Sassy Cats

With those piercing eyes and flicks of the tail, house cats observe domesticity poetically, and with sass "Have you ever given birth before?" "Me..? No, not yet." "When it happened to me for the first time, it wasn't just kittens that I birthed, but also me as a mother. So now, as I'm raising them, I am also raising myself as a mother… And it ain't no joke! So, no! I don't really have the luxury to think about things like whether my children are 'cute' or not." These are the simple musings of a house cat, sprawled on a veranda in the sun, while birds flit and flutter by, as she nurses her most recent litter and chats with a curious yearling. But these are also the musings of Yamada Murasaki. Sassy Cats was the pioneering manga artist's bold return to comics after a yearslong hiatus, during which time she gave birth to two girls. Engaging sensitively and poetically with domesticity, motherhood, and gender relations, Sassy Cats is the work of a master cartoonist, evident in the silky lines of these felines and the textural play at work on the page. Originally serialized in the legendary alternative magazine Garo between 1979 and 1980, Sassy Cats is translated by Ryan Holmberg and includes an essay by the cartoonist's daughter Yamada Yu about her mom, cats, and growing up with a cartoonist.

Yamada Murasaki (1948-2009) debuted as a cartoonist in 1969. Informed by her upbringing-she was raised mainly by her grandmother-and a background in design and poetry, Yamada's early work was unique in form and content, offering realistic portraits of young women negotiating complicated family situations and the passage to adulthood. In the late '70s, after having a family of her own, her work shifted to young mothers negotiating children, husbands, and the balance between social responsibilities as a housewife and self-respect as a woman. Yamada published manga in practically every issue of Garo from 1978 to 1986, and is considered the first cartoonist to use the artistic freedoms of alternative manga to explore motherhood and domesticity with an unromantic eye. She is the cartoonist of Talk to My Back and Second Hand Love.