TOKYO (Kyodo) — Tetsuya Chiba, best known as the creator of the classic Japanese boxing manga series “Ashita no Joe” (Tomorrow’s Joe) whose depiction of postwar Japan resonated with readers, has died, a source familiar with the matter said Tuesday. He was 87.<\/p>\n
Chiba provided the art for the boxing manga, written by Asao Takamori and later translated into English as “Ashita no Joe: Fighting for Tomorrow.” The story follows an orphan’s journey into professional boxing.<\/p>\n
Born in Tokyo, Chiba moved as a child with his family to Manchuria, now part of northeastern China, during Japan’s occupation of the region. They returned to Japan following its surrender in World War II.<\/p>\n
Chiba, who debuted in 1956, began his career with comics for girls and later shifted to works aimed at boys, becoming popular for his sports-themed manga.<\/p>\n
“Ashita no Joe” was serialized in Weekly Shonen Magazine from January 1968 and became so popular in Japan that fans attended a mock funeral for the protagonist’s fictional rival.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Chiba became one of the first manga artists selected for membership of the Japan Art Academy, which praised him for his contribution to sports-themed comics.<\/p>\n
When he became the first manga artist to receive the prestigious Order of Culture in 2024, he said he was proud of the honor for shining a light on the work of manga creators and helping to elevate it to a respected genre.<\/p>\n
Other prominent manga artists of his generation included Takao Saito, known for “Golgo 13,” and Leiji Matsumoto, known for “Galaxy Express 999.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO (Kyodo) — Tetsuya Chiba, best known as the creator of the classic Japanese boxing manga series “Ashita…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":942335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[509415,64,63,802,74717,211465,10852,38117,609,184172,1463,85,509414,39],"class_list":["post-942334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-ashita","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-chiba","tag-creator","tag-dies","tag-japans","tag-joe","tag-manga","tag-no","tag-sports","tag-tetsuya","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}