is a Japanese

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

series by Yūji Aoki which has been serialized in '' Weekly Morning'' since 1990. The series was awarded the 1992

Kodansha Manga Award is one of Japan's major manga awards. The event is sponsored by publisher Kodansha. It has been awarded annually for serialized manga in its third iteration since 1977. Categories The award was originally called the until 1968. In 1970, it was ...

for general manga and the 1998

Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize Named after Osamu Tezuka, the is a yearly manga prize awarded to manga artists or their works that follow the Osamu Tezuka manga approach founded and sponsored by Asahi Shimbun. The prize has been awarded since 1997, in Tokyo, Japan. Current ...

Award for Excellence.

Plot

The protagonist is Tatsuyuki Haibara, a young

salaryman The term is a Japanese word for salary, salaried workers. In Japanese popular culture, it is portrayed as a white-collar worker who shows unwavering loyalty and commitment to his employer, prioritizing work over anything else, including family. ...

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

-born but living in

Osaka is a Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the List of cities in Japan, third-most populous city in J ...

. He loses his job at the start of the series and seeks work in the financial sector, but is repeatedly unsuccessful despite his intelligence and aptitude. (Haibara had been pressured into keeping his previous employer afloat with large personal loans, behavior highlighted in his

credit rating A credit rating is an evaluation of the credit risk of a prospective debtor (an individual, a business, company or a government). It is the practice of predicting or forecasting the ability of a supposed debtor to pay back the debt or default. The ...

and regarded as suspicious even though he repaid them.) Exhausting his options, he applies for a position at a small, shady loans company with links to the

yakuza , also known as , are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan. The Japanese police and media (by request of the police) call them , while the yakuza call themselves . The English equivalent for the term ''yak ...

. Haibara is hired, but soon realises that his colleagues are little better than

loan shark A loan shark is a person who offers loans at Usury, extremely high or illegal interest rates, has strict terms of debt collection, collection, and generally operates criminal, outside the law, often using the threat of violence or other illegal, ...

s, quick to intimidate clients who default. The series follows Haibara's dealings with many and varied customers as he strives to avoid his co-workers' more violent methods. Other than Haibara, most of the characters are Osakans who speak in heavy

Kansai dialect The is a group of Japanese dialects in the Kansai region (Kinki region) of Japan. In Japanese, is the common name and it is called in technical terms. The dialects of Kyoto and Osaka are known as , and were particularly referred to as su ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Naniwa Kin'yudo 1990 manga 2007 manga Kodansha manga Seinen manga Shueisha franchises Shueisha manga Winner of Kodansha Manga Award (General) Winners of the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize (Award for Excellence) Osaka in fiction