632 TEZUKA, OSAMU
Selected Bibliography: Motter, Dean and Michael Lark. Terminal City. New York:
DC Comics. 1996; Motter, Dean and Michael Lark. Terminal City: Aerial Graffi ti. New
York: DC Comics. 1997.
Matthew Dube
TEZUKA, OSAMU (1928–89). Widely known as the “Father of Manga,” or even the
“God of Manga,” Osamu Tezuka was a medical doctor, an illustrator, and a fi lmmaker;
more importantly, this prolifi c artist was the greatest comics author that Japan has ever
known. At a very young age, Tezuka acquired a love for stories from his mother, while
his father allowed him the rare privilege of going to the movies regularly. It was Walt
Disney and the Fleischer brothers who inspired little Tezuka to draw his fi rst manga
by copying Mickey Mouse and Popeye during his primary years, where his talent was
recognized and encouraged by a Samaritan schoolmaster. At the outbreak of World
War II, Tezuka continued to produce manga for his entourage in junior high in spite
of a general manga-bashing mentality. After the war, Tezuka registered in the school of
medicine and set his mind to earn his degree but his heart was already turning towards
manga creation.
Drawing continuously for more than 50 years (about 150,000 plates in 700 works),
creating manga was Tezuka’s way of shielding himself against various persecutions
throughout life. For his primary school classmates ridiculed his small size, the wartime
militaries loathed manga, the Tokyo publishers made fun of the provincial young artist
from Osaka, and the general readership of the 1950s considered manga pernicious, just
as comic books were coming under fi re in the United States as a bad infl uence on young
people.
A self-taught artist, Tezuka broke away from the common farcical stories four to
fi ve pages long of the pre-war period, and molded the modern manga landscape with
“story manga,” which feature a strong and fl uid narrative. He also invented the “star
system,” which recasts the same recognizable key characters in diff erent manga, thus
giving readers a sense of familiarity. His work infl uenced the generation of the postwar
years immensely, not only because his Jungle Taitei (1950–54) defi ned shonen manga,
and his Princess Knight (1954–68) gave birth to shôjo manga, but also because of his
avant-garde use of dynamic techniques. Color plates, use of boldface in dialogues, and
onomatopoeia spreading beyond the edge of the frame were frowned upon at fi rst but
well accepted a decade later. His humorous and deceptively simple drawings lent weight
to the themes that he wanted to convey and explore—ecology and human dignity,
guilt and redemption, evil and moral decay—all adroitly blended in a variety of genres:
science fi ction, social fi ction, medical thriller, biography, history, and the sublime.
Although his very fi rst manga was a science fi ction story (Th e Ghost Man), the best-
known one was New Treasure Island (1947), which pioneered cinematic movements
ranging from panoramic shots to close-ups. Other popular works for young readers
include Lost World (1948), Astro Boy (1951–68), and Black Jack (1973–84). Starting
in the mid-1960s, Tezuka entered his mature period with high-caliber, multi-volume
