was a Japanese

manga artist A is a comic artist who writes and/or illustrates manga. As of 2006, about 3,000 professional manga artists were working in Japan. Most manga artists study at an art college or manga school or take on an apprenticeship with another artist be ...

famous for his surreal, nonsense gag manga.

Career

After initially studying painting, Sugiura became an assistant to the manga artist Suihō Tagawa. He soon began drawing his own manga in 1933 and came to fame after World War II with a series of comedic manga for children based on stories like those of Sasuke Sarutobi, Jiraiya, and '' Journey to the West''. Sugiura closely followed popular culture and thus his manga were also influenced by such contemporary fads as Godzilla, pro wrestling, and American science fiction films. The philosophy of his manga "is of ''yukai'', pleasure and amusement, pursuing the path as far from seriousness as possible. . . . The praxis of ''yukai'' is essentially the body in free motion, and Sugiura’s characters are defined by an excess of movement." The result was a visual style that was often surreal and absurd. A craftsman, Sugiura could not keep up with the mass production of manga that the shift to weekly magazines brought at the end of the 1950s, and his subsequent manga became more and more surreal, if not avant-garde, as they came to be directed at an older audience. He enjoyed a second boom in popularity from the 1970s on.

Influence

Sugiura has influenced many artists in a variety of fields, including the gag manga artist

Fujio Akatsuka was a pioneer Japanese artist of comical manga known as the Gag Manga King. His name at birth is 赤塚藤雄, whose Japanese pronunciation is the same as 赤塚不二夫. He was born in Rehe, Manchuria, the son of a Japanese military pol ...

. Enthusiastic fans include such figures as the novelist Yasutaka Tsutsui and the musician Haruomi Hosono. He is cited as the inspiration for the ''tanuki'' in Isao Takahata's anime film '' Pom Poko'' and Hayao Miyazaki made a television commercial inspired by his work.

Select single works

*Appuru Jamu-kun (アップルジャム君) *Bōken Ben-chan (冒険ベンちゃん) *Doron Chibimaru (ドロンちび丸) *Enban Z (円盤Z) *Gojira (ゴジラ) *Misutā Robotto (ミスターロボット) 1959The Ganzfeld - Issue 4 Dan Nadel, Jessi Rymill - 2005 "In the 1950s, his manga were serialized in boys' monthly magazines and published in original manga books; The Last of ... the Mohicans and Monkey King Goes West were humorous manga loosely based on American and Chinese classics, while Sarutobi, the Ninja Boy and Mister Robot reflected Sugiura's yearning for terrae incognitae and the world of fantasy." *Sarutobi Sasuke (猿飛佐助) *Shōnen Jiraiya (少年児雷也) *Shōnen saiyūki (少年西遊記) *''Sugiura Shigeru: Jiden to kaisō'' (杉浦茂ー自伝と回想). Chikuma Shobō, 2002. (autobiography)

Collected works

*''Sugiura Shigeru kessaku senshū'' 『杉浦茂傑作選集怪星ガイガー・八百八狸』. Seirin Kōgeisha, 2006. *''Sugiura Shigeru mangakan''『杉浦茂マンガ館』, 5 vols. Chikuma Shobō, 1993-6. , , , , *''Sugiura Shigeru no chotto tarinai meisaku gekijō''『杉浦茂のちょっとタリない名作劇場』. Chikuma Shobō, 1993.

Notes

External links

Comic Park
First pages of Sugiura reprints available online (in Japanese).

Seigō Matsuoka review of Sugiura manga reprint (in Japanese).
Sugiura Shigeru 101-nen matsuri

Kyoto International Manga Museum The Kyoto International Manga Museum (京都国際マンガミュージアム, Kyōto Kokusai Manga Myūjiamu) is located in Nakagyō-ku, Kyoto, Japan. The museum's collection includes approximately 300,000 items as of 2016, with 50,000 volumes o ...

exhibition (in Japanese).
Yomiuri Shinbun television commercial
Produced by Studio Ghibli and based on Sugiura manga (in Japanese).
Sugiura Shigeru's Sense of Humor
Manga scholar Ryan Holmberg's exploration of Sugiura's earliest work and influences. {{DEFAULTSORT:Sugiura, Shigeru 1908 births 2000 deaths Manga artists from Tokyo