Osamu Tezuka - Works

Works

The distinctive "large eyes" style of Japanese animation was invented by Tezuka, drawing inspirations on cartoons of the time such as Betty Boop and Walt Disney's Bambi and Mickey Mouse. As an indication of his productivity, the Complete Manga Works of Tezuka Osamu (手塚治虫漫画全集, published in Japan) comprises some 400 volumes, over 80,000 pages; even so, it is not comprehensive. His complete oeuvre includes over 700 manga with more than 150,000 pages. However, the vast majority of his work has never been translated from the original Japanese.

When he was younger, Tezuka's arms swelled up and he became ill. He was treated and cured by a doctor which made him want to be a doctor. However, he began his career as a manga artist while a university student, drawing his first professional work while at school. At a crossing point, he asked his mother whether he should look into doing manga full-time or whether he should become a doctor. At the time, being a manga author was not a particularly rewarding job. The answer his mother gave was: "You should work doing the thing you like most of all." Tezuka decided to devote himself to manga creation on a full-time basis. He graduated from Osaka University and obtained his medical degree, but he would later use his medical and scientific knowledge to enrich his sci-fi manga, such as Black Jack.

Tezuka's creations include Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atomu in Japan, literally translated to "Iron-armed Atom"), Black Jack, Princess Knight, Phoenix (Hi no Tori in Japan), Kimba the White Lion, Adolf and Buddha. His "life's work" was Phoenix — a story of life and death that he began in the 1950s and continued until his death.

In January 1965, Tezuka received a letter from Stanley Kubrick, who had watched Astro Boy and wanted to invite Tezuka to be the art director of his next movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Tezuka could not afford to leave his studio for an entire year to live in England, so he refused the invitation. Although he could not work on it, he loved the film, and would play its soundtrack at maximum volume in his studio to keep him awake during the long nights of work.

Tezuka headed the animation production studio Mushi Production ("Bug Production"), which pioneered TV animation in Japan. The name of the studio derives from one of the kanji (虫 - Japanese reading: mushi, English meaning: bug,insect) used to write his name.

Many young manga artists once lived in the apartment where Tezuka lived, Tokiwa-sō. (As the suffix -sō indicates, this was probably a small, inexpensive apartment.) The residents included Shotaro Ishinomori, Fujio Akatsuka, and Abiko Motou and Hiroshi Fujimoto (who worked together under the pen name Fujiko Fujio).