Sanpei Shirato

A Japanese manga artist and essayist known for his social criticism as well as his realistic drawing style and the characters in his scenarios. He is considered a pioneer of gekiga. The son of the Japanese proletarian painter Toki Okamoto his dream to become an artist equal with his father started when he became a Kamishibai artist. He is also known for his work published in the early issues of the manga anthology magazine Garo in 1964 which he began publishing so as to serialize his comic Kamui.https://anilist.co/manga/47839/KamuiDen/ He died on October 8 2021 at the age of 89 due to pneumonia. His younger brother Tetsuji Okamotohttps://anilist.co/staff/253586 who had worked as his assistant and later drawing Kamui Gaiden Part 2https://anilist.co/manga/136148/KamuiGaidenPart2/ had passed away 4 days later on October 12 2021 also due to pneumonia. Born in 1932 in Toyotamagun later Suginamiku Tokyo in Tokyo Prefecture. As a child he moved from place to place including Kobe and Osaka near Korean villages due to his fathers activities as a painter. He grew up during the resentful years of the war and some of these dark emotions come out in the nihilistic society depicted in his work that are essentially historical dramas centered on ninjas that shed historical light on Japan criticize oppression and discrimination. Shirato developed his style by making boards for Kamishibai shows Influenced by the ukiyoe of the preMeiji era he diverged in his depiction of action scenes by a slow multiphase cutting unique to his style. He then had Goseki Kojimahttps://anilist.co/staff/98021/KojimaGoseki and Kusonoki Shouheihttps://anilist.co/staff/176672/KusonokiShouhei as his assistant as well as his brother Tetsuji Okamotohttps://anilist.co/staff/253586. In spring 1938 he returned to Tokyo from Osaka and in 1944 he entered the private Nerima Junior High School under the old system but soon after the war intensified he and his family evacuated to Nakashioda Village Okengun Nagano Prefecture near Yagisawa Station in Ueda City where he attended the old system Nagano Prefectural Ueda Junior High School now Nagano Prefectural Ueda High School. The surname of a soldier named Ushinosuke Shirato from this old junior high school later became the origin of his pen name. In place of his father who was suffering from Potts disease due to the aftereffects of torture by the Special Higher Police he supports his household by doing forestry and hard work. After spending about a year in the salt pans he moved to Sanada and then to Nishienden. In 1946 he returned to Tokyo. Eikichi Ogihara later head of the Nerima branch of the Buraku Liberation League who lived in the nearby Buraku community Nerimaku Tokyo was a schoolmate and a good friend of Shiratos younger brother Makoto and Makoto even helped Ogihara with the family business. As a result Ogihara said: I sometimes wonder if Sanpei Shiratos manga such as Kamuiden were influenced by his experiences in Nerima. He was introduced to the works of Osamu Tezukahttps://anilist.co/staff/96938/TezukaOsamu around 1947. Later for financial reasons he was forced to drop out from Nerima Junior High School in the middle of his third year. Began working in the studio of Shinichi Kaneno an acquaintance of his father helping him copy and color Yamakawa Sojis picture story shows. In 1951 under the guidance of Kaneno he created a picture story show called Mr. Tomochan. At the time his pen name was Noboru . He continued to work on this series of picture story shows for several years. In 1955 he moved to Kanamachi Katsushikaku Tokyo where he lived with his friends and drew the picturestory show Kachiguri Kacchan. Shirato was nicknamed Ichiji no Sanchan by neighborhood children who came to play with him and this became the origin of the name Sanpei. During this period he also used the pseudonym Kurokawa Shin . In the same year his roommate Takuo Segawa founded the puppet theater company Tarouza and Shirato participated in the production of stage scenery. In 1956 he moved to Itabashi and married Haruko Lee a.k.a. Mayumi Kobayashi who was a member of Tarouza. At that time he wanted to join the Communist Party of Japan and volunteered to deliver the newspaper Akahata for one year but was not able to do so. In 1957 she was encouraged to draw manga by Kazuma Maki a shoujo manga artist who was a senior member of her theater company and learned manga techniques while working as Makis assistant. In August of the same year her substantial debut work Kogarashi Kenshi was published by Tomoe Shuppan. In 1959 However immediately after that the publisher went bankrupt and moved to Katsuichi Nagais company SanyoSha. Ninja Bugeichohttps://anilist.co/manga/51404/NinjaBugeichou/ a 17volume work that ran until 1962 making it an unusually long work for the time. In 1961 Nagai dissolved Sanyosha and established Seirindo where Shirado worked on rental books such as Sasukehttps://anilist.co/manga/136429/Sasuke/ and Ninpou Hiwa etc. In 1963 he won the 4th Kodansha Childrens Manga Award for Sasukehttps://anilist.co/manga/136429/Sasuke/ and Seaton Doubutsuki based on Kenji Uchiyamas novel. In 1964 Seirindo published the first issue of Garo. It was originally launched as a magazine for Shiratos new work Kamui Denhttps://anilist.co/manga/47839/KamuiDen/ for which he established Akame Production the same name as his previous work Akamehttps://anilist.co/manga/41114/Akame/ and began mass production. Because Shirato was the founder of Garo he was not paid for manuscripts fee so he published Watari and Kamui Gaidenhttps://anilist.co/manga/41749/KamuiGaiden/ both 1965 in other magazines in addition to Kamui Den to support his staff. In 1971 the first part of Kamui Denhttps://anilist.co/manga/47839/KamuiDen/ ended. Although a sequel was awaited it was not resumed for a long time and the second part was not started until 1988 after works such as Shinwa Densetsu Series 1974 and Kamui Gaiden Part 2https://anilist.co/manga/136148/KamuiGaidenPart2/ 1982. The second part was serialized in Big Comic until 2000 and was completed with newlywritten stories in a complete collection released in 2006. In 2009 he wrote a new work of Kamui Gaiden called Kamui Gaiden: Saikai after a long absence. In his later years he was planning to write Kamui Biography Part III.