Rintaro wins top prize at Tezuka Osamu manga awards
An illustration drawn by Rintaro to mark his winning of the Manga Grand Prix at the 29th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize, left, and the cover illustration for his winning title, 'Ichi-byo Nijuyon-koma no Boku no Jinsei' (Provided by Rintaro and Kawade Shobo Shinsha Ltd.)
'Ichi-byo Nijuyon-koma no Boku no Jinsei' (My life at 24 frames per second), an autobiographical manga by famed anime director Rintaro, won the Manga Grand Prix at the 29th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize.
Sponsored by The Asahi Shimbun Co., the competition honors 'Astro Boy' creator Osamu Tezuka and the indelible mark he left on Japan's manga culture.
The logo of the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize featuring Atom, the main character of 'Astro Boy' ((c) Tezuka Productions)
The Originality Prize, given for fresh talent and novel modes of expression, went to Shiho Kido, who authored 'When the Chameleon Flowers Bloom.'
The Short Story Prize was given to Shunji Enomoto's 'The Kinks.'
The Asahi Special Prize went to the Yokote City Masuda Manga Art Foundation, a general incorporated association that operates the Yokote Masuda Manga Museum in Yokote, Akita Prefecture.
The awards ceremony will be held at the leading daily's Tokyo head office in the Tsukiji area on June 5.
Each winner will receive a bronze statuette.
The winner of the Manga Grand Prix will also take home a 2-million-yen ($14,000) prize, while the Originality, Short Story and Asahi Special Prize winners will each receive 1 million yen.
Manga titles published or released in Japan in 2024 were eligible for the awards.
Rintaro is an anime director who has movies such as 'Galaxy Express 999,' 'Genma Taisen (Harmagedon)' and 'Metropolis' under his belt.
After working on a Japan-France joint project, he was approached to make an autobiographical anime in the European country.
After six years in the making, it came to fruition as a manga originally released by a publisher in the French-speaking world under the title of 'Ma Vie en 24 Images par Second' (My life at 24 frames per second).
The Japanese edition was published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha Ltd.
'I decided to take on the project thinking that nothing could scare me, but when I started working on it, I remembered various scenes of my life like a revolving lantern of memories,' Rintaro said. 'It was a fun experience.'
After starting out as an animator, Rintaro made a career switch to become a director while working on 'Astro Boy,' Japan's first animated TV series, which aired in 1963 and featured a robot boy named Atom.
'Mr. Tezuka was a great manga artist, but for me, he was the chief who worked together with staff members on 'Astro Boy' without sleep,' he recalled.
'When the Chameleon Flowers Bloom' is Kido's first series published by Kodansha Ltd.
It portrays creators of 'art brut' (raw art), or art made outside the mainstream forms of expression, and their supporters through a peculiar relationship between two elementary school pupils, one being a model student and the other an eccentric one.
Also released by Kodansha, 'The Kinks' is the first family-centered comedy series for Enomoto, whose works are filled with 'erotic, grotesque and nonsensical' elements.
The Yokote City Masuda Manga Art Foundation is among the first to conserve manga manuscripts to pass down the manga culture to future generations.
Opening in 1995, the Yokote Masuda Manga Museum currently houses more than 480,000 original drawings.
(This story was written by Atsushi Ohara and Takumi Terui.)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yomiuri Shimbun
26-05-2025
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Rubik's Cube Featuring Aomori Apple Varieties Debuts Nationwide; Challenging Puzzles Already Rolling off Shelves
Courtesy of the Aomori prefectural government An Aomorikku Cube puzzle toy Aomorikku Cube, Rubik's Cube puzzles designed with apple skin coloration, sales have begun outside Aomori Prefecture. Instead of solid colors, each side of the cube is patterned on a different variety of apple produced in the prefecture. The Aomori prefectural government sold the toys in the prefecture from autumn last year, quickly selling out. Many people voiced their desire to buy the puzzle, so the prefectural government has begun selling them again to promote apples, a prefectural specialty product. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of apple tree planting in the prefecture. When the Aomorikku Cube is solved, each surface shows an image patterned after a different apple variety. The designs are: Fuji, Jonagold, Sekai-ichi, Kogyoku, Chiyuki and Mutsu. All of them are red and look very similar. People need to align the pieces of each surface while paying attention to features of the apple varieties, making it very challenging. In October last year, the toys began to be sold in stores at 11 locations in the prefecture. They caught on right away and the initial run of 1,000 toys sold out in about 2 months. According to the prefectural government's tourism policy division, many people from inside and outside of the prefecture voiced a desire to buy them even after they initially sold out. The prefectural government decided to sell the toys again starting May 1, this time selling them outside the prefecture as well. In Aomori prefecture, the toys are available in multiple locations, including a store in Misawa Airport. Outside the prefecture, such retailers as Aomori Hokusaikan Tokyo Store, the prefecture's antenna shop in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, and A La Ringo Kobe Factory Shop in Hyogo Ward, Kobe, sell them. They sell for ¥3,300 each, including tax. By May 23, some shops reported their stock of the toys was low. An official of the prefectural government's tourism policy division said, 'We want people to become familiar with the features of apple varieties and hope the toys will prompt them to visit the prefecture to try the apples for themselves.'
14-05-2025
From Takadanobaba to Shinjuku: Schools, Culture, and Wild Nightlife on Tokyo's West Side
A Walk around the Yamanote Line Walking from Takadanobaba to Shinjuku, youth is the name of the game, with youngsters attending the many local schools, hunting for bargains at Korean Town, or enjoying Kabukichō's bright lights. But don't forget that many traces of an older past are scattered all over the area. Takadanobaba is where I enter the home stretch of my walk around the Yamanote Line. From here to Shibuya, my final goal, this is my home turf, an area full of memories and personal connections. Yet, it hardly feels like a homecoming. Unfortunately, the district has changed so much that I hardly recognize it. Granted, when I get off the train, I'm still welcomed by the Astro Boy (known in Japan as Tetsuwan Atomu) theme song that's been used since 2003 as a departure melody for trains on these platforms. However, the atmosphere along Waseda-dōri, the station's main commercial street, is utterly different. The stations on the Yamanote line stations loop. (© Pixta) Located close to Waseda and Gakushūin universities and several other vocational and training schools, Takadanobaba is still a favorite student hangout. Over time, though, it has become a little trendier, a little pricier, and a lot blander. Thirty years ago, it had more character, starting with the tacky steel arcades on the north side of the street. There, one could find cheap diners and bars catering to penniless students, secondhand shops where I hunted for old books and video games, and two wonderful art theaters showing both Japanese and foreign films. Nearly all that is gone. Once the area's lone example of corporate shopping and dining, the Big Box commercial center is now surrounded by scores of chain stores. From mobile phone dealers to cafes and fast food joints, they are all over the place. Even the secondhand game shop I loved was replaced by Suit Select, which is happy to provide you with an order-made suit ready in 10 days for just ¥45,000! Big Box is one of Takadanobaba's oldest landmarks. (© Gianni Simone) Constantly changing, inexorably replacing the old with the new, the up-to-date, the money-making convenient, Tokyo is the best demonstration of Marcel Proust's dictum that you can never really get back time lost. To me, no other place drives home this painful fact with more bittersweet poignancy than Takadanobaba. Now, every visit I make becomes an incomplete, deeply unsatisfying stroll along memory lane, a missed chance to reconnect with my younger self. But I haven't lost all my hopes. The mom-and-pop ping pong joint is still there, hidden in an alley north of the station, and the Waseda Shōchiku cinema, which first opened in 1951, keeps showing cheap double-bills. Human traffic, as usual, is decidedly young, though near the station, hidden underground, there are bars and eateries targeting salarymen and other working people. It's like they don't want to attract the students' attention. By the way, if you are tired of the ubiquitous chain restaurants, Takadanobaba is home to several excellent Burmese diners providing simple, tasty, hearty dishes. Takadanobaba is famous for its many Burmese eateries. (© Gianni Simone) Speaking of Asian cuisine, our next stop has plenty of it. Nowadays, Shin-Ōkubo is mainly associated with Korean Town, and the hordes of Japanese youngsters and foreign tourists who clog its streets every day are mainly there to taste the latest colorful Korean snacks and buy Korean cosmetics. Food lovers converge on Shin-Ōkubo's Korean Town on a daily basis. (© Gianni Simone) However, on the west side of the Yamanote Line, a completely different kind of Asian experience awaits you, as the Korean places are easily overwhelmed by Vietnamese, Nepalese and other Asian shops and restaurants lining up on both sides of the street. It's a different world that looks and smells like no other place in Tokyo. So next time people tell you how homogeneous and monocultural Japan is, take them to Shin-Ōkubo. Walking around Shin-Ōkubo doesn't even feel like being in Japan. (© Gianni Simone) Now, the east side is a different story. You will need to walk some 15 to 20 minutes and get away from the Yamanote's acoustic footprints, but it's worth the trip, at least if you are interested in Tokyo's deep history. Tokyo has many danchi (public housing complexes), but Toyama Heights is arguably the only one located inside the loop. It is also one of the first and largest such projects in Tokyo. Initially constructed in 1948 on a former military site as a response to the postwar housing shortage, the original 1,062 structures were wooden, single-story houses. However, over the years, the area underwent significant redevelopment, and between 1968 and 1976, the complex was rebuilt into high-rise buildings made of reinforced concrete. Toyama Heights is one of the more successful examples of danchi in Tokyo. (© Gianni Simone) Coming from Takadanobaba, even before reaching the danchi, we find Toyama Park, a significant green area in the district. Once the residence of members of the Tokugawa clan whose garden was one of the best in Edo, even rivaling Koishikawa Kōrakuen, it was later used by the military, becoming a shooting range and the site of the Army Toyama School. Today, Toyama Park is a rare green oasis in the heart of Tokyo. The park has been left to gently go wild, creating just a few little rough touches here and there that add a certain charm you won't find in Yoyogi or other central Tokyo public parks. Toyama Park is a rare green oasis in the heart of Tokyo. (© Gianni Simone) Toyama Park is bisected by the major thoroughfare Meiji-dōri, and its inner, or eastern, half is a little jewel of unpretentious, quiet beauty. Although this area is more centrally located than the Yamanote stations, it has a suburban, almost rural feel. When I visited the park in the middle of a lazy weekday afternoon, the only people I crossed paths with were elementary school kids going home and pram-pushing moms. I sat on a bench to write down a few notes and the only sounds I could hear were small birds chirping, an impatient crow calling out his gang, and the subtle murmur of tree branches. If you are still hungry for unique landmarks, here you will find Hakone-yama, an artificial hill that, standing at 44.6 meters above sea level, is the highest nonstructural point within the Yamanote Line area. (Atagoyama, in Minato, remains the highest naturally occurring point.) However, to me, the district's most striking feature is Toyama Heights itself. While some of the buildings show their age and the whole complex looks rather dreary and lacks aesthetic charm, they are clean, with manicured lawns and walls unmarred by graffiti. In sharp contrast to the ominous atmosphere that pervades similar places in Europe and America, children play freely, the streets are immaculate, and gangs and drug dealers are nowhere to be seen. (Those things may be easier to find a little southward, in Shinjuku.) As one of Tokyo's main subcenters (it also features the world's most trafficked station), Shinjuku is many things all at once: a shopping Mecca, a sexual playground, and a cultural and intellectual enclave, so much so that one would need to write a whole book to do the place justice. Entering the district from the north, sex—or at least the titillating promise of it—is what you encounter. Welcome to Kabukichō, Japan's largest red-light district. In a city where streetwalkers are far from the norm, the area around Ōkubo Park has long been known as a spot where prostitutes solicit customers, many of them being very young runaways coming from around Japan. There is quite a lot of human traffic during the day, and after a while, you start wondering whether that blonde-dyed girl with the impossibly short miniskirt is just meeting her friends or on her way to some kind of naughty work. There are plenty of love hotels and host clubs here, but under the harsh glare of the midday sun, the place looks particularly drab, unremarkable, and unappealing. It's only when the sun goes down and the lights go up that Kabukichō turns into a riot of colors, a sleepless playground devoted to the neon god. At night the entrance to the Kabukichō district promises glitzy good times. (© Pixta) And to think that Shinjuku used to be a hotbed of student protests and political turmoil; a place where artists and intellectuals gathered to change the world, or at least Japanese culture. So, I leave behind the recent news stories and dive into deep time to look for traces of the past. Starting at the square in front of the station's east exit, we find a very old fountain, a gift from the city of London, where it once provided water for both people and horses. The round building just behind it is the station's parking lot. Both of them can be clearly seen in a rare color scene about halfway through Ōshima Nagisa's 1969 film Diary of a Shinjuku Thief. Not far from there, on Shinjuku-dōri, no history of local architecture would be complete without mentioning the Kinokuniya Bookstore main building (1964). Being squeezed between other lesser buildings, it's easy to overlook, but for more than 60 years it's been the heart of the local cultural scene. Shinjuku used to be full of jazz cafes and clubs, and one of the most famous was Fūgetsudō, where in the late sixties all the rebels and arty people used to gather. Here you could find poets such as Takiguchi Shūzō, Shiraishi Kazuko, and Tanikawa Shuntarō, actors like Mikuni Rentarō and Kishida Kyōko, and of course all-round creator and enfant terrible Terayama Shūji. Then, from the late 1960s onward, more and more hippies made their appearance, selling and doing marijuana and LSD. Unfortunately, the place was closed in 1973, so I find refuge and rest my feet at the retro-looking L'ambre, whose location is very close to the old Fūgetsudō. Here I can still enjoy a whiff of old-time café culture, albeit in a more domesticated, bourgeois atmosphere. L'ambre's retro atmosphere is a reminder of Shinjuku's roaring sixties. (© Gianni Simone) (Originally written in English. Banner photo: The Shin-Ōkubo district provides a Korean flavor to Tokyo travelers. © Pixta.)
Asahi Shimbun
12-05-2025
- Asahi Shimbun
Over 12,000 musicians break Guinness World Record at expo
OSAKA—Musicians from around the country played 'The Stars and Stripes Forever' while marching on the Grand Ring and other areas of the Osaka Kansai Expo to break a world record. The 12,269 participants at the May 11 spectacle earned the Guinness World Records' title of 'largest marching band,' surpassing the previous record set in 1997 of 11,157 people. The event was held as part of the Brass Expo 2025, a brass band festival sponsored by Kansai Suisogaku Renmei (Kansai band federation), The Asahi Shimbun Co. and Ad:Daisen Co. 'I am overwhelmed by a sense of fulfillment,' said Rio Nakamura, leader of the brass band club at Matsuyama Shinonome Junior and Senior High School in Ehime Prefecture. Thirty-three people from the school, including alumni and guardians, took part. 'This is the first time I played with so many people,' Nakamura said. 'I was thrilled even after the performance ended.' In addition to sheer numbers, the group had to meet Guinness World Records requirements that included 'marching 400 meters or more with all participants playing' and 'performing for five minutes or longer.' Daisuke Ataka, 42, joined with about 40 other members of a brass band based in Suita, Osaka Prefecture. 'I became relaxed while playing, and I could afford to enjoy the sights of the expo that I was seeing for the first time,' said Ataka, an alto saxophonist. 'I was also glad to see children happily playing on percussion instruments.' Most of the assembled schools and amateur bands have participated in the All Japan Marching Contest.
