Okamoto Ippei

• 1. Introduction

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  The manga artist Osamu Tezuka named Okamoto Ippei as one of his main influences. Ippei was born on the 11th of June, 1886, the second son of the Confucian scholar Katei Okamoto. He died on the 11th of October, 1948. He worked as an illustrator, cartoonist, and writer at a moment when Japanese visual culture was absorbing new forms from abroad. What made his approach worth carrying forward, and whose hands eventually carried it, is what his life helps to answer.

• 2. Painting, Stage, and Press

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  At Tokyo School of the Arts, Ippei studied Western-style painting under the instruction of Fujishima Takeji. In 1910, he joined Teikoku Theater as a scenery painter. After his marriage, he settled with his family in Kyobashi.

  He traveled to Europe and the United States, and on his return brought several foreign comics back to Japan. In 1912, he began drawing manga for the Asahi Shinbun. That newspaper work gave him a national audience at the dawn of the Taisho era.

• 3. A Taisho Synthesis

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  In the Taisho era, Ippei built his reputation on a style that joined manga to refined writing. He also brought features of film into his comics. The school he would later open, Ippei Juku, gave that hybrid approach a structured setting for passing it on to working cartoonists.

• 4. The Okamoto Household

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  In the fall of 1909, Kanoko Okamoto sent Ippei a poem that fed his interest in her. They married in 1910. Their son Taro was born in 1911 and would go on to become an artist.

  Ippei was known throughout his career for training younger drawers. During World War II, he moved to Hamamatsu and Gifu. He opened a school called Ippei Juku, where he taught the cartoonists Hidezo Kondo and Yukio Matsuura. After retiring, he supported Kanoko in her work as a novelist. Taro Okamoto worked as an artist until his death in 1996.