Hideo Azuma
Orbiting Rumic World - File 2
By Dylan Acres
Manga is back in Weekly Shonen Sunday
In order to fully understand Rumiko Takahashi and her contributions to the field of manga as a whole, you have to understand her place within that field, and that involves examining her influences, peers and followers. This is what Orbiting Rumic World is dedicated to exploring.
As Takahashi’s star was on the rise in the early 1980s there were mangaka that she was enamored with and those who were enamored with her. Hideo Azuma falls into the later category. Born in Hokkaido in 1950, Azuma is only seven years older than Takahashi, but he began his manga career in 1969, almost a full decade before she debuted in Shonen Sunday.
By 1972 he had his first hit, Futari to Gonin (ふたりと5人) a gag manga published in Shonen Champion. Known for his own interest in science fiction around the time of Takahashi’s debut, Azuma once shared an anecdote in which his editor had stopped him from drawing sci-fi manga in Shonen Magazine, but then Takahashi debuted with Katte na Yatsura in 1978 and he proclaimed “manga is back in Weekly Shonen Sunday” and was so excited by the work that he bought three copies of the issue. [1]
As Takahashi was beginning her career, Azuma was attepting to leave the mainstream world of manga behind. His major success, Futari to Gonin was something Azuma labeled as an impersonal work, of which he only contributed “about 20% to” with the rest of the story and characters being decided upon by the editor. [2] Azuma constantly asked to end the work, but it was too popular, and so he endured working on the series, which was focused on dirty jokes and light eroticism to the end, until its popularity sank to the point that cancellation was finally allowed. In later years it would be republished and Rumiko Takahashi would contribute an essay about the work. [3]
After this, around 1979 Azuma would end all of his mainstream publication works and was focus solely on dojinshi and specialty manga magazines, writing the science fiction work that he was most interested in and which was well received amongst critics and fans alike; ushering in what was called the “New Wave of Science Fiction Manga” alongside Jun Ishikawa and Katsuhiro Otomo. [4]
Creation of a new genre of manga- lolicon
While working in the dojinshi scene, it was here that Azuma truly revolutionized the manga industry for decades to come. In 1979 at Comiket 11, Azuma published the dojin Cybele, and created a new genre of manga, lolicon. Lolicon is a portmanteau of “lolita complex” and focuses on the sexualization of younger female characters. This originally began from Azuma’s desire to depict erotic art using a facial design based on shojo manga on the body types popularized by mangaka Osamu Tezuka and Shotaro Ishinomori. [5] This immediately exploded in popularity from there and appealed directly to the growing otaku market of the early 1980s.It was at this time that Azuma drew a parody of Rumiko Takahashi’s Maison Ikkoku and Hayao Miyazaki’s Future Boy Conan in 1982 [6] and had a second round of mainstream success with Little Pollon of Olympus (オリンポスのポロン) and Nanako SOS (ななこSOS) both being adapted into anime. Takahashi and Azuma teamed up on a dojinshi project at the time as well in 1981 in SF Manga Complete Part 12. [7]
It was at this time of great success that Azuma began to show symptoms of depression and would go through what became known as his two phases of “disappearances.” [8] He first left home and abandoned manga in 1989, venturing into the mountains to attempt suicide. However this attempt failed and Azuma decided to live as a homeless person until he was located by police and returned home in February of 1990. Azuma would again leave home due to depression and alcoholism in 1990, this time taking up a new identity as Hideo Higashi and working as a gas pipe fitter for Tokyo Gas from February to August of that year. Eventually he sought treatment for his addiction and abstained from alcohol after being released from an in-patient facility in 1999. [9]
Azuma used the tragedies of his life as material for a new manga, published worldwide in 2005, Disappearance Diary (失踪日記/Shisso Nikki) was an autobiographical story depicting Azuma’s life as an alcoholic as well as his two “disappearances” as a homeless man and gas pipe fitter. The work received global critical acclaim winning the Grand Prize for manga in the Japan Media Arts Awards, the Grand Prize for the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize and a nomination at the Angloume International Comics Festival. As of 2022 this is his only work translated into English.
Take good care of yourself
Before his passing in 2019 from cancer, Rumiko Takahashi drew an illustration celebrating his life’s work. The drawing depicts an Azuma style young girl and has a message saying…. “The fun of Disappearance Diary reminds me that Hideo Azuma is a genius. Depressed Hide Diary, the girls sketches are really cute. Take good care of yourself and entertain us all for years to come, please.”After his passing in 2019 from cancer as a gift to fans a small publisher reprinted an extremely hard to find dojinshi that Takahashi and Azuma collaborated on. [11] Seen here, you can see the respect the two had for one another throughout their professional lives.
Footnotes
- [1] Nakagawa, Shouko and Toshio Okada. "It's a Wonderful Rumic World!" QuickJapan, Volume 71, 98-111. Tokyo: Ohta Publishing, 2007.
- [2] Azuma, Hideo. Disappearance Diary. Tokyo: Nihon Bungeisha, 2007.
- [3] Uzurea News. "吾妻ひでお 幻の同人誌『へろ』と『ふるむまかをめら』が復刻版 ウロン文学選集としてセット刊行決定！" Uzurea. March 4, 2020. Accessed December 8, 2022. https://uzurea.net/ uron-literature-selected-works-reprinted/.
- [4] "ニューウェーブ (漫画)." Wikipedia.org. June 22, 2022. Accessed December 8, 2022. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ ニューウェーブ (漫画).
- [5] "シベール (同人誌)." Wikipedia.org. November 18, 2022. Accessed December 8, 2022. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ シベール (同人誌).
- [6] Azuma, Hideo. 漫画の手帖, Vol 9. Autumn, 1982.
- [7] 少年少女SFマンガ競作大全集, Part 12. Tokyo: Tokyo Sanseisha, 1981.
- [8] "吾妻ひでお." Wikipedia.org. November 30, 2022. Accessed December 8, 2022. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 吾妻ひでお.
- [9] Azuma, Hideo. Disappearance Diary. Tokyo: Nihon Bungeisha, 2007.
- [10] "Manga of Hideo Azuma" Azuma Hideo Sakuhin. January 1, 2015. Accessed December 8, 2022. http://azumahideosakuhin3arasuji.web.fc2.com/ 0english.html.
- [11] Azuma, Hideo. へろ, Vol 9 (collected in ウロン文学選集). Tokyo: FukkanDotCom, 2022.
Dylan Acres is a psychologist and college professor. Maison Ikkoku has long been his favorite manga and he has written a number of articles on the series and Rumiko Takahashi including an analysis of the animation directors of Maison Ikkoku, Takahashi's love of the Hanshin Tigers and a cataloging of the color artwork of Rumiko Takahashi.
