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:

    Names on a list, whose faces I do not recall
    But they are gone to early death, who late in school
    Distinguished the belt feed lever from the belt holding pawl.
    Richard Eberhart (b. 1904)

    John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The parent who loves his child dearly but asks for nothing in return might qualify as a saint, but he will not qualify as a parent. For a child who can claim love without meeting any of the obligations of love will be a self-centered child and many such children have grown up in our time to become petulant lovers and sullen marriage partners because the promise of unconditional love has not been fulfilled.
    Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)