Yoshiharu Tsuge

Yoshiharu Tsuge (つげ義春) is a Japanese mangaka. He is associated with Garo.

Early life
Tsuge was born the eldest of three sons on October 30, 1937 in Katsushika, Tokyo, Japan. After Tsuge's father's death in 1942, two half-sisters, from his mother's second marriage, was introduced to his family. The recession in post-World War II Japan, inspired Tsuge to create comics to the pay-libraries' editors in an attempt to solve his financial problems. Being intensely shy, making dramatic pictures was one way to avoid meeting people and to earn money simultaneously. He created his first gekiga at 18, showing Osamu Tezuka's influence, who was one of the first mainstream artists to draw gekiga. When a girlfriend left him in his early 20s, combined with his debt, Tsuge went into depression and attempted suicide. In 1965, Katsuichi Nagai, editor and publisher of avant-garde magazine, Garo, heard about Tsuge's plight and printed "Yoshiharu Tsuge - please get in touch!" on one of the pages of Garo.

Works
In 1966, Tsuge suffered from another onset of depression and stopped drawing his own manga to be Shigeru Mizuki's assistant. Under Mizuki's influence, Tsuge's later publications feature highly-detailed backgrounds and his trademark cartoonish-characters. Arguably one of Tsuge's more famous works, Screw Style (ねじ式) was translated and published in the 250th edition of The Comics Journal. After the publication of Munō no Hito (無能の人) in 1986, Tsuge has not drawn anymore manga. Gilles Laborderie from Indy Magazine notes that Tsuge "tries to create a pace through careful narrative techniques rather than through grand dramatic events" and compares his style to Yoshihiro Tatsumi's.

Selected works

 * Akai Hana (published as "Red Flowers" in RAW )
 * Arijigoku (manga) (Antlion)
 * Gensenkan Shujin
 * Jōhatsu Tabi Nikki
 * Kona no Yado
 * Munō no Hito (The Man without Talent)
 * Screw Style (Neji-Shiki)
 * The Sun's Joke
 * Yoshio no Seishun (Yoshino's Youth)

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