Image via NHKThe official accounts for manga creator Kazuo Umezu, known for the award-winning manga series The Drifting Classroom and gag-manga Makoto-chan, reported today that the author has passed away. According to Yomiuri Shimbun, Umezu passed away on October 28 from stomach cancer. He was 88 years old. A funeral for close friends and family was already held.
Kazuo Umezu was born in Koya, Wakayama prefecture on August 3, 1936. Umezu’s family then settled in Gojo, Nara prefecture. Due to the influence of his mother, he started to draw at the age of 7 based on stories that his father would tell him about local myths and tales. As detailed in an interview with Tokion, Umezu was inspired by Osamu Tezuka’s Shin Takarajima and started drawing manga in high school, debuting at age 18 with Mori no Kyodai (The Siblings in the Forest), a retelling of the Hansel and Gretel fairytale. From there, he moved to Osaka to pursue the gekiga movement, which favored more mature adult stories. This is where Umezu developed his signature style of adding supernatural undertones to sci-fi stories. He gained more popularity by creating manga for young girls with these same tones, with Niji being a standout manga from this era of Umezu. In the 1960s, Umezu moved to Tokyo and continued to make manga for shojo magazines, combining his cute style with the horror elements he was famous for. In the late 1960s, Umezu switched from publishing house Kodansha to Shogakukan, where he started drawing manga for shonen magazines. This is where he created his most famous work, The Drifting Classroom, which won the 20th Shogakukan Manga Award in 1974 and has been adapted to multiple mediums.
Shortly after, Umezu catapulted himself into mainstream Japanese entertainment contentiousness. He developed a public personality, adopting the “gwashi!” gesture from his Makoto-chan gag-manga series and releasing songs based on his horror manga. In 1995, he retired from regular drawing work due to tendinitis. In an interview with NHK in 2022, he later said in the lead-up to a new exhibition that it was also because he thought he hadn’t received any “recognition or praise” and was told by those around him that “we don’t think scary manga is possible anymore.” After regularly appearing on Japanese TV for 25 years, Umezu returned to drawing after the Angoulême International Comics Festival awarded him the Heritage Award for My Name Is Shingo, culminating in the Kazuo Umezu Great Art Exhibition in March 2022. The exhibition showed 101 new works from the self-proclaimed “great artist.”
Umezu in May 2024 doing his famous “gwashi!” pose (via Umezu Staff on X (formerly Twitter))
Yomiuri reported that Umezu passed away peacefully in hospice care in Tokyo. He had reportedly collapsed in his home in July and was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer in the hospital. Since then, he has been receiving end-of-life care at a hospice after choosing not to get treatment, saying, “I don’t like pain.” He reportedly continued to create new works with a positive attitude while at the hospice center. His manager, Yusuke Ueno, spoke with Yomiuri, telling the magazine that on the day of his death, Umezu asked for his favorite energy drink and rice ball, took a sip of the drink, said it was “delicious” and passed away soon after. Ueno said that Umezu looked “peaceful.” Umezu was laid to rest in his signature red and white striped cap and shirt, and his portrait showed him making his famous “gwashi!” pose. We wish Umezu’s family and friends the best during this time, and would like to thank Umezu for his decades-long contributions to the manga industry.
Sources: NHK, Yoimuri (1, 2), Umezu Staff on X (formerly Twitter)
