Movie in a Book

Abstract

The 1946 comic strip, Mā-chan no nikkichō (The Diary of Mā-chan), marked Osamu Tezuka’s professional career as a cartoonist. Serialized in the newspaper Mainichi Shōgakusei Shinbun, The Diary of Mā-chan enjoyed a warm reception among Japanese children after a long absence of newspaper cartoons in Japan. Prior to The Diary of Mā-chan, Tezuka had already completed a number of long, book-length comics. But it was Shin takarajima (New Treasure Island), a 200-page adventure comic book based on a script by Sakai Shichima, that earned Tezuka his popularity and fame. Published in January 1947 in a format called akahon, New Treasure Island was highly successful, selling more than 400,000 copies. Tezuka began to consciously promote a new kind of comics through this work by heavily referencing film. He diverged into genres that corresponded to popular film genres, quoting images from popular films, and borrowing titles. Tezuka started incorporating a more solid vocabulary of “cinematic techniques,” which later became his trademark, in Metropolis (1948). Another challenge for Tezuka was the transition from akahon to magazine serials.