Uploaded February 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Fukui Eiichi's Igaguri-Kun (1951-54) was one of the most popular and influential manga of the early post-World War II era. While helping to reignite a national craze for judo, it revolutionized both what was drawn in Japanese comics and how it was drawn, establishing for shonen manga an aesthetic and a moral raison d'être, seeding the genres of sports and martial arts manga, and pioneering the cinematic expressions that underwrote gekiga. Supporting the forthcoming English-language edition from Bubbles, this talk by translator and scholar Ryan Holmberg illuminates the alternative, post-Tezuka lineage that Igaguri-kun initiated in Japanese comics.
Fukui Eiichi's Igaguri-Kun (1951-54) was one of the most popular and influential manga of the early post-World War II era. While helping to reignite a national craze for judo, it revolutionized both what was drawn in Japanese comics and how it was drawn, establishing for shonen manga an aesthetic and a moral raison d'être, seeding the genres of sports and martial arts manga, and pioneering the cinematic expressions that underwrote gekiga. Supporting the forthcoming English-language edition from Bubbles, this talk by translator and scholar Ryan Holmberg illuminates the alternative, post-Tezuka lineage that Igaguri-kun initiated in Japanese comics.
