Tobacco-ya no Musume

A shared cigarette offers a momentary connection. A closet hides the evidence of an embarrassed bachelor's laziness. A single woman, not getting any younger, sifts through letters from would-be husbands. A new couple buys two train tickets to anywhere.

Here are the quiet, evocative urban dramas of Masahiko Matsumoto, one of the leading lights of the Japanese alternative-comics movement known as "gekiga." Originally published in 1972-1974, these eleven stories now form the first English-language collection of Matsumoto's mature work. His shy, uncertain heroes face broken hearts, changing families, money troubles, sexual anxiety, and the pressures of tradition, but with a whimsy and lightness of touch that is Matsumoto's trademark.