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.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS