Tag: obits

December 17, 2021 · 1 comment

The manga artist Hiroshi Hirata, who died last week, spent his formative years struggling to make ends meet in a poverty-stricken Japan. He was born in Tokyo, where his parents were preachers for the Tenrikyo Buddhist sect, but was evacuated to the order’s heartland, Tenri, in Nara to avoid Allied air raids. He drew his […]

December 10, 2021 · 1 comment

The writer Keiko Nobumoto, who died on 1st December from oesophageal cancer, was one of the stand-out figures of the anime world, quite possibly because her path to it was so unorthodox. Born in Hokkaido, she first studied to be a nurse in her hometown of Asahikawa, and spent the first few months of her […]

October 26, 2021 · 0 comments

When asked by an interviewer why he became a manga creator, the late Sanpei Shirato answered bluntly: “I needed to eat.” This seemingly simple reply encapsulated much of his own gritty, materialist attitude towards storytelling. He was always aware of the big picture, of the great weight of history as it marched along, but focussed […]

September 29, 2021 · 0 comments

Takao Saito, who died this week of pancreatic cancer at the age of 84, was never a fan of the word manga. He preferred to call his work gekiga, subscribing to the idea, promulgated among the creators of the 1960s, that comics could be a work of “dramatic pictures”, not mere pulp entertainment. Not that […]

September 25, 2021 · 0 comments

Eiichi Yamamoto, who died earlier this month, bore witness to crucial moments in anime history. As a young man, he was one of the talents behind the scenes at Ryuichi Yokoyama’s Otogi Pro studio, an experiment by a manga artist dabbling in the world of animation. But Yamamoto was the brains of the outfit, and […]