Manga

I wasn't sure if to post this or not. When this was published in Japan in 1970 there was a great amount of backslash due to the sensitive topic of teenage pregnancy.
Reading it in 2024 it still feels heavy. When I was a kid, I remember a local scandal about what I considered a big girl at the time (high school) who was pregnant. Her boyfriend was two or three years older than her. Everyone was pushing for them to split (I guess there were also talks about abortion, but since ai was a child ai was probably spared the details). It ended in a huge Romeo and Juliet pantomime, with both of the kids disappearing and later found dead by double suicide. I still think about it, some 40 years later.

The thought of two young people in love being forced to participate in something way bigger than them aches my heart. Nobody obviously knows what would have happened to them or their child, but for grownups not having a single shred of empathy really saddens me.

Woah...that just kept escalating and escalating...

First the pregnancy, but I was expecting that, then Rei being an abandoned baby, then Takashi being already engaged, to the car crash, then Sawako's end, and finally the rooftop.

As somebody in the US, the issue of abortion has remained a thorny one for decades, and has become especially relevant in the past couple years since the overturn of Roe. I have had family members in the past choose to pursue an abortion after cases of rape in states for which that would no longer be allowed. And now, we are on the cusp of an election in which one of the major political parties is not so subtly advocating for a nationwide ban of the procedure at a federal level, making the issue more relevant than ever.

I went to high school in rural Pennsylvania, and there were a handful of people within my school that had children before graduation. I didn't know any of them personally, but it is hard to hide a pregnancy in a relatively small school with an overactive rumor mill. Thankfully, the issue of teen pregnancy is not treated as life-ending today as it is depicted in this work from 1970, so none of those girls (to my knowledge) had to go through the same style of dramatics as Asami did, but I am sure that they probably experienced social pressures one way or the other.

Thanks for sharing this. It is completely over the top dramatics, but it is thought provoking.