patokon blog

Hello, friends and manga-philes.      You probably know that my interest in Japan was originally fueled by a combined interest in Japanese animation and martial arts. My interests expanded somewhat over the years, but one big change happened about the age of 15 when I bought my first Japanese collected comic. From that moment on, I became more interested in comics than animation and eventually after moving to Japan, I started to collect the comics of Mr. Leiji Matsumoto .       At first, I was put off by the heavy-lined art and blocky characters, but the more I got into the stories, the less I cared about the style. Eventually, though, I started to appreciate the artistry much in the same way it took me a while to warm to Jack Kirby's art.      Like most Leiji fans, I was heavy into Space Cruiser Yamato , Captain Harlock , Queen Emeraldas , and finally, Galaxy Express 999 . These comics were created in the 70's and are representative of ...

My good friend Mr. Fujita passed on one of his treasures to my mentor Mr. Hashimoto BUT FIRST he allowed me to share some photos and a quick flip through with you, loyal readers.  In this box is a tiny reprint (a minibon) of the first issue of weekly anthology magazine CoroCoro comics (5/15/1975, featuring Doraemon) which was given away to only the people who attended the editor’s end of year party in what I assume was 2005 as it says 30th anniversary on the box and inside.  I love the mini-bon format and I was sorely tempted to buy the set of Tezuka mini-bon that were sold once. But they’re not the best for research or for reading when your eyesight starts to go like mine has. In the poorly filmed flip-through below, you can see some early Doraemon, a few other series, and some color inserts related to Sadaharu Oh, a Japanese-born Chinese baseball legend who played on the Yomiuri Giants team and holds the world lifetime home run record of 868 home runs. A ...

Welcome back to my blog! Chances are it’s only your first or second time to visit and how could I blame you? This blog has been all over the place since I first started it way back when. I use it to talk about my art, my writing, my charity work, and my adventures in and around Japan. Since right around the time of the Kumamoto Earthquake, I’ve been introduced to a whole new world - the world of comics scholarship.   I gave my first lecture in May 2016, which was on horror comics history, at Kumamoto University. It went over well and once the Kōshi Manga Museum was opened in 2017, I gave a shorter version of the same lecture combined with a fun workshop there. Based on that I was invited to give a series of 6 monthly lectures at the museum starting in Spring of 2018.   I continue to find comics history and scholarship fascinating and so, for the time being, you can expect more posts on comics.   Akahon comic Carefree Journey Without furth...

According to a post by akahon manga researcher Yuuzora Retro (pen name), the Tokyo-based publisher Taikōdō ( 泰光堂 ) created their Manga Classics series in response to the PTA backlash against manga contributing to delinquency in Osaka. This is Gulliver’s Travels by NAKAMURA Hiroshi (中村ひろし), a B6-sized 3-color akahon* printed with red ink fills on either blue or green lines costing 85 yen. NAKAMURA seemed to be the main artist for Taikōdō as evinced by the ad pages at the back. There is no publishing date, but it probably wasn't too far from 1951 when "Cinderella" and "Snow White" from the same series were published. Looking at the stamps on the endpapers on the back, we can see that this particular book was rented out at a kashihon-ya (rental comic shop) in Saga, Kyushu called Imazato Neo Shobō. It was lent to me by a Mr. Fujita, a collector heavy into Showa-era items. I will continue to introduce the books I was able to borrow from his...

Hello, Nipponophiles!    Yes, that's what they used to call us back in the day. Which "day" are you talking about, you might ask. I'm talking about when anime fans were such a minority that Prisoner fans used to give us a hard time. Nowadays, most Japan-o-fans are happy to be called "otaku". Well here on ARTokyo, I've decided to talk about what it was like to be an old-school otaku. Well, I used to be old-school, but now I'm just old. I guess that makes me an "ota-oji", as in "oji-san" as in old dude.   Now this old dude is gonna tell you about a favorite manga of mine by Masashi Tanaka. Learn all about him in this informative wiki article . Tanaka is best known for GON , a comic masterpiece about a little dinosaur, which was one of the first manga to successfully crossover to the Western world if only because it didn't need any translation. There were no words! Console gamers might know Gon from his appearance in Tekken 3,...