His mother was a former teacher, and his father a graduate of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy who had been promoted as far as major, going on to fly fighter planes in World War II. Matsumoto was born in 1938 to a family with roots in the samurai caste, as the middle child of seven brothers and sisters. (© Matsumoto Leiji/Leijisha) Learning from His War-Veteran Father Matsumoto’s Leijisha website ( ) is filled with fun illustrations, such as this one penned by Matsumoto in November 2019 to commemorate being released from the hospital after collapsing on a visit to Italy. But when you look at the characters Matsumoto places in these disparate spaces, you’ll notice two faces: adults who guide and protect young people, and the young people who look up to them. The vastness of space and the confines of a 4.5-mat room represent different ends of the spectrum. It’s synonymous with the cramped, cheap places many young people find themselves living in when they follow their dreams to the big city. Four and a half indicate a tiny, square room. On the one hand, he spun epic tales set in deepest outer space on the other, he introduced readers to a student so poor that mushrooms grew on laundry moldering in his tiny four-and-a-half-tatami-mat room.Ī traditional floor covering measuring a bit under one by two meters, tatami mats are the standard measure of floorspace in Japan. The world lost manga artist and animator Matsumoto Leiji to acute heart failure on February 13, 2023. The Infinities of Space and the Four-and-a-Half-Tatami-Mat Room
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |