Ryūichi Yokoyama (; May 17, 1909 – November 8, 2001) was a Japanese mangaka and animation director. He has created very successful ''

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 ...

'' comic strips since the 1930s.

Life

Yokoyama was born in

Kōchi Kochi is a city in Kerala, India. Kochi or Kōchi may also refer to: People * Kochi people, a predominantly Pashtun nomadic people of Afghanistan * , a Japanese surname: ** Arata Kochi (born 1948 or 1949), Japanese physician and World Health Org ...

; his parents were silk wholesalers. After finishing high school, he moved to Tokyo and worked as a sculptor apprentice. He started to submit comics to magazines, and soon his works got serialized. His series ''Edokko Ken-chan (''江戸っ子健ちゃん'')'', created in 1936, quickly achieved great success and was the first manga to be adapted as a live-action film (1937). In the same year, the ''

Fuku-chan Fuku-chan () is a manga series by Ryūichi Yokoyama. The ''yonkoma'' series appeared in Japanese newspapers from 1936 to 1971, making it one of the longest-running Japanese comic strip series. During the World War II, Second World War, three ...

'' (フクちゃん) spin-off came out, which became the most popular manga of its time and influenced several other artists, including

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 ...

. It appeared in 5534 strips in the ''

Mainichi Shimbun The is one of the major newspapers in Japan, published by In addition to the ''Mainichi Shimbun'', which is printed twice a day in several local editions, Mainichi also operates an English-language news website called , and publishes a bilin ...

'' newspaper from 1936 to 1971, making it one of the longest-running Japanese comic strips. The stories focus on the little boy Fukuo "Fuku-chan" Fuchida and his experiences in kindergarten and with his family. The manga was adapted from 1982 to 1984 as a 71-episode anime television series. The character was used for propaganda during World War II, filmed in several anime, with Yokoyama being only slightly involved in the productions. After the war, Fuku-chan became the mascot of

Waseda University Waseda University (Japanese: ), abbreviated as or , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the Tōkyō Professional School by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the fifth Prime Minister of Japan, prime ministe ...

Jonathan Clements Jonathan Michael Clements (born 9 July 1971) is a British author and scriptwriter. His non-fiction works include biographies of Confucius, Koxinga and Qin Shi Huang, as well as monthly opinion columns for '' Neo'' magazine. He is also the co-au ...

: ''Anime – A History''. Palgrave Macmillan 2013. S. 65f. ISBN 978-1-84457-390-5. His other comics include ''Densuke'' (デンスケ), which appeared in the Mainichi Shimbun from 1949 to 1955, and ''Peko-chan'' (ペ子ちゃん). For ''Hyaku Baku'' (百馬鹿), which came out from 1968 to 1970 in the magazine Manga Sunday, he received the 1979 prize from the

Japan Cartoonists Association Award is an annual award for 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 i ...

. He was honored again with this prize in 1992 for his life's work. In 1994 he was nominated

Person of Cultural Merit is an official Japanese recognition and honour which is awarded annually to select people who have made outstanding cultural contributions. This distinction is intended to play a role as a part of a system of support measures for the promotion of ...

. Enthusiastic about Disney's work in the US, Yokoyama wanted to set up his own production studio after the war. For this he invested from his private fortune, which was not inconsiderable from his success as a mangaka. In 1955, Yokoyama directed the short film ''Onbu Obake'' (おんぶおばけ, ''Piggyback Ghost''), which was performed only once in front of a special audience. The following year, Yokoyama founded his own studio, Otogi Pro. In 1957, this released the short film ''Fukusuke'', which was based on one of Yokoyama's books. However, Yokoyama's management and directing work is described by contemporaries and employees as chaotic and the production work as craft-oriented. With veteran animator Maeda Hajime, work became more organized, with Yokoyama's role in the productions gradually fading into the background, even though he was officially credited as director. From 1961, Otogi Pro created the first anime television series, ''Otogi Manga Calendar'' (also referred as ''Instant History''). The 100-episode television series '' Dōbutsu-mura Monogatari'' (動物村ものがたり ''Tales of the Animal Village'') followed in 1970. However, Yokoyama's commitment to animation films was already exhausted during the production of ''Otogi Manga Calendar'' and he turned away from the industry, leaving it to the emerging studios from 1963 onwards. In addition to comics, Yokoyama also created essays, sculptures and paintings. His younger brother was the cartoonist Yokoyama Taizō. Yokoyama died in 2001, in

Kamakura , officially , is a city of Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. It is located in the Kanto region on the island of Honshu. The city has an estimated population of 172,929 (1 September 2020) and a population density of 4,359 people per km2 over the tota ...

at the age of 92.

Works

Manga

* 1936: '' Edokko Ken-chan'' * 1936–1971: ''Fuku-chan'' * 1939: ''Chisana Sencho-san'' * 1948–1949: ''Peko-chan'' * 1949–1955: ''Densuke'' * 1966: ''Yuki'' * 1968–1970: ''Hyaku Baku'' * 1972: ''Waga Yūgiteki Jinsei'' * 1979: ''Hyaku-baka''

Film

* 1950: ''Peko-chan to Densuke'' * 1955: ''Onbu-obake'' * 1957: ''Fukusuke'' * 1959: ''Hyotan suzume'' * 1962: ''Otogi Manga Calendar'' (TV series) * 1962: ''Otogi no Sekai Ryōko'' * 1970: '' Dōbutsu-mura Monogatari'' (TV series)

External links

*
Yokoyama Ryūichi Museum website

at

Lambiek Galerie Lambiek is a Dutch comic book store and art gallery in Amsterdam, founded on November 8, 1968 by Kees Kousemaker (, – Bussum Bussum () is a commuter town and former municipality in the Gooi region in the south east of the prov ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yokoyama_Ryuichi 2001 deaths 1909 births Persons of Cultural Merit Japanese printmakers Japanese animators Japanese comic strip cartoonists Manga artists from Kōchi Prefecture