Factbook

Kitazawa Rakuten (1876-1955) created Japan’s ‘first serialised comic’ in the 1890s for Box of Curios, a paper set up by the Australian political cartoonist and printer Frank Arthur Nankivell (1869-1956).

Rakuten joined the Tokyo-based English language publication, Box of Curios, in 1895, and is said to have been the first professional Japanese cartoonist in Japan, as well as the very first to use the term ‘manga’ in its modern sense.

That said, many have contributed to Japan’s long history of visual storytelling and some experts like to highlight the links back to famous Japanese woodblock artists, such as Santo Kyoden (1761-1816) and Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), who both knew and used the term manga.

They are, however, thought to have used the word manga to mean drawing, casually and spontaneously, according to experts such as Ryoko Matsuba, and not in the way the word manga is used today, to describe Japanese-style visual storytelling, even if their artwork has indirectly inspired many manga artists and storytellers.

Kitazawa Rakuten was actually the pen name of Yusuji Kitazawa, an artist known today for both his nihonga and manga art. 

Interestingly, Rakuten shares his name, written using the same letters, with Rakuten one of Japan’s largest Internet companies founded much later in 1997. The name, Rakuten, literally means happy heavens, and is often said to mean optimism.

Amongst his many creative pursuits, Rakuten, the artist, launched his own publication, called Tokyo Puck, named after Puck, America’s first commercially successful humour magazine, which Nankivell contributed to after he moved to the United States from Japan.

Rakuten is also remembered for creating an early female character called Haneko Tonda, Hopping-Jumping Girl in 1928, about a tomboyish schoolgirl, as well as Teino Nukesaku, Foolish Wooden-Head, a male character.

Jiji Manga, a Sunday colour supplement included in the newspaper Jiji Shimpo, launched by Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835-1901), was one of the first publications in Japan to use the word manga in its title.  It was launched in 1902.

Rakuten contributed to this publication and copies of his work included in Jiji Manga are now part of The British Museum’s collection in London, highlighting the importance of his contribution to publishing and manga, as well as the growing interest outside Japan in manga amongst academics and curators, as well as fans.

This goes some way in explaining Rakuten’s moniker as the Grandfather of Japanese manga, which has itself been dubbed the visual lingua franca of Japan.

Rakuten, the company, is the owner of Kobo one of the world’s leading digital reading devices and the local competitor to Amazon in Japan and is also very much involved in publishing innovation and new forms of communication and storytelling like its cartoonist forbearer and namesake.