Katsuji Matsumoto - Early Career and Marriage

Early Career and Marriage

Matsumoto's first forum for steady work was the magazine Shōjo Gahō (少女画報?, "Girls' Illustrated"), to which he contributed from 1928 to 1938. Matsumoto first ventured into manga in Shōjo Gahō, creating a series of illustrated narratives featuring a lively Chinese girl named Poku-chan, which was irregularly published between November 1930 and March 1934. The Poku-chan strips were drawn in a stylized, almost abstract, Art Deco manner.

Matsumoto could draw in a wide range of styles, from the realistic to the near-abstract, but all of his work was distinguished by clean, almost geometrical lines and a strictly Modern sensibility. While he illustrated numerous dramatic girls' novels, his style was better suited to sunny, playful, or humorous work. In 1935, Matsumoto began to work for the magazine that would become his primary forum, Shōjo no tomo (少女の友?, "Girls' Friend"). Shōjo no tomo, with its modern, stylish image, was the ideal magazine for Matsumoto.

In 1932, at the age of 28, Matsumoto was wed to Ayako Nimori (二森あや子). They went on to have seven children (four boys, three girls) together. Because Ayako was an only child, the decision was made to have the firstborn male child legally adopted by her parents in order to carry on the Nimori name. On official records, therefore, Ki Nimori (二森騏, born 1933) is listed as the younger brother of Ayako, and therefore the brother-in-law of Matsumoto.

Read more about this topic:  Katsuji Matsumoto

Famous quotes containing the words early, career and/or marriage:

    “Our bad neighbor makes us early stirrers,
    Which is both healthful and good husbandry.”
    —William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    “Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
    —Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)

    “A marriage based on full confidence, based on complete and unqualified frankness on both sides; they are not keeping anything back; there’s no deception underneath it all. If I might so put it, it’s an agreement for the mutual forgiveness of sin.”
    —Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)