"they should tell no man of him" - Manga Black Jack

Around Tokyo

Manga Black Jack

A Shakespeare in the Japanese Manga art genre is apparently Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989), but not Hayao Miyazaki (1941-).

The most popular title of Tezuka's 700 works (total 150,000 original pages) seems to be Black Jack (presented between 1973 and 1983).

Black Jack is a Japanese manga written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka in the 1970s, dealing with the medical adventures of the title character, doctor Black Jack.

Black Jack consists of hundreds of short, self-contained stories that are typically about 20 pages long. Black Jack has also been animated into an OVA, two television series (directed by Tezuka's son Makoto Tezuka) and two films. Black Jack is Tezuka's third most famous manga, after Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. In 1977, it won the 1st Kodansha Manga Award for shōnen.[1] About.com's Deb Aoki lists Black Jack as the best "re-issue of previously released material" of 2008.[2]

Most of the stories involve Black Jack doing some good deed, for which he rarely gets recognition—often curing the poor and destitute for free, or teaching the arrogant a lesson in humility. They sometimes end with a good, humane person enduring hardship, often unavoidable death, to save others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Jack_(manga)

This title of manga comics sold 45 million copies in Japan and 176 million copies world wide.

Osamu Tezuka himself graduated from the medical faculty of Osaka University, one of elite universities of Japan.  He obtained a medical license in 1953.  Tezuka opted to become a manga artist rather than a medical doctor.

For Tezuka, creating manga or animation works itself was a life.  He didn't pursue any other business to make money.  Even after success in his career to be rich, he simply continued to draw cartoons.  He had no political or religious ideology.  He probably didn't support any social movement.  From a material point of view, he just enjoyed an upper middle-class life in Japan, though always being engaged in his creation of manga stories and drawings.

But his work that appealed to the largest number of manga readers happened to be Black Jack, an underground medical doctor facing evil and tragedies of society with his own humanity.    

So, if not an advocate of justice, a hero who can perform an operation on a troubled man to cure him not physically but also morally is welcomed by the public.  Tezuka probably proved that this society was not so corrupt yet, at least in 1970s when the world still had a trauma of the Vietnam War.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%83%96%E3%83%A9%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF-5-%E6%89%8B%E5%A1%9A%E6%B2%BB%E8%99%AB%E6%BC%AB%E7%94%BB%E5%85%A8%E9%9B%86-%E6%89%8B%E5%A1%9A-%E6%B2%BB%E8%99%AB/dp/406108755X



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Mar 8:29 And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ.
Mar 8:30 And he charged them that they should tell no man of him.