Japanese manga artist (born 1936)
Kazuo Umezu
|
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|
Kazuo Umezu, 2010
|
Born
| (
1936-09-03
)
September 3, 1936
(age 87)
|
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Occupation
| Manga artist
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Years active
| 1950s - present
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Kazuo Umezu
or
Kazuo Umezz
(
?? かずお
,
Umezu Kazuo
, birth name ??一雄; born September 3, 1936)
is a Japanese
manga artist
, musician and actor. Starting his career in the 1950s, he is among the most famous artists of
horror manga
and has been vital for its development, considered the "god of horror manga". In 1960s
sh?jo manga
like
Reptilia
, he broke the industry's conventions by combining the aesthetics of the commercial manga industry with gruesome visual imagery inspired by
Japanese folktales
, which created a boom of horror manga and influenced manga artists of following generations. He created successful manga series such as
The Drifting Classroom
,
Makoto-chan
and
My Name Is Shingo
, until he retired from drawing manga in the mid 1990s. He is also a
public figure
in Japan, known for wearing red-and-white-striped shirts and doing his signature "Gwash" hand gesture.
Life
[
edit
]
Umezz was born in
K?ya
,
Wakayama Prefecture
, but raised in the mountainous
Goj?
,
Nara Prefecture
. His mother motivated him to start drawing when he was seven years old.
[1]
[2]
[3]
His father would tell him local legends about ghost and snake women before going to bed.
[2]
He was inspired to start drawing manga by reading
Osamu Tezuka
's
Shin Takarajima
in fifth grade.
[4]
He was part of a drawing circle with others called "Kaiman Club".
[5]
In 1955, he published his first manga at the age of 18 with
Mori no Ky?dai
based on the fairytale
Hansel and Gretel
with the
kashihon
publisher Tomo Book.
[2]
[5]
He would soon shift towards the
gekiga
movement and publish manga in the
kashi-hon
industry in
Osaka
of the time, which would allow him more freedom than serializing his manga in magazines. His specialty was to include
paranormal
elements in his stories.
[2]
At the same time, he also started working on
sh?jo manga
; he published in the magazine
Sh?jo Book
and the kashi-hon anthology
Niji
.
[3]
After moving to
Tokyo
in 1963 due to the decline of the kashihon industry,
[3]
he developed his specific style, which blended the aesthetics of sh?jo manga with grotesque horror visuals and broke with conventions of sh?jo manga at the time.
[2]
[6]
Horror manga like
Nekome no Sh?jo
and
Reptilia
became a hit in the commercial shojo manga magazine
Sh?jo Friend
in the mid 1960s.
[4]
In the late 1960s, he also started publishing in
sh?nen manga
magazines and he switched publishing houses, from
Kodansha
to
Shogakukan
, when a new editor asked him to draw something other than horror manga.
[3]
He became a well established author and was at times working at up to five serials at the same time.
[7]
In 1974 he won the 20th
Shogakukan Manga Award
for his series
The Drifting Classroom
about a school including its schoolchildren and teachers being teleported into an alternate post-apocalyptic universe.
[8]
In 1975, Umezu started becoming a public figure also apart from creating manga. He recorded songs based on his horror manga and released them as the solo album
Yami no Album
.
[9]
His comedy manga
Makoto-chan
, which he published from 1976 to 1981 in
Weekly Sh?nen Sunday
, became a hit. The hand gesture "Gwash" from the manga became Umezu's own trademark hand gesture as well in public.
[2]
In the 1980s and 1990s, he focused on
science fiction
manga depicting a near future like
My Name Is Shingo
and
Fourteen
.
[4]
In 1995, he had to retire from regular publishing due to
tendinitis
after finishing
Fourteen
. He then became even more of a public figure, appearing regularly on TV in a red and white striped shirt. He was also famous for the architecture of his candy-striped home in
Kichij?ji
, inspired by his
Makoto-chan
series.
[2]
[10]
In 2011, he released a second music album with his songs.
[9]
In 2018 he was awarded the
Prize for Inheritance
at the
Angouleme International Comics Festival
for the French translation of
My Name Is Shingo
. This was the second prize awarded him throughout his career and Umezu had previously been unhappy about the amount of recognition he had gotten for his work. The award motivated him to start working again and he produced a series of 101 paintings based on
My Name Is Shingo
, which were exhibited for the first time in 2022 and were his first new work in 27 years.
[11]
[10]
Themes
[
edit
]
His work is influenced by Japanese folklore. Manga artist and critic
Sakumi Yoshino
explains that his horror manga is related to
religion in Japan
, as monsters and demons are not considered completely evil, and Umezu wants readers to sometimes also feel compassion for the monsters in his works.
[12]
Many of his manga feature
intergenerational conflict
between children and adults. Umezu initially focused on this topic as he found that relationships between mothers and children in sh?jo manga in the early 1960s were portrayed only as caring, never as scary. His manga
Reptilia
depicts an intense conflict between a schoolgirl and her sick mother, who turns out to be a snake woman when she visits her in hospital. Manga scholar Tsuchiya Dollase compares this character with the
Jungian
"Terrible Mother".
[6]
The children of the deserted school in
The Drifting Classroom
are immediately betrayed by their teachers and need to fight for their survival. In
My Name Is Shingo
, children are the only ones able to communicate with and have an emotional connection with an AI computer. Umezu explained that he himself finds the world of children more relatable, as children are much more open to illogical and adaptable in their thinking: "I’m writing about myself in a way. I don’t want to become an adult and 'grow up.'"
[3]
Reception and legacy
[
edit
]
His works inspired a new generation of horror manga artists.
Junji Ito
,
Toru Yamazaki
and
Minetar? Mochizuki
cite him as one of their biggest influences
[13]
[10]
[14]
and
Kanako Inuki
got her career start in a magazine compiled by him.
[15]
Rumiko Takahashi
briefly worked as an assistant for him, while he was working on
Makoto-chan
.
[16]
[17]
His reputation gave him the nickname "god of horror manga" (ホラ?まんがの神?) in Japanese media.
[10]
Umezu's manga broke with the norms of the commercial manga industry at the time that he started publishing in major magazines in the mid 1960s and created a boom around horror manga in the late 1960s. Tsuchiya Dollase writes: "The monstrous mothers must certainly have scared the audience; at the same time, however, the torture of the pretty but superficial heroines by these horrifying mothers must have given the same audience a certain pleasure."
[6]
Umezu regularly received complaint letters from parents in the beginning of his career due to his horror visuals and also editors of magazines would ask him to scale down the violence in his imagery. He remarks in an interview: "I was protested but never boycotted. I considered such criticism to be a form of praise."
[3]
He was critical of watering down horror elements: "Old Japanese folk stories and fairy tales could be unflinchingly brutal. They come from a time when tragedy and carnage was an everyday part of life. Now we have people calling to water them down, which essentially whitewashes history. It’s insulting to the memory of those who suffered to bring us these stories."
[3]
Besides his impact on the development of horror manga, scholar Tomoko Yamada counts Umezu as one of the sh?jo manga artists in the 1950s who contributed to the development of
ballet
manga with his series
Haha Yobu Koe
(1958) and
Maboroshi Sh?jo
(1959).
[18]
Works
[
edit
]
Manga
[
edit
]
Original title
|
English title
|
Year
|
Notes
|
Mori no Ky?dai
(
森の兄妹
)
|
Siblings of the Forest
|
1955
|
published by Tomo Book
[5]
|
Haha Yobu Koe
(
母呼ぶこえ
)
|
|
1958
[19]
|
one-shot in
Sh?jo Book
|
Ningy? Sh?jo
(
人形少女
)
|
|
1959
|
published by T?h? Mangasha
|
Maboroshi Sh?jo
(まぼろし少女)
|
|
1959
[19]
|
serialized in
Niji
|
Yamabiko Shimai
(
山びこ姉妹
)
|
|
1964
[20]
|
serialized in
Niji
|
Nemuri Sh?jo
(
ねむり少女
)
|
|
1964
|
published by T?ky? Mangasha
|
Hebi Obasan
(
へびおばさん
)
|
|
1964
[21]
|
|
Romansu no Kusuri
(
ロマンスの?
)
|
Romance Medicine
|
1962
|
serialized in
Nakayoshi
|
Madara no Sh?jo
(
まだらの少女
)
|
|
1965
|
serialized in
Sh?jo Friend
|
Mama ga Kowai
|
I'm Scared of Mama
|
1965
[6]
|
published in
Sh?jo Friend
|
Benigumo
(
紅グモ
)
|
Red Spider
|
1965-1966
[22]
|
serialized in
Sh?jo Friend
|
Hangyojin
(
半魚人
)
|
Half-Fish Man
|
1965
|
serialized in
Sh?nen Magazine
|
Hibiware Ningen
(
ひびわれ人間
)
|
Cracked Human
|
1966
|
serialized in
Sh?nen Magazine
|
Hebi Onna
(
へび女
)
|
Reptilia
|
1966
|
serialized in
Sh?jo Friend
|
Urutoraman
(
ウルトラマン
)
|
Ultraman
|
1966-1967
|
serialized in
Sh?nen Magazine
|
Nekome no Sh?jo
(
赤んぼ少女
)
|
Nekome no Sh?jo
|
1967
|
serialized in
Sh?jo Friend
|
Nekome Koz?
(
猫目小僧
)
|
Cat Eyed Boy
|
1967-1968
1968-1969
1976
|
serialized in
Sh?nen Gaho
serialized in
Sh?nen King
serialized in
Weekly Sh?nen Sunday
|
Akanbo Sh?jo
(
赤んぼ少女
)
|
Baby Girl
|
1967
|
serialized in
Sh?jo Friend
|
Shisha no K?shin
(
死者の行進
)
|
March of the Dead
|
1967
|
serialized in
Sh?nen Magazine
|
SF Ishoku Tampensh?
(
SF異色短編集
)
|
|
1968-1969
|
serialized in
Big Comic
|
Kage
(
映像
)
|
|
1968
|
serialized in
Teen Look
|
Ch? no Haka
(
蝶の墓
)
|
Butterfly Grave
|
1968
|
serialized in
Teen Look
|
Osore
(
おそれ
)
|
Fear
|
1969
|
|
Orochi
(
おろち
)
|
Orochi
|
1969-1970
|
serialized in
Weekly Sh?nen Sunday
|
Iara
(
イアラ
)
|
|
1970
|
serialized in
Big Comic
|
Kaij? Gy?
(
怪?ギョ?
)
|
|
1971
|
serialized in
Teen Look
|
Agein
(
アゲイン
)
|
Again
|
1971-1972
|
serialized in
Weekly Sh?nen Sunday
|
Hy?ry? Ky?shitsu
(
漂流?室
)
|
The Drifting Classroom
|
1972-1974
|
serialized in
Weekly Sh?nen Sunday
|
Senrei
(
洗?
)
|
Baptism
|
1974-1976
|
serialized in
Sh?jo Comic
|
Makoto-chan
(
まことちゃん
)
|
Makoto-chan
|
1976-1981
|
serialized in
Weekly Sh?nen Sunday
|
Watashi wa Shingo
(
わたしは?悟
)
|
My Name Is Shingo
|
1982-1986
|
serialized in
Big Comic Spirits
|
Kami no Hidarite Akuma no Migite
(
神の左手?魔の右手
)
|
God's Left Hand, Devil's Right Hand
|
1986-1988
|
serialized in
Big Comic Spirits
|
Ch?! Makoto-chan
(超!まことちゃん)
|
|
1988-1989
|
serialized in
Weekly Sh?nen Sunday
|
F?t?n
(
14?
)
|
Fourteen
|
1990-1995
|
serialized in
Big Comic Spirits
|
Paintings
[
edit
]
- Zoku-Shingo Chiisa na Robotto Shingo Bijutsukan
(ZOKU-SHINGO 小さなロボット シンゴ美術館; 2022)
[10]
Films
[
edit
]
Albums
[
edit
]
- Yami no Album
(闇のアルバム; 1975)
- Yami no Album 2
(闇のアルバム?2; 2011)
Musicals
[
edit
]
In 2016, his manga
My Name Is Shingo
was adapted into a musical. It stars
Mitsuki Takahata
and
Mugi Kadowaki
as the lead characters and is
directed
and
choreographed
by
Philippe Decoufle
.
[24]
Assistants
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Toku, Masami; Dollase, Hiromi Tsuchiya, eds. (August 2020).
MANGA!: Visual Pop-Culture in ARTS Education
.
doi
:
10.24981/2020-3
.
ISBN
9789895468379
.
S2CID
242662617
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
"Profile"
.
umezz.com
. Retrieved
2022-10-15
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
"Drifting Classroom Creator Kazuo Umezu Interviewed"
.
Anime News Network
. Retrieved
2022-10-15
.
- ^
a
b
c
荒金良介 (2022-10-11).
"Manga Artist Kazuo Umezu's Undying Urge to Create - TOKION"
.
TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information
. Retrieved
2022-10-15
.
- ^
a
b
c
Nicolas.
"Un florilege de kashihon #1 ? Limited Animation"
(in French)
. Retrieved
2022-10-15
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Dollase, Hiromi Tsuchiya (2010).
"
"Sh?jo" Spirits in Horror Manga"
.
U.S.-Japan Women's Journal
(38): 62?63.
ISSN
2330-5037
.
- ^
"??かずおのおすすめ漫?ランキングベスト5!ホラ?漫?の神?!"
.
ホンシェルジュ
(in Japanese)
. Retrieved
2022-10-16
.
- ^
小?館漫?賞: ?代受賞者
(in Japanese). Shogakukan. Archived from
the original
on 2008-07-10
. Retrieved
2007-08-19
.
- ^
a
b
"インタビュ?:??かずお - Time Out Tokyo(タイムアウト東京)"
.
Time Out Tokyo
(in Japanese)
. Retrieved
2022-10-20
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
日本放送協?.
"??かずおさん 27年ぶりの新作で描いた"人類の未?とは"|NHK"
.
NHK NEWS WEB
(in Japanese)
. Retrieved
2022-10-20
.
- ^
"Kazuo Umezu, laureat du Fauve Patrimoine pour Je suis Shingo - 46e Festival de la Bande Dessinee d'Angouleme"
.
Festival International de la bande dessinee
(in French)
. Retrieved
2022-10-20
.
- ^
King, Emerald; Fraser, Lucy; Yoshino, Sakumi (2010).
"An Interview with Sakumi Yoshino"
.
U.S.-Japan Women's Journal
(38): 129.
ISSN
2330-5037
.
- ^
"The Horror of an Uncertain Future: An Interview with Revered Manga-ka Junji Ito"
.
B&N Reads
. 2019-06-17
. Retrieved
2022-10-15
.
- ^
"Interview manga de Minetaro Mochizuki sur planetebd.com !"
.
planetebd.com
(in French)
. Retrieved
2023-07-26
.
- ^
Inc, DIGITALIO.
"犬木 加奈子(漫?家)"
.
マンガペディア
(in Japanese)
. Retrieved
2022-10-15
.
- ^
Chazan, Helen; December 15, 2020.
"Mermaid Saga: Collector's Edition Vol. 1"
.
The Comics Journal
. Retrieved
February 27,
2023
.
{{
cite web
}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link
)
- ^
Flowers
. February 2013 issue (December 28, 2012), p. 330?334 (
English translation
).
- ^
"「バレエ?マンガ展 外?!」第二部座談? ~バレエ?マンガの魅力~"
.
www.toshonoie.net
. Retrieved
2022-11-08
.
- ^
a
b
"バレエ漫?リスト[1950年代]?書の家"
.
www.toshonoie.net
. Retrieved
2022-11-08
.
- ^
"完全復刻版 山びこ姉妹 | ??かずお ? 小?館コミック"
.
shogakukan-comic.jp
(in Japanese)
. Retrieved
2022-10-16
.
- ^
管理人.
"【完全復刻版】へびおばさん ?? | UMEZZ.com: ??かずお情報サイト"
(in Japanese)
. Retrieved
2022-10-16
.
- ^
"【?書の家】漫?作品デ?タ"
.
www.toshonoie.net
. Retrieved
2022-11-08
.
- ^
"Horror Manga Creator Kazuo Umezu Helms 1st Feature Film"
.
Anime News Network
. 2013-12-12
. Retrieved
2013-12-17
.
- ^
Vannieuwenhuysen, Lora-Elly.
"BCM reads: Kazuo Umezu "Watashi wa Shingo" ("Je suis Shingo")"
.
A Belgian J-Culture Magazine
. Vol. 35. Hilde Heyvaert. p. 19.
ISSN
2593-0435
. Archived from
the original
on 2019-06-05
. Retrieved
2018-06-04
.
External links
[
edit
]
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1950s
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1960s
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2020s
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Grand Prize
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Special
Award
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Award for
Excellence
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Creative
Award
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New Artist
Prize
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Short Story
Award
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