November 3rd Birthday

Dr. Osamu Tezuka

Born November 3, 1928. Died February 9, 1989. He was a Japanese manga artist, animator, producer and medical doctor, although he never practiced medicine. Born in Osaka Prefecture, he is best known as the creator of “Astro Boy” and “Kimba the White Lion”. He is often credited as the "Godfather of Anime", and is often considered the Japanese equivalent to Walt Disney, who served as a major inspiration during his formative years. His prolific output, pioneering techniques, and innovative redefinitions of genres earned him such titles as "the father of manga", "the god of manga" and “kamisama of manga"


Kimba - The White Lion

He started to draw comics around his second year of elementary school. Around his fifth year he found a bug named "Osamushi". It so resembled his name that he adopted osamushi as his pen name. He came to the realization that he could use manga as a means of helping to convince people to care for the world. After surviving World War II, he created his first piece of work (at age 17), “Diary of Ma-chan” and then “Shin Takarajima (New Treasure Island)”, which began the golden age of manga, a craze comparable to American comic books at the time.

The distinctive "large eyes" style of Japanese animation was invented by Dr. Tezuka, drawing inspirations on cartoons of the time such as “Betty Boop” and Walt Disney's “Bambi” and “Mickey Mouse”. As an indication of his productivity, the Complete Manga Works of Tezuka Osamu (published in Japan) comprises some 400 volumes, over 80,000 pages; even so, it is not comprehensive. In fact, his complete oeuvre includes over 700 manga with more than 150,000 pages. However, the vast majority of his work has never been translated from the original Japanese and is thus inaccessible to people who do not read Japanese.

His creations include “Astro Boy” (“Tetsuwan Atomu” in Japan, literally translated to "Iron-armed Atom"), “Black Jack”, “Princess Knight”, “Firebird” (“Hi no Tori” in Japan), “Kimba the White Lion” and “Adolf”. His life's work was “Firebird”; a story of life and death, concerning an eponymous phoenix whose blood endows those who drink it with immortality. Dr. Tezuka told that he created the image of Phoenix as he was impressed by Firebird from the Konyok Gorbunok animation film (Soyuzmultfilm studio), directed by Ivan Ivanov-Vano.




Astro Boy

In January 1968, Dr. Tezuka was invited by director Stanley Kubrick to be the art director of his next movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Dr. Tezuka couldn't afford to leave his studio for an entire year to live in England, so he refused the invitation. Tezuka couldn't work on it, but he loved the movie, and would play its soundtrack at maximum volume in his studio to keep him awake during the long nights of work.

Dr. Tezuka headed the animation production studio Mushi Production ("Bug Production"), which pioneered TV animation in Japan. The name of the studio derives from one of the kanji (modern Japanese written characters) used to write his name.

Dr. Tezuka died of stomach cancer at the age of 60, the same month when the Shōwa Emperor (Hirohito) also died of cancer; it is said that people mourning him took much attention from their mourning of the emperor. In an afterword written by Takayuki Matsutani, president of Mushi Productions, that was published in Viz Media's English language release of the “Hi no Tori” manga, it is said that his last words were, "I'm begging you, let me work!"

His grave is located in Tokyo's Souzen-ji Temple Cemetery.