The Secret of Osamu Tezuka's Original Pictures

Japanese blog Kodomo no Mousou recently posted a review of the book "The Secret of Osamu Tezuka's Original Pictures." According to the review, "the all-color illustration book is simply wonderful."

The catchphrase of the illustration book is:

"One can notice a sign of struggle from the 'God of Manga' by tracing his raw pictures and unusable manuscripts. The original pictures in the illustration book have never been loaned out, to think Tezuka spent so much time by repeatedly making the same draw just to illustrate a palm! The lines and erase marks which show the correctional processes of Tezuka were not visible until just recently with the help of modern technology. Tezuka's manga is the history of 'correction'."


A close observation shows signs of whiteout, cutting, pasting, and much correction in the artwork; the scene of Siddhartha's (so-called Buddha) tonsure has been redrawn as many as three times. By illuminating light through the papers, one can clearly see the outline of the head before it was redrawn.

The scene of Black Jack's first appearance was redrawn by pasting a bit of paper on the character's eyes, after illuminating the paper with light, the outline of larger eyes appear.

A series of different openings show that "Jungle Taitei" was redrawn whenever the title was published in book form - there are seven different openings!

Whenever an original picture was to be published in book form, it was reconstructed by Tezuka like a puzzle, with a great many number of retouching, cutting, and pasting. The flow of conceiving an idea, noting, designing characters, naming, correcting, and then completion is explained together with the original pictures and manuscripts. One can stare at the vivid process of the "God of Manga" with a grinning. Surely anyone will be happy to read this illustration book.