Adolf: An Exile In Japan, by Osamu Tezuka
Second frame of chapter three: 
At the not terribly impressive Brussels Comic Con, I thought I might try classic manga again, having bounced off the first volume of Tezuka's Buddha when I tried it ten years ago. Mistakenly, I thought that this was the first of Tezuka's Adolf series; in fact it's the second, which may explain why the plot goes around in circles without really getting anywhere. At the beginning of the book, the central character, journalist Sohei Toge has returned from the 1936 Olympics with evidence that Adolf Hitler is in fact of Jewish descent. On this not terribly substantial and somewhat offensive idea is hung a run-around plot of getting beaten up and escaping certain death while attempting to retain the precious documents. I'm not sufficiently attracted to want to get any more in the series, or indeed, anything else by Tezuka.
The format of the book has been flipped left-to-right rather than the original Japanese right-to-left, and I wondered if that might apply to the pictures as well. But in fact the sign in the frame excerpted above is pretty clearly an unreversed 協合通信社, the last three characters meaning "News Agency" and the first two could be pronounced Kyogo, though I see the more usual pronunication fo the second character is "Ai" (as in "Aikido", 合気道).
This came to the top of my list as the most popular book (on LibraryThing) by a non-white author. Next on that list is Hamilton: The Revolution, by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter, which I think I will enjoy more.
At the not terribly impressive Brussels Comic Con, I thought I might try classic manga again, having bounced off the first volume of Tezuka's Buddha when I tried it ten years ago. Mistakenly, I thought that this was the first of Tezuka's Adolf series; in fact it's the second, which may explain why the plot goes around in circles without really getting anywhere. At the beginning of the book, the central character, journalist Sohei Toge has returned from the 1936 Olympics with evidence that Adolf Hitler is in fact of Jewish descent. On this not terribly substantial and somewhat offensive idea is hung a run-around plot of getting beaten up and escaping certain death while attempting to retain the precious documents. I'm not sufficiently attracted to want to get any more in the series, or indeed, anything else by Tezuka.
The format of the book has been flipped left-to-right rather than the original Japanese right-to-left, and I wondered if that might apply to the pictures as well. But in fact the sign in the frame excerpted above is pretty clearly an unreversed 協合通信社, the last three characters meaning "News Agency" and the first two could be pronounced Kyogo, though I see the more usual pronunication fo the second character is "Ai" (as in "Aikido", 合気道).
This came to the top of my list as the most popular book (on LibraryThing) by a non-white author. Next on that list is Hamilton: The Revolution, by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter, which I think I will enjoy more.