The passing of manga artist Takao Saito at age 84 today represents the end of an era. He's famed for creating the antihero assassin-for-hire Golgo 13, but he's also a pioneer of "gekiga" (劇画): a cutting edge form of illustrated entertainment intended to dethrone manga. (1/x
Saito debuted in the rental comics market of the Fifties but really rose to prominence as a member of the Gekiga Workshop, a collective founded and named by artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Under Tatsumi's editorship, they launched a magazine called Matenrow (Skyscraper.) (2/x
Until gekiga came around, manga was synonymous with the rounded, cartoony fantasies of Osamu Tezuka and his peers. Matenrow upended all that with dark, crime-filled stories set in gritty urban settings. Saito was a master of hard-boiled crime: guns, gangsters and dames. (3/x
Tatsumi & company sent a postcard out to all the magazines announcing their debut. It read in part, “there is a demand for entertainment intended for adolescents, one unfulfilled… These are gekiga’s target audience.” (4/x
Matenrow didn’t last long; its founders went their separate ways. Saito emerged as the most successful of the lot. His Assassin-for-hire Golgo 13 became a Sixties icon. Student protestors saw in him (and other stoic gekiga antiheroes) a model for their battles with The Man. (5/x
Sharp linework, speed-lines, dramatic close ups, obsessive mechanical detail, sex and violence: by the end of the Sixties, gekiga style was ubiquitous, even in kids' stuff. In fact, what people often call “manga” today is actually better described as descended from gekiga. (6/x
I go into this in more detail in Pure Invention; gekiga's rise represented a battle for the soul of graphic drama in Japan. The edginess its creators brought to the scene made manga a more vibrant medium, paving the way for success around the globe. (7/x amazon.com/gp/product/198…
And if you're interested in more, I'd highly recommend tracking down the essays of @mangaberg, who does an amazing job chronicling the tumltuous early postwar years of manga in Japan. For instance: tcj.com/saito-takao-an…
For another excellent overview of the era I'd also highly recommend the classic "Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics" by @fschodt, whose reminisces of Saito I really look forward to hearing if he's open to sharing! amazon.com/gp/product/156…
Like for instance the story behind this photo, taken early 80s, at Saito’s studio. From “manga! manga!”
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