The Heart of Thomas
The Heart of Thomas is a 1974 Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Moto Hagio. Originally serialized in Shūkan Shōjo Comic, a weekly manga magazine publishing shōjo manga, the series follows the events at a German all-boys gymnasium following the suicide of student Thomas Werner. Hagio drew inspiration for the series from the novels of Hermann Hesse, especially Demian ; the Bildungsroman genre; and the 1964 film Les amitiés particulières. It is one of the earliest works of shōnen-ai, a genre of male-male romance manga aimed at a female audience.
The Heart of Thomas was developed and published during a period of immense change and upheaval for shōjo manga as a medium, characterized by the emergence of new aesthetic styles and more narratively complex stories. This change came to be embodied by a new generation of shōjo manga artists collectively referred to as the Year 24 Group, of which Hagio was a member. Hagio originally developed the series as a personal project that she did not expect would ever be published. After changing publishing houses from Kodansha to Shogakukan in 1971, Hagio published a loosely-adapted one-shot version of The Heart of Thomas titled The November Gymnasium before publishing the full series in 1974.
While The Heart of Thomas was initially poorly received by readers, by the end of its serialization it was among the most popular series in Shūkan Shōjo Comic. It significantly influenced shōjo manga as a medium, with many of the stylistic and narrative hallmarks of the series becoming standard tropes of the genre. The series has attracted considerable scholarly interest both in Japan and internationally, and has been adapted into a film, a stage play, and a novel. An English-language translation of The Heart of Thomas, translated by Rachel Thorn, was published by Fantagraphics Books in 2013.
Synopsis
The series is set in the mid-20th century, primarily at the fictional Schlotterbach Gymnasium in the Karlsruhe region of Germany, located on the Rhine between the cities of Karlsruhe and Heidelberg.During Easter holidays, the titular character Thomas Werner, a Schlotterbach student, dies after falling off a pedestrian footbridge spanning a railroad track. Although the school's community believes his death to be accidental, his classmate Julusmole "Juli" Bauernfeind receives a posthumous suicide letter from Thomas wherein Thomas professes his love for him; Thomas had unrequited romantic feelings for Juli, who had previously rejected his affections. Though Juli is outwardly unmoved by the incident, he is privately racked with guilt over Thomas' death. He confides in his roommate Oskar Reiser, who is also secretly in love with Juli.
Erich Frühling, a new student who bears a very close physical resemblance to Thomas, arrives at Schlotterbach shortly thereafter. Erich is irascible and blunt, and resents frequent comparisons to the kind and genteel Thomas. Juli believes that Erich is Thomas' malevolent doppelgänger who has come to Schlotterbach to torment him, and tells Erich that he intends to kill him. Oskar attempts to de-escalate the situation, and befriends Erich. They bond over their troubled family contexts: Erich harbors an unresolved Oedipus complex towards his recently deceased mother, while Oskar's mother was murdered by her husband after he discovered Oskar was the product of an extramarital affair.
It is gradually revealed that the root of Juli's anguish was his attraction to both Thomas and Siegfried Gast, the latter of whom was a delinquent student at the school. Juli chose to pursue Siegfried over Thomas, but Siegfried physically abused Juli by caning his back and burning his chest with a cigarette to the point of scarring, and is implied to have raped him. The incident traumatized Juli; likening himself to a fallen angel who has lost his "wings", Juli came to believe he was unworthy of being loved, which prompted his initial rejection of Thomas. Juli, Oskar, and Erich ultimately resolve their traumas and form mutual friendships. Having made peace with his past, Juli accepts the late Thomas' love, and departs Schlotterbach to join a seminary in Bonn, so he may be closer to Thomas through God.
Characters
Primary characters
;Thomas Werner;Julusmole Bauernfeind
;Oskar Reiser
;Erich Frühling
Secondary characters
;Ante Löwer;Siegfried Gast
;Julius Sidney Schwarz
;Gustav Reiser
;Müller
Development
Context
made her debut as manga artist in the monthly manga magazine Nakayoshi in 1969 with a comical story,. Shōjo manga of this era were typically sentimental or humorous in tone, marketed towards elementary school-aged girls, and were often centered on familial drama or romantic comedy. As Hagio's artistic and narrative style deviated from typical the shōjo manga of the 1960s, her next four submissions to Nakayoshi were rejected. Hagio's debut as a manga artist occurred contemporaneously with a period of immense change and upheaval for shōjo manga as a medium: the 1960s saw the emergence of new aesthetic styles that differentiated shōjo manga from shōnen manga, while the 1970s saw the proliferation of more narratively complex stories that focused on social issues and sexuality.This change came to be embodied by a new generation of shōjo manga artists collectively referred to as the Year 24 Group, of which Hagio was a member; the group was so named because its members were born in or around year 24 of the Shōwa era. The group contributed significantly to the development of shōjo manga by expanding the genre to incorporate elements of science fiction, historical fiction, adventure fiction, and same-sex romance: both male-male and female-female. Two particular works created by members of the Year 24 Group influenced the development of The Heart of Thomas. The first was In the Sunroom by Keiko Takemiya, which would become the first manga in the shōnen-ai genre and was noted for having male protagonists, an uncommon practice for shōjo manga at the time. The second was The Rose of Versailles by Riyoko Ikeda, which began serialization in the manga magazine Margaret in May 1972; the series became the first major commercial success in the shōjo genre, and proved the genre's viability as a commercial category. Hagio herself began publishing The Poe Clan in March 1972 in Bessatsu Shōjo Comic; the series was not strictly a serial, but rather a series of interrelated narratives featuring recurring characters which functioned as standalone stories.
Production
In 1970, Hagio befriended and manga artist Keiko Takemiya. Masuyama is credited with introducing Hagio and Takemiya to literature, music, and films that would come to heavily influence their manga: Demian, Beneath the Wheel, and Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse, as well as other novels in the Bildungsroman genre recommended by Masuyama, came to influence Hagio generally and The Heart of Thomas specifically. Hagio has stated that Hesse's works "opened up one by one the dams that had stopped up the water I heard a voice saying 'yes, you can write. Yes, you can express yourself the way you like. Yes, you can exist.'" That same year, Hagio and Takemiya watched the 1964 Jean Delannoy film Les amitiés particulières, which depicts a tragic romance between two boys in a French boarding school. The film inspired Takemiya to create In the Sunroom, while Hagio began to create The Heart of Thomas as a personal project that she did not expect would ever be published.In 1971, Hagio changed publishing houses from Kodansha to Shogakukan, granting her greater editorial freedom and leading her to publish a loosely-adapted one-shot version of The Heart of Thomas titled The November Gymnasium. An early draft of The November Gymnasium relocated the setting of the story from an all-boys school to an all-girls school; unsatisfied with the resulting story, she maintained the male protagonists of the original series and published the adaptation in Bessatsu Shōjo Comic in November 1971. The November Gymnasium depicts a love story between Erich and Thomas, and ends with the latter's death; Oskar also appears, having previously appeared in Hagio's in April 1971, and who would later appear in in April 1972 and in April 1974.
Release
Following the critical and commercial success of The Rose of Versailles at rival publisher Shueisha, Shūkan Shōjo Comic editor asked Hagio to create a series of similar length and complexity, initially planned to be serialized over the course of two to three years. Having already drawn roughly 200 pages of The Heart of Thomas, Hagio submitted the series; the first chapter was published in the magazine on May 5, 1974. Three weeks into its serialization, a reader survey found that The Heart of Thomas was the least-popular series in Shūkan Shōjo Comic, prompting editors at the magazine to request that Hagio amend the original two- to three-year timeline for the series to four to five weeks. Hagio negotiated to allow serialization of The Heart of Thomas to continue for an additional month, stating that if the reception was still poor after that time, she would finish the story prematurely. She issued a direct appeal to Shūkan Shōjo Comics readers, writing in the magazine that The Heart of Thomas was facing cancellation due to its poor survey placement, and launched a sweepstakes in which a random respondent to the magazine's reader survey would receive a piece of original cover artwork from the series.In June 1974, the first tankōbon of Hagio's The Poe Clan was published: it sold out its initial print run of 30,000 copies in three days, an unprecedented sales volume at the time for a shōjo manga series that had not been adapted into an anime. Shogakukan encouraged Hagio to conclude The Heart of Thomas to focus on The Poe Clan, though Hagio insisted on continuing the series. The success of The Poe Clan drew attention to The Heart of Thomas, and by the end of the summer, The Heart of Thomas was ranked as the fifth most popular serialization in Shūkan Shōjo Comic. Assisted by Yukiko Kai, Hagio continued serialization of The Heart of Thomas. The series concluded on December 22, 1974, with 33 weekly chapters published in Shūkan Shōjo Comic. At the time, original manga artwork did not necessarily remain the property of the artist; in the case of The Heart of Thomas, the original artwork for the frontispiece of each chapter were distributed as rewards for a contest in the magazine. In 2019, Shogakukan launched a campaign through its magazine Monthly Flowers to recover the original frontispieces for The Heart of Thomas.
Upon its conclusion, Shogakukan collected The Heart of Thomas into three tankōbon published in January, April, and June 1975; they are respectively numbers 41, 42, and 43 of the Flower Comics collection. The series has been regularly re-printed by Shogakukan. In the West, The Heart of Thomas was not published until the 2010s. On September 14, 2011, Fantagraphics Books announced that it had acquired the license to The Heart of Thomas for release in North America. The single-volume hardcover omnibus, translated into English by Rachel Thorn, was released on January 18, 2013.