When was osamu tezuka born

Despite the deadlines and excitement of life in Tokyo — especially the Disney films — he never stopped his studies. Tezuka could never completely abandon medicine. Although he never actively practiced, he became a licensed doctor later in life, and one of his most famous manga series stars the rogue genius doctor, Black Jack.

But life as both a doctor and an in-demand though underpaid young artist was difficult. Tezuka struggled to meet deadlines and commitments. His family feared for his health and begged him to focus on medicine, but he had become too successful, and too passionate, to stop.

Tezuka worked nonstop during this period to help finance his childhood dream of opening an animation studio. Starting a studio required a lot more money than a manga artist typically made — but Tezuka was already proving he was not a typical artist. As his popularity and reputation grew, Tezuka moved to the suburbs of Tokyo where he would later begin building his studio.

Tezuka continued producing work at an astounding pace right up until his untimely death from stomach cancer at Nothing could slow him: not censorship, the demands of various editors nor changes in drawing trends even when more realistic — i. He kept his standards high even as his workload increased. Impatient editors would lurk outside his home when he missed them and, if he traveled, some would follow him around the country to collect work. He once flew a score of aspiring manga artists to Fukuoka to help him submit illustrations on time.

When the work got too much, he hired assistants and a full-time manager. When he was nine, Osamu used his drawing and newly-formed writing skills to produce his first multi-page manga. By age eleven, he was wearing his trademark black-rimmed glasses and had solidified a lifelong interest in insects.

He also began using the pen name "Osamushi," a play on words between his name and an insect's. Despite many other activities acting and playing the piano, for two examples he pursued through school and beyond, Tezuka continued to draw. After nearly losing both arms to an infection as a teenager, though, he decided to also study medicine. Due to a severe shortage of doctors in occupied Japan, Tezuka, then 17, was admitted to the medical school of Osaka University in He was qualified to practice medicine by and successfully defended his doctoral thesis in These were noble goals and testify to his keen intelligence.

Tezuka's heart, however, was more given to visual art than it was to science. Shortly after entering medical school Tezuka sold his first comic strip, a four-panel serial called Diary of Ma-chan to an Osaka children's newspaper.

Though it appeared in limited circulation, the strip proved popular enough to generate publisher interest in the artist. In short order, he sold the manga The New Treasure Island , the first in a long line of his adaptations from Western literature. Treasure Island made Tezuka nationally famous and proved to be the tipping point in his career. Even while completing medical school, he published manga at a furious clip, graduating to larger newspapers and reader numbers.

From until his death, Tezuka worked non-stop. It seemed natural to him to transition his manga characters into the animation he so loved, and thus a genre was born. Even he could not have foreseen that his Astro Boy would take anime global and offer Tezuka international fame. Ever the workaholic, he produced nearly anime episodes -- and this while continuing to conceive, write and draw volumes of some different manga titles.

Tezuka's enduring impact on Japanese popular culture - indeed, on world popular culture - is nearly impossible to overstate. He was truly an exceptionally influential artist. Tezuka Osamu's work was exported to the U. He also ventured into the world of full-length adult animation, exploring all possibilities of the field of animation.

In addition to his record of achievement in TV and commercial animation, he also received international acclaim for his work in experimental animation in his later years.

His enduring theme that of the preciousness of life, formed the crux of all of Tezuka Osamu's works.