroplate Factory” — but other than that and a few stories scanlated online, his work remains mostly elusive in English.

While in Japan, I picked up a collection of his stories simply entitled ねじ式. It contains many of the stories that are available online — “Swamp,” “Mushroom Hunting,” “Chico,” “Gensenkan” — and ten others, including the title story and “Oba’s Electroplate Factory.” Of the remaining stories, I’ve decided to contribute a translation of “Salamander,” the shortest work in the collection.