Yoshihiro Yonezawa


Yoshihiro Yonezawa was a Japanese manga critic and author. He is also known for being Comiket's co-founder and president. He died of lung cancer at 53. He won the 2007 Seiun Award in the special category and 2010 Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize Special Award.

Biography

Born in Kumamoto, Japan, on March 21, 1953, Yoshihiro Yonezawa began drawing parodies of his favourite manga characters when he was a child. In 1969, Yonezawa joined the staff of Kyukon at age 16. He began criticising manga while he was studying engineering at Meiji University, as part of the group Meikyu. Yonezawa has said that in the early 1970s, mostly mainstream manga were published, as there were few manga magazines at that time. COM, a manga magazine with a reputation for publishing experimental manga had closed in 1972, and Yonezawa believed that by 1973 and 1974, it was very difficult to publish "unusual" works in anything other than "underground" zines devoted to dōjinshi. To explore the potential of the medium, he co-founded Comiket in 1975 with Harada Teruo and Aniwa Jun, who were university students. Comiket is a bi-annual, 3-day event where dōjinshi manga is brought and traded. Yonezawa's publication of The History of Post War Manga Trilogy in 1980 showed his devotion to reviewing and chronicling manga. He was a judge for the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize. In 1999, he received the 21st Japan Society of Publishing Studies Award for Bessatsu Taiyo: Hakkinbon. Since 1999, he regularly reviewed manga on his column, "Yoshihiro Yonezawa's Commentary on Contemporary ", in Media Factory's Monthly Comic Flapper until October 2006. He was posthumously awarded the 2007 Seiun Award in the special category, and the special Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2010.
He was hospitalised on September 30, 2006, and on October 1, 2006, Yonezawa died of lung cancer at age 53. On the last day of Comiket 71 which was held from December 29 to 31, 2006, as announced in the event's catalogue, a thirty seconds of silence was held on 15:59 just before the announcement of closing.

Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library

In 2009, Meiji University opened a library housing dōjinshi, manga- and anime-related circle newsletters, as well as commercially published manga and manga magazines. The collection, which at present largely consists of Yonezawa's personal collection, donated by his widow, has been named “Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library of Manga and Subcultures.” The library is located at the university's Surugadai campus. The core collection comprises Yonezawa's dōjinshi collection, consisting of 4,137 boxes, or over 140,000 items. The library will also incorporate the collection of Tsuguo Iwata. The construction of the new library complex is expected to be complete in 2015.

Works