Tetsuya Chiba, the manga artist behind the classic boxing series Ashita no Joe, has died. He was 87. Chiba died on Oct. 22 at a hospital in Tokyo of myelodysplastic syndrome, a disorder that affects blood cells in the bone marrow, the Japan Cartoonists Association said, as reported by Kyodo News and Anime News Network.
Chiba was born in Tokyo and spent his early childhood in what is now northeastern China, returning to Japan after the war. He made his professional debut in 1956 at just 17, while still in high school, with a book for Japan’s rental book market. He first found success with girls’ manga before moving into boys’ comics with sports stories.
His defining work began in the Jan. 1, 1968 issue of Weekly Shonen Magazine. Ashita no Joe, written by Asao Takamori (a pen name of Ikki Kajiwara) and drawn by Chiba, follows Joe Yabuki, an orphan who fights his way into professional boxing. Its raw portrait of postwar Japan struck a chord with young readers, and the series ran until 1973. It inspired TV anime in 1970 and 1980, two anime films and, decades later, the 2018 sci-fi reimagining Megalobox.
Chiba kept working for the rest of his life. His other hits include the kendo series Ore wa Teppei, the golf manga Ashita Tenki ni Naare and the sumo story Notari Matsutaro. Since 2015 he had drawn an autobiographical essay manga for Big Comic, which he put on hiatus on Sept. 25 because of poor health.
He also spent years supporting younger artists. Chiba served as chairman of the Japan Cartoonists Association from 2018 and, from 2019, as president of Bunsei University of Art, which has a manga program. In 2024 he became the first manga artist to receive Japan’s Order of Culture, one of the country’s highest honors, an award that went to Shigeru Miyamoto as the first game creator this year.
English-language readers only recently got an official edition of his masterpiece, with Ashita no Joe: Fighting for Tomorrow released in December 2024. As AP notes, the story of an orphan boxer became a national sensation in Japan, and Joe’s final, quiet moment in the ring remains one of the most famous images in manga.
