The Stupid Guy Goes to India  (English, Paperback, Yamamatsu Yukichi)

Through the autobiographical story of Yukichi Yamamatsu, Stupid Guy Goes To India takes a funny look at one man’s struggle as a clueless tourist in a foreign land.

Summary Of The Book

Stupid Guy Goes To India is the firsthand account of Yukichi Yamamatsu’s experiences in a foreign country.

Yukichi Yamamatsu is a 56-year-old Japanese man who travels to India. He is on a mission to sell his manga comics in India, a country where they are yet to gain popularity. As he attempts to navigate his way as a stranger in a strange land, hilarity ensues.

He lands at the Delhi airport, armed with just a little money, a mission to accomplish, and zero interest in sight-seeing. From the minute he arrives in India, he is swept away in a hurricane of new, often daunting sights and sounds. Even the tiniest and most common of tasks seem to take enormous amounts of effort.

From the spicy cuisine and the persistent beggars to the filthy toilets, Yamamatsu is left quite overwhelmed by it all. His comic-selling mission is initially overshadowed by the need to accomplish seemingly simple tasks like looking for a place to live, and escaping from the clutches of all manner fraudulent people, including landlords, cops, auto drivers, shoe sellers, and street vendors.

As he slowly recovers from the culture shock that he was highly unprepared for, he gets back on track to focus on his original mission. His problems seem never-ending as he struggles to find a translator for his books, deal with a printing press, and find a vendor for the printed comics.
Stupid Guy Goes To India has been written in Japanese, Yamamatsu’s native language. It has been written in keeping with the traditional format of Manga comics, i.e., it needs to be read in a back to front, right to left manner. It was first published in 2008. This particular edition is the English translation by Kumar Sivasubramanian. It was published in 2012.

About The Authors

Yukichi Yamamatsu was born in 1948 in Tottori Prefecture, Japan. He quit junior high school and went on to take up one different job after another. At the age of 16, he sold his first Manga book to a publisher in Osaka. He has been a well-known manga comic artist for over four decades now.

Kumar Sivasubramanian is a Canadian writer and translator of Indian origin. He is also a consultant for Sunrise Inc, a company that is into anime production. He has translated several manga series from Japanese to English, including Summit Of The Gods, Blade Of The Immortal, and Old Boy. He is also the author of a webcomic called Weird Crime Theater. He currently lives in Melbourne, Australia.