Eiichi Fukui (福井英一, March 3, 1921 – June 26, 1954) was a

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 bef ...

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, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, he worked for Nippon Eiga sha, 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 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 dabbling in dra ...

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 was a monthly manga magazine published by Gakudōsha between December 1947 and October 1955. The magazine was important in forming and promoting shōnen manga in post-war Japan. Legacy The magazine was first published on 20 December 1947. ...

'', after its creator

Kazuo Inoue is a Japanese former professional racing cyclist. He finished second in the Japanese National Road Race Championships in 2008 and 2014, and represented Japan in the 2008 UCI Road World Championships. He has won the elite road race competition at ...

had died. His most popular series was '' Igaguri-kun'', about an orphaned boy who becomes a strong

judo is an unarmed modern Japanese martial art, 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 Encyclopedia Nipponica, "Judo") ...

fighter. It ran from 1952 to 1954 in ''

Bōken Ō ''Bōken Ō'' (冒険王, "Adventure King") was a monthly magazine for youth published by Akita Shoten between 1949 and 1983. It was among the first generation of children's comic magazines after World War II and was initially focused on publish ...

'' 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. Born in Osaka Prefecture, his prolific output, pioneering techniques, and innovative redefinitions of genres earned him such ...

'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. Menta ...

, 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 People from Tokyo 1954 deaths 1921 births {{manga-artist-stub