Justin’s Japan: ‘The Osamu Tezuka Story’

By JQ magazine editor Justin Tedaldi (CIR Kobe-shi, 2001-02) for Shukan NY Seikatsu. Justin has written about Japanese arts and entertainment for JETAA since 2005. For more of his articles, click here.This summer, get to know the “God of Manga.”From Stone Bridge Press comes “The Osamu Tezuka Story,” a documentary manga biography of the influential artist and the birth and evolution of manga and anime in Japan.Written and illustrated by longtime Tezuka associate Toshio Ban and newly translated into English by Frederik L. Schodt (author of “Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics”), this colossal 928-page trade paperback covers the entire life of Tezuka (1928-1989), warts and all.“Readers may be surprised to see how honestly Tezuka is depicted, as an extraordinarily obsessed individual whose family rarely saw him and as someone who suffered from his creative impulse and hyper-competitiveness,” writes Schodt in the introduction.The creator of such beloved characters as Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion, Tezuka also experimented with darker, more adult-themed works, penning more than 150,000 pages (over 700 volumes) in his lifetime, dwarfing any other manga artist. The book includes a detailed appendix of his complete creative output.“As Tezuka grows and develops you are slowly introduced to his world and genius. This book isn't just a book about a man, it's a book about the development of a nation,” says Alexis Agliano Sanborn, a New York University program coordinator and Japan specialist. “Japan wouldn't be the Japan it is today without Tezuka, and this book helps you realize it.”For more information, visit www.stonebridge.com/catalog/the-osamu-tezuka-story.