Osaka: Where Japanese Manga Began Its Meteoric Rise

A shopping arcade in Osaka’s Matsuyamachi. Currently known as “Gocchamachi,” the arcade is home to many wholesale shops. (© Pixta)

A street scene from 1960s Matsuyamachi. (© Kyōdō)

Tezuka Osamu’s Shin Takarajima. (Photo courtesy Nakano Haruyuki)

Tezuka’s Lost World. (Photo courtesy Nakano Haruyuki)

Tezuka at work. (© Jiji)

Artist Saitō Takao, creator of Golgo 13, died in September 2021. This photo is from a November 2021 exhibition in the city of Sakai, where he lived as a child. (© Jiji)

An issue of Kage, a seminal gekiga magazine. (Photo courtesy Nakano Haruyuki)

A bookstore in Kanda, Tokyo, at the height of the gekiga boom, in October 1973. Manga began emerging from children’s literature into a full-fledged form of expression for readers of all ages. (© Kyōdō)