On the tenth day in the June of 1935 Osaka, there was born a man. His name was Tatsumi Yoshihiro: one of the earliest mangaka, and one of the first makers of alternative comics in the world. And his love was in writing, like those who wrote the stories which inspired him.
His days would be spent writing and drawing these works destined for submission to any number of the multiple youth magazines cropping across Japan in the new decade, by the inspiration of a particularly famous man in the nation known as Osamu Tezuka. This influence would become evident as the hours spent on reader-made strips evolved into a life of telling tales through the inscription of the characters within.
A time arrived where he become his own mangaka, bringing about a number of individual stories, and collaborative works with others in his field. In time he would come to create a story of his own, one that would mark him as a unique entity within the realm of comic books, and illustrated works. The latter part of the 1950's was when Yoshihiro created a simple work now translated and published as Black Blizzard:
The style is very different from that of his later works, both in aesthetic and content, and yet it retains many traits which managed to remain. Some of these include a greater artistic emphasis on the environment with a lesser on individuals and crowds, and a narrative bearing a lower - at times somber - tone, especially in contrast with much of the output present in the industry. Time would bring with it a greater sense of cynicism and ennui, The Push Man and Other Stories being the first of these, followed by Abandon the Old in Tokyo, and Good-bye, all published in English by the Canadian company Drawn and Quarterly.
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In 1972, the year in which the last parts of Good-bye were made, Tatsumi Yoshihiro received the Japanese Mangaka Association award, and in a single moment of life-long aptness, was awarded the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize thirty-nine years later for his autobiography, detailing the struggles of Japan, the rising manga industry, and those of his own, in the eight-hundred and fifty-six page classic, A Drifting Life.
From the end of the second world war to the death of Tezuka Osamu, Tatsumi tells of the changing cultural landscape of Japan, and how it has affected manga, and manga affected it. We learn of life, of individual hopes and idealized ambitions coming short under the weight of a post-war reality, as well as the impressions and ideas taken from a new world in which the Japanese were starting to live. It is the genesis of a society's medium, and the telling of those who helped it continue.
Shall we discuss some giants of graphic novelization, Arlong Park?
