The Birth Of Kitaro collects seven of Shigeru Mizuki's early, and beloved, Kitaro stories, making them available for the first time in English, in an all-new, format. These stories are from the golden era of the late 1960s, when Gegege no Kitaro truly hit its stride as an all-ages supernatural series. Mizuki's Kitaro stories are both timelessly relevant and undeniably influential, inspiring a decades-long boom in stories about yokai, Japanese ghosts and monsters. Kitaro's Birthday reveals the origin story of the yokai boy Kitaro and his tiny eyeball father, Medama Oyaji. Neko Musume versus Nezumi Otoko is the first of Mizuki's stories to feature the popular recurring character Neko Musume, a little girl who transforms into a cat when she gets angry or hungry. Other stories in The Birth of Kitaro draw heavily from Japanese folklore, with Kitaro taking on legendary Japanese yokai like the Nopperabo and Makura Gaeshi, and fighting the monstrous recurring villain Gyuki. The Birth of Kitaro is the perfect introduction to award-winning author Shigeru Mizuki's most popular series, seminal comics that have won the hearts of Japanese children and adults for more than half a century.
About the AuthorShigeru Mizuki (1922 2015) was one of Japan s most respected artists. A creative prodigy, he lost an arm in World War II. After the war, Mizuki became one of the founders of Japan s latest craze manga. He invented the yokai genre with GeGeGe no Kitaro, his most famous character, who has been adapted for the screen several times, as anime, live action, and video games. In fact, a new anime series has been made every decade since 1968, capturing the imaginations of generations of Japanese children. A researcher of yokai and a real-life ghost hunter, Mizuki traveled to over sixty countries to engage in fieldwork based on spirit folklore. In his hometown of Sakaiminato, one can find Shigeru Mizuki Road, a street decorated with bronze statues of his Kitaro characters.
ReviewsShigeru Mizuki's excellent little spooky comics [are] humorous, satirical and folkloric, populated with countless Japanese ghosts and fairies. -The Guardian
Book InformationISBN 9781770462281
Author Mizuki ShigeruFormat Paperback
Page Count 200
Imprint Drawn and QuarterlyPublisher Drawn and Quarterly