Shigeru Sugiura
Career. After initially studying painting, Sugiura became an assistant to the manga artist Suihō Tagawa. He soon began drawing his own manga in 1933 and came to fame after World War II with a series of comedic manga for children based on stories like those of Sasuke Sarutobi, Jiraiya, and "Journey to the West". Sugiura closely followed popular culture and thus his manga were also influenced by such contemporary fads as Godzilla, pro wrestling, and American science fiction films. The philosophy of his manga "is of "yukai", pleasure and amusement, pursuing the path as far from seriousness as  possible. . . . The praxis of "yukai" is essentially the body in free motion, and Sugiura’s characters are defined by an excess of movement." The result was a visual style that was often surreal and absurd. A craftsman, Sugiura could not keep up with the mass production of manga that the shift to weekly magazines brought at the end of the 1950s, and his subsequent manga became more and more surreal, if not avant-garde, as they came to be directed at an older audience. He enjoyed a second boom in popularity from the 1970s on. Influence. Sugiura has influenced many  artists in a variety of fields, including the gag manga artist Fujio Akatsuka. Enthusiastic fans include such figures as the novelist Yasutaka Tsutsui and the musician Haruomi Hosono. He is cited as the inspiration for the "tanuki" in Isao Takahata's anime film "Pom Poko" and Hayao Miyazaki made a television commercial inspired by his work.