is a

yonkoma is a comic strip format that generally consists of gag comic strips within four panels of equal size ordered from top to bottom. They also sometimes run right-to-left horizontally or use a hybrid 2×2 style, depending on the layout requiremen ...

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

series by

Susumu Nemoto Susumu is a masculine Japanese given name. Notable people with the name include: *Susumu Akagi (born 1972) Japanese voice actor * Susumu Aoyagi (青柳進, born 1968), Japanese baseball player *Susumu Chiba (born 1970), Japanese voice actor *, Ja ...

which ran from October 1, 1951, to March 31, 1965, in the

Asahi Shimbun is a Japanese daily newspaper founded in 1879. It is one of the oldest newspapers in Japan and Asia, and is considered a newspaper of record for Japan. The ''Asahi Shimbun'' is one of the five largest newspapers in Japan along with the ''Yom ...

evening edition. Nemoto modeled the main character, Kuri-chan, after his oldest son, born in 1948. The name of the main character is actually , and gets his nickname from his naturally curly hair which makes his head appear round (or ''kuri kuri''). The manga is unusual in that, other than the images, it relies almost exclusively on

onomotopeia Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...

rather than words to tell the story. In that regard it has been classified as a pantomime comic. The manga depicts the life of a typical

salaryman The term is a Japanese word for salary, salaried workers. In Japanese popular culture, it is portrayed as a white-collar worker who shows unwavering loyalty and commitment to his employer, prioritizing work over anything else, including family. ...

fairly accurately. However, the main character becomes the salaryman's child, Kuri-chan. Because of this, several

picture book A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. With the narrative told primarily through text, they are distinct from comics, which do so primarily through sequential images. The ima ...

s have been published, and marketed to children, several of which are still in print as of 2008. A large amount of character goods featuring Kuri-chan continue to be produced as well. In the last manga strip released, the first panel shows Kuri-chan at age one, the second at age five, the third at age fourteen, showing his growth and progression through the fifteen years of publication. The fourth panel, Kuri-chan gets annoyed at the manga author, Nemoto, for pointing out the details of how he looked at those ages.

Sources

External links

Lambiek Comiclopedia article.
1951 manga Child characters in comics Male characters in comics Comics about children Humor comics Pantomime comics Works originally published in Asahi Shimbun Comics characters introduced in 1951 Yonkoma {{manga-stub