Abstract
Whereas the passing of Tezuka Osamu (1928–1989) is eulogised with a frequency unrivalled in Western academic and scholarly discourse; the passing of Ishinomori Shōtarō (1938–1998), who is equally celebrated in Japan, hardly receives any mention at all. Yet, the relationship between arguably two of the greatest graphic artists in postwar Japan is so close that Ishinomori’s drawing style and overall artistry closely resembles that of Tezuka. This is hardly surprising since in 1955 Ishinomori began to submit drawings to regular contests designed to discover new talents for the magazine Manga Shōnen. It is said that Tezuka was so moved by what he saw that he invited Ishinomori to work for him as an assistant on Astro Boy. From there on their relationship deepened and after his graduation from high school in 1956 Ishinomori moved to what was then the hub of young budding artists, the apartment building Tokiwa-sō, where he lived and worked with Tezuka until 1961. In one of their many recorded round-table talks the two grandmasters discuss their contribution to the Japanese graphic art media:
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Notes
- 1.
Gakushū (学習) refers to ‘learning’ and acquiring new knowledge in general but in combination with manga it indicates a specific ‘genre’ in graphic art that aims to educate the reader in the sense of traditional textbooks.
- 2.
Publishers like Drawn & Quarterly have now translated and published many obscure and perhaps, to the Western comic aficionado, somewhat fringe manga from Japanese grandmasters like Mizuki Shigeru’s Showa: A history of Japan and Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life.
- 3.
Positions 9:2 © 2001 by Duke University Press, p. 468.
- 4.
The work was awarded with the 33rd Shōgakukan-Manga-Prize (小学館漫画賞) in 1987 as well as the 17th回(1988年) Japan Cartoonists Association Award (日本漫画家協会賞) in 1988.
- 5.
All examples are taken from Ishinomori (1999).
- 6.
Attempted in March 1931, it was launched by the ultranationalist Sakurakai (Cherry Blossom Society) established within the Imperial Japanese Army.
- 7.
See for instance Aaron Benedek and Ann Dobinson ‘JAPAN: Far right rewrites history’, 2011. Online at: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/24718 (Accessed: 22 July 2012).
- 8.
Source: http://www.imamoe.jp/?p=1560. Accessed: 20 July 2012.
- 9.
Original wording: ‘Manga no omonachigai ha, omoshiro-okashiidakedewanaku, tayōnate-ma gahyōgenkanō to iu mono’. (漫画との主な違いは、面白おかしいだけではなく、多様なテーマが表現可能と言うもの). Online at: <http://d.hatena.ne.jp/keyword/%E8%DF%B2%E8>. Accessed: 20 July 2012.
- 10.
See Tasumi Yoshihiro. 2009. A Drifting Life (劇画漂流, gekigahyōryū) and Matsumoto Masahiko. 2009. GekigaBakatachi (劇画パカたち, The idiots of gekiga).
References
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Rosenbaum, R. (2016). Redacting Japanese History: Ishinomori Shōtarō’s Graphic Narratives. In: Otmazgin, N., Suter, R. (eds) Rewriting History in Manga. East Asian Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55143-6_5
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