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Chapter 3 MOVIEINABOOK Tezuka Osamu’s professional career started in 1946 with a comic strip, Mā-chan no nikkichō (The Diary of Mā-chan). This classic four-panel comic strip was serialized in a local children’s newspaper, Mainichi Shōgakusei Shinbun, depicting humorous incidents in the daily life of a young boy named Mā-chan. The Allied Occupation Forces controlled not only the contents of all print material but also the paper supply in Japan during the postwar years, which meant that the newspapers were thin, with little room for comics. Mā-chan’s adventures were restricted to the standard four-panel form. After a long absence of newspaper cartoons in Japan, Japanese children in the area most warmly welcomed Mā-chan. Artistically speaking, The Diary of Mā-chan was a step back for Tezuka, who had already completed a number of long, book-length comics by this time. As a high school student, he had produced several ambitious pieces including the first draft of The Lost World (later published in 1948). Still, Diary of Mā-chan was important in that it allowed Tezuka to enter the circle of local professional cartoonists. It also earned Tezuka other newspaper commissions, though they were not as successful as his first. For a Kyoto area paper, Kyoto Nichi Nichi Shinbun, Tezuka serialized Chinnen to Kyō-chan (Chinnen and Kyō-chan), featuring a very “Kyoto-like” pair of main characters: a Buddhist apprentice monk, Chinnen, and a maiko (an apprentice geisha), Kyō-chan. Others include A-ko chan B-ko chan tanken ki (Adventures of A-ko and B-ko), Kasei kara kita otoko (A Man from Mars), and Lost World (not the same as the earlier version). These were slightly more experimental in that they had continuous plots, though they still took the form of four-panel comics, but were also short-lived. Tezuka also became a regular contributor to Hello Manga, a 38 MOVIE IN A BOOK 39 publication put out by Kansai Manga Man Club, a cartoonists’ organization founded by a children’s book writer, Sakai Shichima. Tezuka also contributed illustrations, essays, and short comics to Takarazuka Graph and Kageki, both fan magazines for a local theater company Takarazuka Kagekidan. What earned Tezuka his popularity and fame was his Shin takarajima (New Treasure Island), a two-hundred-page adventure comic book based on a script by Sakai Shichima. Tezuka had met Sakai through Hello Manga and was approached by him for this collaboration. New Treasure Island was published from Ikuei Shuppan in January 1947 in the format called akahon, cheaply manufactured children’s comics sold through toy and candy stores. Publishers were able to put out thick volumes of comics by using inexpensive paper called senkashi, which was outside the regulation by the Allied Forces. The term akahon, literally “red book,” referred to their bright red covers often used to catch the potential buyers’ eyes. With little other entertainment sources combined with the long absence of comics in Japanese media, these inexpensive comic books were guaranteed to sell. The success of New Treasure Island was unparalleled. The book went through several reprints, selling over 400,000 copies (some sources claim as many as 800,000). The famous opening sequence shows the protagonist , Pete, speeding through the countryside in a sports car. Compared to other akahon, New Treasure Island also had a classier appearance with a sophisticated cover design. The scene in Fujiko Fujio A’s comic autobiography Manga michi (The Way of Manga), where the two protagonists Michio and Shigeru encounter Tezuka’s New Treasure Island, gives a sense of how New Treasure Island mesmerized young boys at the time of its publication. The scene has been translated into English by Fredrik Schodt: “(The two boys) opened the first page of the book (they) had borrowed without permission, and reeled in shock!” “New Treasure Island began with a flowing scene in which young Pete roared off in his sports car. It was Osamu Tezuka’s debut publication—a revolution in post-war comics ! [sic]” (fig. 3.1; translated by Schodt in Manga! Manga! 63). In another autobiography , Futari de shonen manga bakari kaite ita (All We Ever Did Was Draw Boys’ Comics), Fujiko Fujio A describes the experience in prose: In the upper right hand corner of the opened pages was a chapter title, “Bōken no umi e” (To the Sea of Adventure), and in the frame below, a fashionable boy in a hat drives his sports car from...

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