ABSTRACT
This chapter examines migrant memories in Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama’s The Four Immigrants Manga: A Japanese Experience in San Francisco, 1904–1924 (1931) and The Arrival (2006) by Shaun Tan, arguing that the figure of the migrant is one of continuing importance, particularly in the context of contemporary population flows generated by wars, famines, persecution, and economic collapses. The representation of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in comics offers one mode of ‘recovering’ these figures from the margins of history to which they are often relegated. A relatively little-studied comic from 1931, The Four Immigrants Manga by Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama, demonstrates the power of comics to capture and convey the complexity of migrant memories, and his book showcases the struggles faced by first-generation Japanese migrants to the USA (known as the issei), in turn of the century San Francisco. The Arrival by Shaun Tan shares similar concerns about the tenuousness of migration, and borrows some of its visual vocabulary from migration to the United States, and specifically arrivals to Ellis Island. As a mostly wordless and surrealistic work, The Arrival distills themes relating to migration, loss, and regeneration into its main storyline. The design, construction, and aesthetic approach of the text, with its use of melancholic sepia tones, and foxing, help stage the ‘history’ of the work alongside the ontological disorientation of migration. The respective texts immerse readers into their story-worlds and allow a multiplicity of perspectives to emerge, which humanise and personalise the figure of the migrant.
