Tributes poured in yesterday for Japanese cartoonist Yoshito Usui after confirmation the bruised body of a man found on a mountain was that of the creator of the popular Crayon Shin-chan series.
Usui, 51, who is popular worldwide among manga enthusiasts, went missing on Sept. 11 after he went hiking on his own on a mountain range straddling Gunma and Nagano prefectures.
A body was found on Saturday by a fellow hiker and Usui’s family late onh Sunday confirmed it was Usui, a recluse who was married with two daughters.
The indications are he fell and there was no suggestion of suicide, police and reports said.
His death dampened celebration yesterday on the Respect for the Aged holiday in Kasukabe, a suburban city outside Tokyo that has become well-known nationally as the place where the cartoonist lived and set the Crayon Shin-chan story.
“I’m deeply depressed to hear the unfortunate news. I pray his soul rest in peace with citizens here,” Kasukabe Mayor Ryozo Ishikawa said by telephone.
“I saw many sorrowful citizens today as Shin-chan is definitely a Kasukabe kid. We hope Shin-chan, a byword for cheerfulness, will keep staying here with his family,” he said.
Usui made his debut as a manga author in 1987 and sprang to prominence in the 1990s with Crayon Shin-chan, which features the daily life of Shinnosuke, a mischievous five-year-old boy.
The series ran regularly in a magazine and later was made into a book and animation version.
“We had been praying for Mr Usui’s safety with his family, but now feel the utmost regret over how things have turned out. We are in a big shock,” Futabasha, the publishing house of Crayon Shin-chan, said in a statement.
A Futabasha official said the last picture on the broken digital camera found near Usui’s body was one peering down a steep cliff.
“As he was full of curiosity, we think he fell off at the moment he took the picture,” the official said.
The books have been translated in 14 countries, while the series has aired in 30 countries.
Shinnosuke embarrasses his parents and kindergarten teachers as he often pulls down his trousers and shakes his hips while cracking indecent jokes.
The behavior prompted parents-teachers’ associations in Japan to list the animation as a production they wanted to keep out of children’s view. But the character has more recently been used in educational materials.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS