Author: Wang Xinxi/Anitama Cover Source: Former guests before the demolition of Tokiwaso
<h4>Fifth, the funny king's youthful years</h4>
It is undeniable that the personal charm of cartoonists has played a considerable role in promoting the inheritance of the comic book business. Fujiko duo and Shotaro Ishimori are both inspired by Osamu Tezuka, and Shotaro Ishimori attracts the next manga artist. That is a generation of funny kings - Akatsuka Fujio.
Akatsuka's origin is slightly tragic. He was a descendant of the so-called "Manchukuo" immigrants after the Japanese invasion of northeast China, and was born in September 1935 in "Rehe Province" (the provincial capital is now Chengde, Hebei). His father served as a gendarme and later served in the secret service, treating people seriously and rigidly, not smiling, and having absolute authority at home. Reading manga was completely forbidden when Akatsuka was a child. If he dared to peek, what awaited him would be a violent beating from his father.
Although his father was so strict that he was almost unkind, he could only discipline Akatsuka until he was 10 years old. When Japan surrendered in August 1945 and soviet troops entered the northeast, Akatsuka's father was arrested by the Red Army and taken to Siberia for hard labor. Akatsuka followed her mother back to her hometown of Yamato-gun, Nara Prefecture. Before returning to China, her younger sister Ayako died of diphtheria, while her younger brother was sent to someone else's home as an adopted son; upon her return, her youngest sister died of nutritional disorders. The experience of this family was really tragic, and Akatsuka's mother cried blood and cried out for her life. But she never expected that the eldest son, Akatsuka Fujio, who was in such a human tragedy, would reverse her life into a comedy in the future.
The anime "Assoun", which is now airing, was written by Fujio Akatsuka. It is also a project to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the birth of Akatsuka.
Without Father Yan's discipline, Akatsuka suddenly felt that the sky was wide and wide, and no one could control what he loved to do. He was assigned to the fifth grade of a primary school in his hometown, and his academic performance was sparse, and his classmate relationship was so-so, but he was good at drawing. In middle school, Akamoto manga was popular, and Akatsuka bought a copy of Osamu Tezuka's "The Lost World", read it with relish, read it several times and felt that it was not addictive, simply copied it, and then created several similar manga according to the gourd. Maybe at this very moment, when the idea of a manga artist sprouted in Akatsuka's mind.
In 1949, my father, who had struggled in the Soviet Union and finally saved his life, returned to China. His mother was overjoyed, but Akatsuka's skin was a little numb, and he couldn't forget his father's education of sticks. However, the arduous foreign service and the failure of militarism have swept the prestige of the father, who symbolizes the authority of the military, and his personality has completely changed, and he no longer needs to violently "correct" his son. Akatsuka breathed a sigh of relief and continued to live the days when Hanger lang went to school and drew seriously. After graduating from high school, according to Akatsuka's achievements, of course, college should not be counted on. But as long as you have a skill, you can't go anywhere hungry. Akatsuka relied on his painting expertise and found a job painting signs for movie theaters. Because of the nature of his work, he enjoyed a large number of films, of which Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton were the most fascinating. These two masters of comedy and film had a major influence on the formation of Akatsuka's artistic concept, and later Akatsuki's love of taking the comedy manga route was based on this.
While working part-time, Akatsuka began to submit articles to Manga Shonen. Due to the lack of communication at that time, he felt that it was extremely inconvenient to engage in the manga industry in a small place, so he went to Beijing at the age of 18 to seek development. After arriving in Tokyo, he first found a job in a chemical factory, and he was not dedicated to this job, just to make a living, and devoted his main energy to manga creation. Through the editorial department of Manga Shonen, Akatsuka saw a manga doujinshi, "A Drop of Ink", and became acquainted with the founder of Doujinshi, Akitaro Ishimori. The two were like-minded and like-minded, and soon became a sworn party to hook up.
After the suspension of manga shonen at the end of 1955, Akatsuka had no target for submissions. Fortunately, Akira Publishing Signed a publishing contract with him at this time, and in 1956, Fujio Akatsuka officially debuted with the manga series Beyond the Storm (嵐をこえて).
The inner page of Fujio Akatsuka's debut novel Beyond the Storm.
At the same time, Ishimori is planning to move into Tokiwaso, and when he sees that his friend has become a child, he invites Akatsuka to move in with him and take care of each other. He said, "We are two brothers in the same world, not to be born on the same day of the same month of the same year, but to move on the same day of the same month of the same year..." So on May 4, 1956, Akitaro Ishimori and Fujio Akatsuka moved into Tokiwaso together.
Akatsuka Fujio, who pursues "life is a joke", is a living treasure in Tokiwaso, and he looks like a laughing lotte all day. Moreover, as "the first beautiful man of Tokiwaso relatively speaking", he has a feminine relationship. When his photographs were published, they attracted many female readers to visit the house. Two years later, Akatsuka's mother, who was not worried about her son, also arrived in Tokyo, and she was very fond of Hideko Mizuno, who lived in the room opposite Akatsuka, and repeatedly wanted to match her son and Mizuno. Helplessly, Akatsuki and Mizuno only have a work relationship, no marriage, although they have cooperated together in works such as "赤い火と黒かみ", "星はかなしく", "くらややみの Angel" and other works, but they just don't call each other. Akatsuka's mother could only stare dryly.
When he was young, Akatsuka Fujio, pictured here is the introduction photo of Akatsuka in the Tokiwaso Memorial Hall.
Akatsuka's work during the Tokiwaso period was mainly a loan of girl manga, and his income was not much, which made him discouraged for a while, thinking that the future of his manga career was not good. In 1959, Akatsuka planned to find a way out and go to a tavern to work part-time, thanks to Terada Hiroo's guidance: "Let's draw manga, we don't open for three years, and we will open for three years." As long as you are willing to persevere, you may become rich tomorrow. Akatsuka persevered because of this. Sure enough, three years later, the funny manga "Asson" became a hit, and Akatsuka became a popular manga artist.
<h4>Sixth, a little red in the evergreen bush</h4>
Akatsuka's mother, who wants to marry Hideko Mizuno, is the grand grandmother of the opening school of shonen manga, known as "Onotsuka". Born in October 1939, she loved to scribble since she was a child, and when she was in the third grade of elementary school, she came across Osamu Tezuka's "Manga University" and was determined by her fate. She may not be the first girl to aspire to become a manga artist under the influence of Tezuka, but she is definitely the first girl to chase and get up when she has a manga dream.
Since junior high school, Hideko Mizuno has been contributing to Manga Shonen non-stop. "Comic Boy" was the only magazine at that time to solicit new writers, so we saw that many of the above cartoonists originally aimed at "Comic Boy", and it was their common desire to win the Newcomer Award. As one of the judges, Tezuka saved many newcomer submissions. One day in March 1955, Akira Maruyama, the editor of The Girls' Club, happened to see Mizuno's drawing at Tezuka and fell in love with it. So "Shunto touched the melon", got Mizuno's home address, and immediately wrote a passionate letter of appointment, asking her to draw a few comics for girls. When Mizuno received an envelope printed with the "Great Japan Eloquent Society" (the predecessor of Kodansha), he was suspicious of the letter. When it was confirmed that it was a genuine letter of appointment, Denshi burst into tears. It took her a long time to conceive carefully, and then carefully drew two illustrations and a one-page comic. These works were published in the August 1955 issue of The Girls' Club, and Hideko Mizuno made her official debut.
The original cover of "Girl Club".
In this way, Mizuno and Maruyama Akira established a friendship for many years, and "Girls' Club" became a publication she had long cooperated with. In the June 1956 issue of the magazine, Mizuno's short manga "Red Mane Pony" (赤っ毛子馬), and in the January 1958 issue, Mizuno's first feature-length comic strip", Silver Petals (銀の花びら, originally Keiko Midorikawa), received a good response. Maruyama advised Mizuno to go to Kyo in order to cooperate more efficiently. Mizuno heeded the advice of his mentor and friend and came to Tokyo from his hometown of Yamaguchi Prefecture in March of the same year to stay at Tokiwaso.
In Hideko Mizuno's own painting of the Tale of Tokiwaso, she was pictured when she first arrived at Tokiwaso.
In the all-male Tokiwa-so, Hideko Mizuno is called "a little red in the evergreen bush". However, she has a frank personality and does not feel any inconvenience, cooperating seamlessly with Ishimori and Akatsuka, and at the same time, due to frequent contact and communication with other manga artists, her brushwork and drawing skills have also been greatly improved. During this period, her representative work was "The Harp of the Stars" (星のたてごと), which was staged in the medieval Era of European imperialism, with a magnificent and gorgeous background and a romantic and touching plot, attracting countless young girl readers. Her delicate depiction of the costumes and hairstyles of the characters, the use of bright colors in the drawings, and the expression techniques of love feelings, especially the original "Star Eyes" drawing method, formed a distinctive "Mizuno style", which became the object of emulation by later generations of female cartoonists. A new era of girl comics created by female manga artists through a female perspective, completely different from the manga drawn by male manga artists, has begun with Mizuno's pen.
On the cover of Hideko Mizuno's Silver Petals, you can see the characteristics of the girl manga with the starry eyes.
The last manga artist to move into Tokiwaso was Noriyuki Yamauchi, who was also a descendant of the "Manchukuo" immigrants, along with Akatsuki. His father was a police officer at the Kanto Bureau. After World War II, Yamauchi endured two years in the shelter and returned to Japan in 1947. When I was in middle school, I became acquainted with Shotaro Ishimori and had the idea of becoming a manga artist. After graduating, he immediately went to Tokyo, and in September 1960, he entered Tokiwaso to work as an assistant to Ishimori and Akatsuka. His manga achievements were not large, only slightly better than Naoya Mori and Tokuo Yokota, and later mainly engaged in picture books, advertising design and other work.
In addition to the above-mentioned manga artists, there were also frequent exchanges and discussions at Tokiwaso, such as Saburo Sakamoto, Hideo Shinoda, Jiro Kakuda, Shunji Enyama, Takemaru Nagata, Kunio Haseya, and Zero Matsumoto, all of whom were well-known manga artists at the time. It can be said that at that time, most of Japan's most growing manga artists had gathered here, and most of them later became the masters of the national animation industry. As a result, Tokiwaso was later known as "The Manga Artist's Liangshan Po". For young people who aspire to comics, it is synonymous with dreams and struggles.
<h4>7. Reminiscences of Tokiwaso</h4>
Once a young man loved to chase dreams, he only wanted to fly forward. This group of like-minded manga artists gathered at Tokiwaso bid farewell to ordinary and unspecific lives for the same blue sky-like dream and embarked on the road of unpredictable manga. In the second-floor cottage, which rents 3,000 yen a month, they work hard to share public space, help each other in life, and support each other in their careers. As the first generation of Japanese post-war manga artists, they were full of ideals, bravely picked up the beams, and tried their best to complete the gorgeous transformation of chrysalis into butterflies in Tokiwaso.
Group photo of the main members of Tokiwaso in their youth
In 1981, Osamu Tezuka summoned the old friends of Tokiwaso, who had gone through many vicissitudes, and held a "same window meeting". In the midst of laughter, this group of comic giants who have two sideburns seem to have returned to the hard but happy green years of that year. NHK TV, which followed the film, produced a special program based on this: "My Youth No. Tsukiwaso - A Biography of Modern Manga Artists". The following year, Tokiwaso was officially demolished by the local government due to its age.
Videotape cover of NHK's documentary "My Youth no Tsukiwaso – A Biography of a Modern Manga Artist"
Many years after Tsukiwa-soo used a paintbrush to paint his dream diligently, because of the masterpieces they left behind, Tokiwa-sho evolved into a carrier of the "Legend of the Gods" and became famous. Fans from all over the world who come to Tokyo will visit the former site of Tokiwaso to visit the "Pilgrimage" and feel the eternal spirit of Tokiwaso due to the hard work of the previous generations of manga artists. The Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan has also deliberately made it a benchmark for cultural tourism. Compared with Akihabara, the holy land of ACG today, Tokiwaso has a bit more of a sense of history and legend. Readers of this article who travel to Tokyo should also visit to today's hometown! Its current address is No. 6, 16 Banzai, Minami-Nagasaki, Toshima-ku.
Old photograph of Tokiwaso.
When Tokiwaso is sent by time into the hall of worship, the confusion between reality and fantasy puts on a cloak of elegance. People began to publish memoirs, hold commemorative events, organize tours, and other forms to describe its past. Among them, the memories of the parties concerned are doubly precious because of their first-hand historical value. Several autobiographical manga by Tezuka include Paper Castle, The Tale of Tokiwaso, Suo Yasuko's Path to Manga (まんが道), and his sequel, Love Sinu Chu Shu しりそめし頃に... ), Hideko Mizuno's "Diary of Tokiwaso" and Akira Maruyama's "Records of Tokiwaso", both partially restored the past of Tokiwaso from their own perspective. Collage them together and trickle down the river to form the complete Story of Tokiwajo. In particular, Ansonko Suo's "Path to Manga", 23 volumes of the Emperor, plus 11 volumes of sequels, with Michio Manga (prototype Ansonko Suo) and Shigeru Caino (prototype Fujimoto Hiroshi) as the protagonists, detailing the whole process of the two from acquaintance and acquaintance, Kamigyo struggle to fame, the most intuitive depiction of Tokiwaso and many editors and manga artists, highly recommended to see. In his later years, Suo An suffered from colorectal cancer and was lying in the ICU ward, his head empty, and in a trance, he only felt that the deceased friends of Tokiwaso were waving to him. It can be seen how unforgettable the memory of this youth is for them.
Various books reminiscing about Tokiwaso.
In March 1996, the film "The Youth of Tokiwaso" (トキワ庄の春), directed by the famous director Jun Ichikawa, was released in Japan. Masahiro Motoki plays Hiroo Terada, the leader of the gentle and calm "New Manga Party", and through Terada's efforts, strings together the struggles of Fujiko, Ishimori, Akatsuka and others.
Stills from the movie "The Youth of Tokiwaso".
In the scenes of peace and water, the audience not only witnesses the unremitting and sweaty hardships of the manga artists, but also sees the life in the old Japanese houses. Together with the comic book creators who have tapped our hearts, we rejoice in the publication of the manuscript, grieve over the closure of the publishing house, and warm up for each other's encouragement and mutual assistance. Sometimes editors flock to the table and are overjoyed; sometimes they are exhausted and have no money to cook. Suffering and loss, sorrow and joy intersect. In the pure fixed mirror and empty mirror, feel the humanistic style and human touch in the yellowed film.
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