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WORK TITLE: The Osamu Tezuka Story
WORK NOTES: trans by Frederik L. Schodt
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1953
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Japanese
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/b/ban_toshio.htm * http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2016/08/06/books/book-reviews/life-japans-god-manga/#.WMVWEjvytPY
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1953.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, editor, and publishing executive. Tezuka Productions Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, joined in 1974 as assistant to Japanese manga comics creator Osamu Tezuka, left for a period to work as a freelance, then rejoined Tezuka Productions in 1978 as the sub chief of manga production for magazines.
AWARDS:Asahi Shimbun’s Osamu Tezuka Cultural Award, 2000; The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, 2009, for contribution to the introduction and promotion of Japanese contemporary popular culture.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Toshio Ban was a coworker of Osamu Tezuka, a Japanese manga legend. A cartoonist, animator, and film producer, Tezuka also studied to be a medical doctor and was an activist. Called “the father of manga,” Tezuka was a major influence on manga comics, which refers to comics created in Japan or in the Japanese language and that fit a style first developed in Japan in the later part of the nineteenth century. Tezuka was particularly lauded for his innovations and redefinition of the genre. Ban was particularly close with Tezuka, working with him over a long period and even serving as his English interpreter in the United States and Canada and as a consultant onone of Tezuka’s animated features and on a television series.
In his book titled The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime, written in collaboration with Tezuka Productions, Ban presents a biography of the influential artist Tezuka as well as an examination of the birth and evolution of manga and anime Japan. The biography in cartoon format follows Tezuka’s life from his childhood to his death. It was first released in Japan in serialized form following Tezuka’s death in 1989 over three years in Asahi news magazine and first appeared in book form in Japan in 1992. Ban recounts how Tezuka grew up as an avid science fiction fan and showed early promise in drawing comics of his own. Living in the city of Takarazuka in the Hyogo Prefecture in Japan, Tezuka became a lifelong fan of the Takarazuka Revue, an all-female musical theatre troupe based in the city. Ban also reveals how Tezuka’s parents were extremely supportive of his interest in drawing and comics to the point that his father created an expansive library of comics and other books in an effort to further his son’s creativity.
Tezuka eventually enrolled in medical school and became a doctor but found himself increasing drawn to cartooning as a career. Ban recounts the feverish rate at which Tezuka worked early in his cartooning career trying to meet deadlines from his demanding editors. In telliing Tezuka’s story Ban provides a comprehensive view of Tezuka’s career and life, including Tezuka working tireless through World War II and the difficult times in Japan followings its defeat. It also shows Tezuka’s rise to prominence as Japan reemerged as an economic superpower. The Osamu Tezuka Story examines the numerous innovations Tezuka developed to create a distinctive style of manga storytelling as well as in the development of anime. In the process, Tezuka created several now iconic manga characters, including Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion, and Black Jack.
Ban not only examines Tezuka as an unusually creative individual but also delves into his personal life. Ban illustrates Tezuka’s almost maniacal commitment to his work and how its affected his relationships and other aspects of his life, including his professional life. According to Ban, Tezuka faced numerous obstacles as he created manga and various anime companies, which he vowed to keep operating as a collective of artists rather than solely as a commercially focused effort. Throughout The Osamu Tezuka Story Ban provides numerous anecdotes that occurred throughout Tezuka’s life, providing a context for how they impacted Tezuka’s creative process and were incorporated into his manga characters and stories. For example, the spiky hair of Astro Boy comes from Tezuka’s own feelings about his unmanageable hair when he was a boy.
Ban provides numerous examples of Tezuka’s childhood stories and comics that he created while he was still in grade school. Excerpts from Tezuka’s work are presented throughout the story, including some creations never published. Overall, The Osamu Tezuka Story is more than 900 pages long and, as noted by School Library Journal contributor Andrea Lipinski, “reading it will take a large commitment of time and energy.” Lipinski added: “That being said, it is absolutely worth the read.” PopMatters Web site contributor Han Rollman remarked: “If manga straddles the divide between strong narrative plot and whimsical excess, it’s a tension that applies itself to Tezuka’s life in this telling.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, August 29, 2016, review of The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime, p. 76.
School Library Journal, November, 2016, Andrea Lipinski, review of The Osamu Tezuka Story, p. 123.
Xpress Reviews, August 5, 2016, Emilia Packard, review of The Osamu Tezuka Story.
ONLINE
Comics Grinder, https://comicsgrinder.com/ ( September 2, 2016 ), review of The Osamu Tezuka Story.
Foreword Reviews Online, https://www.forewordreviews.com/ (November 28, 2016), Peter Dabbene, review of The Osamu Tezuka Story.
Japan Times, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/ (August 6, 2016), review of The Osamu Tezuka Story.
Limbiek, https://www.lambiek.net/ (May 25, 2017), author profile.
PopMatters, http://www.popmatters.com/ (August 10, 2016), Hans Rollman, “The Dark Side of Obsession in the The Osamu Tezuka Story.”
World Literature Today, https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/ ( March 1, 2017), Zack Davisson, review of The Osamu Tezuka Story.*
Toshio Ban was a longterm co-worker of Japanese manga legend Osamu Tezuka. He joined Tezuka Productions in 1974 as one of Tezuka's assistants. After a period of working as a free-lancer, he re-joined Tezuka in 1978 as the sub-chief of manga production for magazines. He supported Tezuka until his death in 1989. As the artist who worked so closely with the master, he made a 900 pages manga biography, called 'The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime' (2016). Besides the life and work of the creator of 'Astro Boy', 'Kimba the White Lion' and 'Black Jack', the book also gives an anecdotal study of the evolution of Japan's early manga and anime business.
Toshio Ban has also worked with writer Peter Tasker on a futuristic manga story called 'I am a Digital Cat: A Japanese Future' (2012).
Toshio Ban (b. 1953) was Osamu Tezuka's subchief of manga production for magazines at Tezuka Productions, the company founded by Tezuka and responsible for the development, production, merchandising, licensing, and distribution of his many manga and anime creations, including books, films, and characters. Tezuka Productions Co., Ltd., is the now-legendary company founded by Osamu Tezuka in 1968 to produce his own manga and anime. In the wake of Tezuka's death in 1989, it has continued as a family enterprise, responsible for the development, production, merchandising, licensing, and distribution of his many manga and anime creations, including books, films, and characters. Frederik L. Schodt is a translator and author of numerous books about Japan, including Manga! Manga!, Dreamland Japan, and Astro Boy Essays: Osamu Tezuka, Might Atom, and the Manga/Anime Revolution. He often served as Osamu Tezuka's English interpreter in the U.S. and Canada and served as a consultant on one of his animated features and a TV series. In 2009 he received The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette for his contribution to the introduction and promotion of Japanese contemporary popular culture. He is also winner of the Asahi Shimbun's Osamu Tezuka Cultural Award in 2000.
The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime
263.35 (Aug. 29, 2016): p76.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime
Toshio Ban and Tezuka Productions, trans. from the Japanese by Frederik L. Schodt.
Stone Bridge, $29.95 (914p) ISBN 978-161172-025-9
Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989), the "god of manga" and creator of such characters as Astro Boy, looms like a colossus over Japanese comics and animation. His manga biography is fittingly massive, dramatizing the artist's life over some 900 pages of cheery cartoon action. As a boy in the city of Takarazuka, Tezuka draws comics, devours science fiction, and becomes a lifelong fan of his town's famous all-female theater. He enrolls in medical school, but a cartooning career beckons. From there, much of the narrative consists of Tezuka drawing feverishly while editors prowl outside his studio waiting on deadlines. But even at its most repetitive, the book captures its subject's tireless genius through WWII, the lean postwar years, and the emergence of Japan as a superpower. The artist, Tezuka's longtime assistant Ban, draws in an accurate recreation of Tezuka's style, although not quite able to match the easy fluidity of the master. Legendary manga scholar Schodt provides a first-rate translation. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime." Publishers Weekly, 29 Aug. 2016, p. 76. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA462236472&it=r&asid=1054dd10336de0dc59cf778d1f0110c5. Accessed 3 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A462236472
Ban, Toshio. The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime
Andrea Lipinski
62.11 (Nov. 2016): p123.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
BAN, Toshio. The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime. tr. from Japanese by Frederik L. Schodt. illus. by Toshio Ban. 928p. Stone Bridge. Jul. 2016. pap. $29.95. ISBN 9781611720259.
Gr 7 Up--This is the first English translation of an enormous homage to one of Japan's most famous manga and anime creators. After Osamu Tezuka's death in 1989, this graphic format biography was released in Japan, first in serialized form and later collected into several volumes. The English version is more than 900 pages long and is taller and wider than traditional manga, so reading it will take a large commitment of time and energy. That being said, it is absolutely worth the read. This volume gives an amazingly extensive view of Tezuka's life, from his childhood through his adult years. It covers the breadth of his career, including the creation of memorable characters such as Astro Boy and the innovations he used in manga storytelling and in the development of anime. While this title is positive in its treatment of Tezuka, it's no puff piece. It focuses on how incredibly prolific he was, and it also examines how overextending himself affected his personal and professional life. Over and over again, Tezuka is shown trapped in different rooms, working as quickly as possible while his editors wait outside, refusing to leave until he hands them their pages. Readers will come away with an appreciation for Tezuka's influences and will be inspired to seek out his creations. VERDICT For fans of manga and anime, as well as anyone interested in innovative people and the creative process.--Andrea Lipinski, New York Public Library
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Lipinski, Andrea. "Ban, Toshio. The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime." School Library Journal, Nov. 2016, p. 123+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA468699364&it=r&asid=a981e66586f7f1661c5ac47342c7cfe8. Accessed 3 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A468699364
Ban, Toshio & Tezuka Prods. The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime
Emilia Packard
(Aug. 5, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews-first_look_at_new.html.csp
Ban, Toshio & Tezuka Prods. The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime. Stone Bridge. Jul. 2016. 928p. tr. from Japanese by Frederik L. Schodt. ISBN 9781611720259. pap. $29.95. BIOG
For true fans, this near 1,000-page biography of manga artist Osamu Tezuka (1928-89) will spark excitement and rabid consumption. The illustrated saga began serialization soon after Tezuka's death and was first published as a book in Japan in 1992. The timing of its recent English-language translation works just fine for U.S. readers of his work, which has been rendered in multiple languages over the past few decades. Created by Ban, a close assistant of Tezuka's, this portrait of the artist preserves his bubbly, detailed illustration style, offers glimpses of his many and ever-changing work environments, traces his transition from manga to anime, and even shares some of his earliest artistic creations, beginning at the tender age of five. As with Yoshihiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life, it captures the harried existence of a manga creator, and similar to Shigeru Mizuki's Showa, it portrays the artist in the context of a period of great upheaval in Japan. Perhaps because of its immediate, serialized nature, it's a bit procedural and doesn't plunge far into the depths of Tezuka's endlessly creative mind--the documentation herein is almost academic, for better or worse.
Verdict A must for Tezuka devotees, a maybe for manga lovers, and a pass for the simply curious.--Emilia Packard, Austin, TX
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Packard, Emilia. "Ban, Toshio & Tezuka Prods. The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime." Xpress Reviews, 5 Aug. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA460900922&it=r&asid=37d7ff3280000fb5820cd84efc5c8ca3. Accessed 3 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A460900922
September 2, 2016 · 11:00 am
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Review: THE OSAMU TEZUKA STORY by Toshio Ban
Osamu Tezuka, as a boy, shows promise.
Osamu Tezuka, as a boy, shows promise.
“The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime,” by Toshio Ban, published by Stone Bridge Press, is a work in manga fit for one of the greatest manga artists ever, Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989). Manga is a very particular experience and much can get lost in translation. One key trait to manga is that time constraints often go out the window, the format embraces extended scenes. I like this approach and find it can be quite effective in setting a mood. Like any other technique, it can be overdone. I thought this to myself as I began to undertake this behemoth of book clocking in at 928 pages. Could it have benefited from some restraint? Well, yes and no. Overall, I highly recommend it on many levels. It provides much needed context and general information. And, in the end, there is an enthusiastic spark throughout that lifts the reader.
Manga is inextricably linked to a different world view, as opposed to most Western comics. We Americans, even the most seasoned readers among us, have been conditioned to more tightly edited work. You just need to come into reading this biography with the same spirit you would approach a gloriously sprawling foreign film. Yes, expect to find many detailed scenes with the little boy Osamu. And, yes, expect various detailed scenes of Osamu, the man, at his drafting table.
Osamu Tezuka in his prime.
Osamu Tezuka in his prime.
Who exactly was Osamu Tezuka? you may ask. In the United States, Osamu Tezuka is not as well known as he could be. But, in Japan, he ranks as high as, say, Charles M. Schulz does in America. There is every reason to believe that Tezuka could become as beloved an artist as Schulz. And that adds to the importance of this biography. In America, a certain number of enthusiasts know Tezuka for his landmark Buddha series. In Japan, Tezuka is also celebrated for Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion, and Black Jack. Also covered in this book is Tezuka’s trailblazing work in animation. It is no exaggeration to say that Japan’s manga and anime owes greatly to the work of Osamu Tezuka.
Working for Osamu Tezuka
Working for Osamu Tezuka proves challenging.
Among the memorable detailed accounts: Tezuka, up to his ears in work, is literally fleeing anxious editors from various publications hounding him to meet his deadlines. The King of Manga, hiding out in hotel rooms from publishers, with the press not far behind, became a veritable cause célèbre. At the height of so many conflicting deadlines piling up on him, Tezuka had to devise various systems to cut down the time-consuming process of creating manga. This included hiring a team of assistants. The poor devils were left to do various bits of piece work without a clue as to what would ultimately go where. This would be just a taste of what it would be like once Tezuka began to work in his own anime studio.
You are in for a treat. Yes, here you are dealing with a mammoth book. Take it bit by bit and you will be rewarded. Frederik L. Schodt’s translation works smoothly with Toshio Ban’s original script and artwork which greatly emulates Tezuka’s own artwork. This is indeed a treasure trove. The original work was published in 1992, three years after Tezuka’s death. It originally came out as three books: Osamu to Osamushi (1928-1945), Dreams of Manga (1945-1959), and Dreams of Anime (1960-1989). With that in mind, it is more reasonable to see how we ended up with such a big book. I think a graphic novel should be as long as it needs to be. Some 300-pagers could easily be half as long. But, in this case, here is a story that is well justified in spreading out as much as it needed to.
The Osamu Tezuka Story
A Life in Manga and Anime
Reviewed by Peter Dabbene
November 28, 2016
Osamu Tezuka was a towering figure in Japanese manga and anime, referred to as the God of Manga and Japan’s Walt Disney. Despite his importance in the development of these fields, Tezuka’s name and work are not well known outside his native country, a situation that Toshio Ban and translator Frederik L. Schodt seek to remedy with the monumental manga biography The Osamu Tezuka Story.
At over 900 pages plus appendices, The Osamu Tezuka Story might seem imposing, but while the account is thorough and well-detailed, Ban always moves it along engagingly, making use of one of Tezuka’s characters, Mustachio, to narrate. There are amusing scenes of editors attempting to monitor Tezuka and ensure that he meets the deadlines for their manga publications, but when Ban shows Tezuka escaping from windows or taking a train to a distant hotel for some solitude, it’s not just exciting and funny, it also demonstrates the tremendous pressure Tezuka was under to meet his commitments. Beginning with Tezuka’s childhood, the book illuminates the critical ingredients of his career, including his medical degree, his business ventures, his passion for experimentation, and, above all, his relentless work ethic.
Drawing on Tezuka’s own manga biographies (I Am A Manga Artist, and others) as well as outside references, Ban and his partners have created a landmark guide to the life and accomplishments of a master.
Toshio Ban (b. 1953) was Osamu Tezuka's subchief of manga production for magazines at Tezuka Productions, the company founded by Tezuka and responsible for the development, production, merchandising, licensing, and distribution of his many manga and anime creations, including books, films, and characters. Tezuka Productions Co., Ltd., is the now-legendary company founded by Osamu Tezuka in 1968 to produce his own manga and anime. In the wake of Tezuka's death in 1989, it has continued as a family enterprise, responsible for the development, production, merchandising, licensing, and distribution of his many manga and anime creations, including books, films, and characters. Frederik L. Schodt is a translator and author of numerous books about Japan, including Manga! Manga!, Dreamland Japan, and Astro Boy Essays: Osamu Tezuka, Might Atom, and the Manga/Anime Revolution. He often served as Osamu Tezuka's English interpreter in the U.S. and Canada and served as a consultant on one of his animated features and a TV series. In 2009 he received The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette for his contribution to the introduction and promotion of Japanese contemporary popular culture. He is also winner of the Asahi Shimbun's Osamu Tezuka Cultural Award in 2000.
The Dark Side of Obsession in 'The Osamu Tezuka Story'
BY HANS ROLLMAN
10 August 2016
TEZUKA MAY BE A GOD OF MANGA, BUT HIS STORY IS APOCRYPHAL.
cover art
THE OSAMU TEZUKA STORY
TOSHIO BAN
(STONE BRIDGE)
US: JUL 2016
AMAZON
It’s perhaps not surprising that the man known as ‘the god of manga’ should require a biography of biblical proportions. Clocking in at over 900 pages, The Osama Tezuka Story is a worthy tribute to the man who pioneered a great deal of the manga-anime industrial complex that today constitutes a multi-billion dollar global industry.
But Tezuka fought a pitched battle to keep his growing manga and anime companies a ‘creator’s collective’, rather than a commercial industry, argues his biographer Toshio Ban, who served as sub-chief of manga productions for Tezuka Productions, working under the manga god himself. That’s one of the over-arching themes of his tome of a biography; Tezuka’s relentless and at times ruthless work ethic is the other. The result is a book that provides an invaluable history of manga and anime development, but elides any true understanding of Tezuka the man.
The Osama Tezuka Story is a manga biography of the man who’s best known in the English-speaking world for works such as Astro Boy, Buddha, Phoenix, Adolf, Black Jack, Princess Knight, and many more titles in the more than 150,000 pages of manga (over 700 volumes) he drew during his career. Ban’s biography was originally serialized in an Asahi news magazine over three years following Tezuka’s death in 1989, and published in Japan in book format in 1992. It’s now available in English for the first time, translated by Tezuka’s fan, friend and translator Frederik L. Schodt, a manga and Japanese pop culture scholar himself.
The book collects an array of amusing anecdotes from Tezuka’s life. Copiously cited and referenced, the material is drawn from speeches, memoirs, and other commentary produced by Tezuka over the years for his Japanese audience. The anecdotes offer insight into many of the elements that he would later incorporate into his manga (for example, Astro-Boy’s irrepressible spiky hairstyle, inspired by his own struggles with unruly hair as a child). We see how his obsession with collecting butterflies fueled the obsession with metamorphosis that characterizes many of his comics. Other examples and inspirations abound.
The research is meticulous: the book opens by sharing some of Tezuka’s childhood stories and comics from grade school, and continues the pattern by inserting short and illustrative excerpts of many of his works throughout, from the internationally acclaimed to the whimsically personal and never-published. But these also reveal the very charmed childhood that Tezuka enjoyed.
In contrast to other manga and comics artists whose childhoods were troubled and marked by adults who sought to deter them from the graphic artist’s life, Tezuka, at least as he is presented here, received nothing but praise and support in his early years. His parents indulged his childhood artistic inclinations, providing him notebooks (even erasing his notebooks to supply him blank pages when the Second World War induced scarcity). They bought him comics at every opportunity, and his father had an extensive library of comics and other works to inspire the youthful Tezuka.
He was short and poor at athletics—classic fodder for bullying—but nonetheless his classmates idolized him for his artistic skills. Even his teachers encouraged him; by some fluke of fate or fortune he managed to avoid teachers indoctrinated by Japan’s militaristic nationalism and instead had teachers who praised his creativity and individuality, and encouraged him to continue writing stories and producing art, even when it affected his studies.
If Tezuka is considered a god of manga, he grew up in an environment remarkably conducive for such an aspiration. His story offers, perhaps, an example of what humans can accomplish when their childhood creative inclinations are nurtured with praise and respect, by peers and by adults alike.
Of course, this formative fortune was coupled with (if not generated by) a personal drive of tremendous energy. Tezuka went to medical school at the same time as he began getting contracts for his manga, and eventually found himself torn between the two fields. He persevered with his medical studies, passing his exams, but it was manga that won his heart, and to which he dedicated his life. This led to the incongruous phenomenon of a striving artist whose editors had to address him with the respect due a medical doctor.
A striving artist, but not a starving one. Tezuka’s drive led him to win contracts with several of the top manga magazines just at the moment when manga was beginning to take off. The result was a grueling schedule of deadlines—his editors pursued him around town to make sure they got their comics, often crashing in his rooms as they supervised him—but no shortage of cash. Indeed, other manga artists began to resent Tezuka’s success, as he became known as one of the richest and most successful manga artists in the country.
A deeply ambitious man, his money-earning drive served a functional purpose: he was determined to earn enough to open his own animation studio. He was an obsessive fan of films—one year he set himself the goal of watching 365 films over the course of the year—and yearned to bring his manga to animated life. This he eventually did, pioneering many of the techniques and styles that would later fuel the anime industry.
Rich Details, Dry Story
While North American readers might open a cartoony manga expecting an entertaining story, what they’ll find here is actually a very technical and meticulously researched history. The book sheds a fascinating light on what life was like for manga artists in the early and formative years of the genre. It’s full of explanatory (and delightfully illustrated) asides on the technical production and evolution of manga, and offers unique sociological-historical vantages as well. For example, Tezuka had contracts with several different magazines, so each month his various editors would gather at a restaurant or bar and negotiate deadlines with each other. Tezuka himself would sometimes preside over the negotiations, rewarding his editors with sake when they reached mutually amicable agreements.
Still, they acted like his personal managers at times, locking him into hotel rooms rented by the magazines so he could finish his assignments undisturbed, or sleeping in his rooms and waking him to make sure he got their comics done by the agreed upon deadlines (these were common practices in the manga industry at the time, and were referred to in Japanese as kanzome, or ‘canning’). Sometimes he slipped away from them, and they had to scour the city in search of him (a common technique was to search hotel garbage bins for pencil shavings, a clear giveaway of a manga artist at work).
The field had its darker sides, too. Sometimes the grueling work schedules got the better of the artists, and burned them out or even killed them. The fate of Tezuka’s colleague Eiichi Fukui is an illustrative, if tragic, example. In 1954 the rising manga star died of karoshi—the Japanese term for death-through-overwork—just as he was entering his prime. Tezuka had crossed swords with Fukui, who was several years his senior, as described in Ryan Holmberg’s fascinating 2015 article in The Comics Journal. Tezuka may have regretted his critique of Fukui in the wake of his death, but his attacks on the senior artist illustrate both his own personal ambition, as well as a “crystal example of how manga’s new hero was no angel.”
It’s here that The Osama Tezuka Story leaves much to be desired. While incidents like Fukui’s death are referenced, and the less savoury moments of Tezuka’s career are alluded to, any sort of critical commentary on Tezuka’s life is strictly avoided. What’s more, the book avoids the sort of controversial material that would actually offer an interesting storyline. For example, Tezuka’s popular Black Jack series, whose protagonist is a rogue surgeon, often served as a critique of the Japanese medical establishment (with which Tezuka, as a medical doctor, had first-hand experience). Some issues tackled such controversial and sensitive topics—lobotomies, for instance—that the medical establishment successfully lobbied for their suppression (some issues were omitted from subsequent book collections as a result). As Cian O’Luanaigh recounted in The Guardian last year, this “scourge of the medical establishment… shaped the national debate about medical reform in Japan.” Now that’s the sort of thing that makes a biography interesting, but there’s little exploration of it here.
Perhaps some of this can be attributed to the fact that the 900+ page book was originally serialized (and immediately after his death, too, so the desire to eulogize probably trumped the desire for critical analysis). This probably accounts for the repetitive nature of the account: Tezuka has an idea; Tezuka faces a deadline; the staff overwork themselves and meet the deadline; everyone goes off to celebrate at a restaurant or a movie. In serialized format, it might have been more difficult to explore the more compelling, if controversial, side of Tezuka’s life and work. Yet Tezuka himself explored complex themes in serialization. Finding a way to do so would have injected a great deal more life into the narrative.
If manga straddles the divide between strong narrative plot and whimsical excess, it’s a tension that applies itself to Tezuka’s life in this telling. Tezuka comes across as a superhero; his steely gaze and jaunty beret belying an ambition of nearly superhuman strength. His portrayal in the book assumes all the dimensions of the comic superhero: he doesn’t sleep, produces record amounts of manga, looks after his assistants (who serve him happily despite his extreme demands), mediates between his editors, and tirelessly (almost effortlessly) redefines the genre after an idealistic image of his own ingenious devising. When he succumbs to leisure, it’s with equally ambitious results: he caps a four-day bout of sleepless manga-writing by taking his assistants out to the theatre with him.
There’s doubtless some truth to this depiction—his astonishing output is confirmation enough of his remarkable work ethic—but it leaves something wanting in the telling. The reader yearns for the human Tezuka, for some indication of his doubts, his setbacks, his fears and regrets (as it is, the only doubts portrayed in the story are whether he should pursue a career as a successful doctor or one as a successful manga artist, and he is already both by that point). Perhaps he had none of these human foibles, but the reader can’t help but be skeptical. Perhaps some day there will appear in manga form “Osama Tezuka: The Human Behind the Myth”.
Until then, Anglophones will have to be satisfied with the myth.
A Celebration of Creativity and Overwork
The Story of Osamu Tezuka is a magnificent tome of a book, an illustrated history covering not only the year-by-year life of Tezuka but the development of modern manga and anime. It’s chock-full with points of technical interest, and applies passionate devotion to the telling of Tezuka’s life.
So much so that it frequently goes overboard. It often becomes hagiographic, depicting Tezuka’s obsessive creative drive in heroic style. But this belies the dark side of obsession. The exploitation of his staff reached epic proportions—they referred to sessions in the early years of Mighty Atom’s (Astro Boy) animation as ‘death marches’, and when they later re-made the series he had sleeping bunks installed in the studio workspace—yet this is all rationalized as a pleasant byproduct of creative genius. The text quotes from Tezuka’s own account Boku wa Mangaka (I Am a Manga Artist): “In inverse proportion to the rising popularity of the show, the staff looked frighteningly emaciated. Some had nervous breakdowns, or fell ill and had to take time off… But most just gritted their teeth, and kept going. And the only thing that kept them going was pride in the fact that they were pioneering a new field…”
These scenes of overwork and exploitation appear repeatedly, framed as a celebration of creative devotion that’s hard to swallow in this day and age. In December 1966 an overworked employee of Tezuka who had devoted himself to the Atom TV show [The Mighty Atom, or Astro Boy] collapsed and died at his desk, and from the way this is presented it’s unclear whether the reader is expected to think this is a wonderful or terrible thing.
Certainly Tezuka achieved remarkable things, and can be credited with making manga and anime the successful fields they are today. He held the conviction that manga could become an international language, and surmount both cultural and political divides. He left a tremendous legacy (the vast majority of which has yet to be translated into English). But that’s all the more reason to treat his legacy with a greater degree of critical analysis. The Osama Tezuka Story goes into meticulous research and detail about the history of manga, but offers only the glowing surface veneer of Tezuka himself. The reader looking for an entertaining narrative will find instead a dry and clinical history, and a sense of inferiority if they can’t regularly operate on two hours of sleep a night.
One is tempted to compare it to Shigeru Mizuki’s autobiographical works—Showa, Nonnonba, etc.—but the difference is that Mizuki’s life was darn interesting. From his spirit explorations in the forest to his war experiences, Mizuki’s autobiographical work is deeply political, self-reflexively philosophical, and offers a riveting narrative. Tezuka’s story, by contrast, offers little more than a charmed life of obsessive, if creatively inspired, overwork. While the lover of Tezuka’s rich oeuvre, or the student of manga and anime, will find much to interest themselves here, let us hope that future biographies of the manga-anime pantheon—Hayao Miyazaki, Nanase Ohkawa, etc.—will offer a more critical, and human, portrayal of their subjects.
Home | March 2017 | Book Reviews
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The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime by Toshio Ban & Tezuka Productions
MISCELLANEOUS
Author:
Toshio Ban and Tezuka Productions
Translator:
Frederik L. Schodt
The cover to The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime by Toshio Ban & Tezuka ProductionsBerkeley, California. Stone Bridge Press. 2016. 914 pages.
This is a big book. Massive. Shockingly so. In fact, when you first pick it up there is little you can do other than marvel at the size and wonder how the binding holds it together. But then you dig into the story and you realize what a giant Osamu Tezuka really was and how even a book at a hundred times this size could barely begin to capture this explosive genius.
When talking about Tezuka, you are obligated to mention his title as Japan’s “God of Manga.” Before reading this, I never gave much thought to what this meant. It was a nickname, like Jack “King” Kirby for American comics. And, to be perfectly honest, I was never a Tezuka fan. Sure, I knew he was brilliant, but aside from Astro Boy and Black Jack, I hadn’t read much of his work. His style didn’t appeal to me, and I have always been a Shigeru Mizuki guy. But wow, The Osamu Tezuka Story opened my eyes. Tezuka didn’t just make manga, he created manga genres. He invented the idea of “story manga,” of moving beyond gag strips into long-format stories, aka “The way all manga is done today.” Tezuka could have lived for a thousand years and never run out of ideas. Reading this, Tezuka seems less like a human being and more like creativity incarnate—a true “God of Manga.”
Cartoonist Toshio Ban pulls off this manga biography beautifully. One of Tezuka’s chief assistants for years, he can imitate his boss’s style when he needs to but brings his own flair to the work. Ban keeps the energy high, moving us through Tezuka’s life at a pace as fast as Tezuka himself. The story was originally serialized, which means that there are several check-in points and some repetition. I found this incredibly helpful, actually. This wasn’t a comic I could read in one sitting, so I appreciated the landmarks along the way.
Fred Schodt’s translation was wonderful: fluent, smooth, and with natural language. I can’t imagine anyone else translating this—Schodt himself even appears in a panel in this book (see WLT, March 2016, 7).
One slight criticism: The Osamu Tezuka Story is absolutely a work in praise of Tezuka. This is no “warts and all” biography; there is nothing here that isn’t presented as wonderful. Tezuka was a workaholic to the extreme, and while this meant many fantastic creations, you can see the strain on those around him, caught up in the whirlwind of a man who never slept, never rested, and never stopped even to breathe. They are the collateral damage of a force of nature, like Semele burned to ashes by seeing Zeus in his full glory. Still—the world of comics we currently live in is worth it. The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime has made me a new disciple to the God of Manga. Now I have a lot of reading to do.
Zack Davisson
Seattle, Washington