Jiro Taniguchi

Jiro Taniguchi (Japanese谷口 ジロー, Jiro Taniguchi, born August 14, 1947 in Tottori, Tottori Prefecture) is a Japanese manga artist.

Career

Jiro Taniguchi worked as an assistant to Kyota Ishikawa, before his first book was published in 1972 Kareta heya in the manga magazine "Young Comics ". In 1974 he was nominated for the Shogakukan Manga Award. From 1976, he worked several times together with Natsuo Sekikawa and also set texts by other authors. In the 1980s, he moved away from the classic manga genres such as boxers or samurai stories and created with Sekikawa with the five-part series " Botchan " no Jidai about Natsume Soseki, a writer of the Meiji period, a " new form of literary Manga ".

The confrontation with the Franco Belgian comic led to a collaboration with Frédéric Boilet who brought Taniguchi's works on the French comic market. After a scenario of Moebius 2000 Ikaru, originally released in Japan in Kodansha arose. Followed in 2009 at Dargaud the first original French, drawn by Taniguchi Comicwerk after a scenario by Jean- David Morvan ( uA Spirou and Fantasio and Storage system ): The fully colored album Printemps from the four parts, according to the seasons, landscaped series Mon année. Further volumes are so far not been published.

Style

Jiro Taniguchi was limited in his first works on the representation of a rough man's world. Influenced by French- Belgian comics and especially by artists such as Mœbius, Bilal and Schuiten and the Italian signatories Micheluzzi and Giardino, he began to realize the realism depicted in these comics in the representation of nature and people in his own works. Both his drawings and his narrative style changed towards a peaceful representation of everyday situations, the nature and the animal world, for which he often uses the narrative form of the short story. Many drawings come from no dialogue, the peaceful mood is rarely interrupted by onomatopoeic elements.

Awards

In 1992, Taniguchi was awarded the Shogakukan Manga Award. For Botchan no Jidai 1998, he received together with Natsuo Sekikawa the Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize -. As the first Japanese he received the Alph'Art, which is awarded on the comic book festival in Angoulême 2003. His work Familiar Strangers was elected in Germany 2007 as the first manga to comic of the year. and on the Comic Salon Erlangen 2008 with the Max and Moritz Prize awarded for Best Manga.

On 15 July 2011, Taniguchi et des Lettres was appointed Chevalier des Arts. For this reason, Saji Astro Park Observatory his hometown of one of them discovered asteroid named on 2 March 2003 in his honor as Taniguchijiro.

Works

Jiro Taniguchi enjoys great prestige in Japan. In Europe it is known particularly in France, because his works have been published in the middle 1990s by Casterman and Dargaud in French. In German-speaking comparatively less work has been available since only in 2006 with the short story collection The Wanderer is published in the ice of the first title. With Familiar Strangers by director Sam Garbarski a work Taniguchi was filmed first time in 2010.

Short Story Collections:

Swell

• The Japan Foundation (ed.): Manga. The World of Japanese Comics. Cologne 2000.