is a Japanese manga series created by

Suihō Tagawa , better known by the pen name Suihō Tagawa (田河水泡, ''Tagawa Suihō''), was a Japanese manga artist. Biography Born in Sumida, Tokyo, Nakatarō Takamizawa grew up an orphan: his mother died upon his birth, his father and his uncle (who ...

, originally published by Kodansha in '' Shōnen Kurabu'', and one of the first series' to be reprinted in

tankōbon is the Japanese term for a book that is not part of an anthology or corpus. In modern Japanese, the term is most often used in reference to individual volumes of a manga series: most series first appear as individual chapters in a weekly or ...

format. The titular protagonist, Norakuro, or Norakuro-'' kun'', is an anthropomorphic black and white dog inspired by

Felix the Cat Felix the Cat is a cartoon character created in 1919 by Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer during the silent film era. An anthropomorphic black cat with white eyes, a black body, and a giant grin, he was one of the most recognized cartoon characte ...

. The name ''Norakuro'' is an abbreviation of and .

History

In the original story, the central character Norakuro was a soldier serving in an army of dogs called the . The strip's publication began in Kodansha's ''Shōnen Kurabu'' in 1931, and was based on the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

of the time; the manga artist,

, had served in the Imperial Army from 1919 to 1922. Norakuro was gradually promoted from private to captain in the stories, which began as humorous episodes, but eventually developed into propaganda tales of military exploits against the "pigs army" on the "continent" - a thinly-veiled reference to the

Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...

. Serialization of ''Norakuro'' stopped in 1941 for wartime austerity reason. After the war, due to the popularity of the strip, the character returned in various guises, including a sumo wrestler and a botanist. Pre-war

animated Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...

films based on the military ''Norakuro'', and two post-war animated series of ''Norakuro'', in 1970 and 1987, have also been produced. In the 1970 series, the voice of Norakuro was played by Nobuyo Ōyama, also known as the voice of

Doraemon ''Doraemon'' ( ja, ドラえもん ) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Fujiko F. Fujio. The manga was first serialized in December 1969, with its 1,345 individual chapters compiled into 45 ''tankōbon'' volumes and ...

. During the 1980s and early 1990s, Norakuro was the mascot of the Physical Training School (Tai-Iku Gakko) of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. There is an excerpt that appears in the sixth '' Kramer's Ergot''

comics anthology A comics anthology collects works in the medium of comics, typically from multiple series, and compiles them into an anthology or magazine. The comics in these anthologies range from comic strips that are too short for standalone publication to co ...

which is the only example of Tagawa's work published in English.

References

External links

''Norakuro-kun''
at Studio Pierrot
''Norakuro-kun''
at Studio Pierrot * * * {{Pierrot (company) 1930s animated short films 1931 manga 1981 comics endings 1933 anime films 1933 films 1934 anime films 1934 films 1935 anime films 1935 films 1938 anime films 1938 films 1970 anime television series debuts 1971 Japanese television series endings 1987 anime television series debuts 1988 Japanese television series endings Animated television series about dogs Anime series based on manga Anime short films Comics characters introduced in 1931 Eiken (studio) Fuji TV original programming Kodansha manga Manga adapted into films Pierrot (company) Shōnen manga