Eiichi Fukui (福井英一, March 3, 1921 – June 26, 1954) was a Japanese
manga artist
A manga artist, also known as a mangaka (), is a Cartoonist, comic artist who writes and/or illustrates manga.
Most manga artists study at an art college or manga school or take on an apprenticeship with another artist before entering the indus ...
.
Life
Fukui graduated from middle school in 1938 and then began working in the animation industry. During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, he worked for , which produced propaganda cartoons. In 1945 he was hired by another animation studio,
Shin Nihon Dōga sha, and also worked for
Nihon Manga Eiga sha, where he worked for
Mitsuyo Seo
was a Japanese animator, screenwriter, and film director, director of animated films who played a central role in the development of Japanese anime. He was born in Himeji, Hyōgo Prefecture.
Career
Initially working as a sign painter, Seo began ...
as a chief animator until 1949. After the collapse of the studio, he began publishing manga.
His first work was to take over the baseball manga series ''
Bat Kid'' in 1949 for the magazine ''
Manga Shōnen'', after its creator had died.
His most popular series was ''
Igaguri-kun'', about an orphaned boy who becomes a strong
judo
is an unarmed gendai budō, modern Japanese martial art, combat sport, Olympic sport (since 1964), and the most prominent form of jacket wrestling competed internationally.『日本大百科全書』電子版【柔道】(CD-ROM version of Encyc ...
fighter. It ran from 1952 to 1954 in ''
Bōken Ō'' and was at the time the industry's top-selling manga series. The success of the manga led to a strong increase in sales of the magazine it was published in and also paved the way for more manga centering judo. Its cinematic narration, influenced by
Osamu Tezuka
Osamu Tezuka (, born , ''Tezuka Osamu'', – 9 February 1989) was a Japanese manga artist, cartoonist and animator. Considered to be among the greatest and most influential cartoonists of all time, his prolific output, pioneering techniques an ...
's story manga, and fight scenes had an impact on the development of
sports manga
is a genre of Japanese manga and anime that focuses on stories involving sports and other athletic and competitive pursuits. Though Japanese animated works depicting sports were released as early as the 1920s, sports manga did not emerge as a di ...
.
Osamu Tezuka criticized the
breakdown-oriented drawing style of Fukui and other popular artists at the time in his 1953 series ''Manga Classroom'': "Truth be told, at the time I was extremely jealous of Fukui’s drawing. That ended up bleeding unconsciously into ''Manga Classroom'' in the form of slander against an ''Igaguri kun''-like manga."
He also created ''
Akado Suzunosuke'', which was published in the August 1954 issue of ''Shōnen Gaho''.
Fukui died suddenly at the age of 33 of
karōshi
, which can be translated into "overwork death", is a Japanese term relating to occupation-related sudden death.
The most common medical causes of karoshi deaths are heart attacks and strokes due to stress and malnourishment or fasting. M ...
, overworking, while being pressured to draw the closing of the works for a supplement for ''Bōken Ō'' magazine and having drunken a lot of alcohol. Fukui's death led other manga artists to protest against the low pay for magazine supplements and publishers agreed to raise the salary for these.
References
External links
*
Manga artists from Tokyo
1954 deaths
1921 births
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