TOKYO \u2014 Legendary Japanese manga artist Tetsuya Chiba, who sparked a national sensation with his boxing series \u201cAshita no Joe\u201d (\u201cFighting for Tomorrow\u201d), a story about an orphan who becomes a professional boxer, has died. He was 87.<\/p>\n
Mr. Chiba\u2019s masterpiece series became so popular that fans even attended a mock funeral for the protagonist Joe Yabuki\u2019s rival.<\/p>\n
Mr. Chiba died at a Tokyo hospital last Thursday, his publisher Kodansha Ltd. said Tuesday, without specifying the cause of his death.<\/p>\n
While he depicted aspiring young athletes fighting for their lives and careers, Mr. Chiba was a vocal supporter of peace and freedom of expression, telling stories of his harrowing memories of war as a child in autobiographical stories and manga.<\/p>\n
Months after he was born in Tokyo in January 1939, his family moved to northeastern China, and Mr. Chiba spent his early childhood there during Japan\u2019s occupation in the region, where his father worked at a printing factory.<\/p>\n
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At age 6, Mr. Chiba and his family marked Japan\u2019s surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, while they were still in China. There, they faced danger and hunger in the face of anti-Japanese riots, but survived with the help of his father\u2019s Chinese translator, who hid the family in an attic, where Mr. Chiba drew pictures for his three younger brothers.<\/p>\n
The family eventually fled to China\u2019s port city of Huludao and returned to Japan in 1946.<\/p>\n
The harrowing memories later influenced his work and activity with an anti-war theme.<\/p>\n
Mr. Chiba debuted as a manga artist in 1956, initially drawing comic books for girls and later moving on to works for boys in the early 1960s.<\/p>\n
In 1961, he debuted in a boys\u2019 comic magazine with a baseball manga, \u201cChikai no Makyu (The Magic Ball),\u201d paving the way for a new genre of sports-themed manga in Japan.<\/p>\n
Mr. Chiba\u2019s sports-themed manga also included \u201cOre wa Teppei\u201d (\u201cI\u2019m Teppei\u201d), the story of a high school student training in the martial art of kendo, \u201cNotari Matsutaro,\u201d about sumo wrestling, and \u201cAshita Tenki ni Naare (Let\u2019s hope the weather\u2019s fine tomorrow)\u201d about a teenage golfer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO \u2014 Legendary Japanese manga artist Tetsuya Chiba, who sparked a national sensation with his boxing series \u201cAshita…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":943141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-943140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943140","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=943140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/943141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}