Sanpei Shirato

He died on October 8, 2021 at the age of 89 due to aspiration pneumonia. The news of his death was announced by the editorial department of Big Comic on October 26, 2021. It was also reported that his brother Tetsuji Okamoto (岡本 鉄二氏, Okamoto Tetsuji) died four days later of interstitial pneumonia.

Many of Shirato's works have been adapted as anime series and films, including Ninja Bugeichō, adapted by Nagisa Oshima as Band of Ninja in 1967, an unusual film consisting only of images from the manga and voiceovers with no animation. Some works have received attention in the United States, such as The Legend of Kamui, which was released in 1987 by Viz Media, but others remain relatively unknown.

The son of the Japanese proletarian painter Toki Okamoto, his dream to become an artist equal with his father started when he became a kamishibai artist. He is also known for his work published in the early issues of the manga anthology magazine Garo in 1964, which he began publishing so as to serialize his comic Kamui.

Shirato started his career as a professional manga artist in 1957 with Ninja Bugeichō (Ninja Martial Arts Handbook, published 1959–62), a historically-based ninja-themed manga that captured the attention of students and intellectuals of the time. This violent epic tale set in Japan's "Warring States" (Sengoku) period was seen by many readers and critics as a thinly-veiled allegory for the ongoing Anpo protests against the US-Japan Security Treaty (although Shirato himself later denied this was his intention). Regardless of Shirato's true intentions, the manga seemed to correspond to the feelings and experiences student protesters were going through at the time, and Ninja Bugeichō developed an avid following among left-leaning student activists. Because its adult themes and graphic violence, Ninja Bugeichō has been cited as one of the first examples of gekiga, or serious manga aimed specifically at adult audiences rather than children.

Noboru Okamoto (岡本 登, Okamoto Noboru, February 15, 1932 – October 8, 2021), known by the pen name Sanpei Shirato (白土 三平, Shirato Sanpei), was a Japanese manga artist and essayist known for his social criticism as well as the realism of his drawing style and the characters in his scenarios. He was considered a pioneer of the controversial gekiga genre of adult-oriented manga.