Sanpei Satō
Sanpei Satō was a Japanese manga artist best known for salaryman manga such as Fuji Santarō and Dotanba's Manners. He was born as Yukikazu Satō in Nagoya, but grew up from a young age in Ōsaka after his father built and managed a clock manufacturing plant there as part of the family business. When Satō was in junior high, he worked at a munitions plant during World War II.
After studying dyeing at Kyoto Technical College, he was hired at Daimaru where he started in clothing sales and quickly moved into advertising department. In 1953, he made his manga debut in the Shin Ōsaka newspaper. Only four years later, he quit his job at Daimaru in order to work full time as a manga artist. He moved to Tokyo in 1961.
Both Satō and his works have received multiple awards and recognition, including the Bungeishunjū Manga Award in 1966, the Tokyo Metropolitan Cultural Honor Award in 1991, the Medal of Honor from the Emperor of Japan in 1997, the Order of the Rising Sun in 1996, and the Special Award at the Japan Cartoonists Association Awards in 2017.
Satō died in 2021 from aspiration pneumonia at age 91.
Biography
Yukikazu Satō was born on 11 September 1929 in Nagoya in Aichi Prefecture in the Empire of Japan. His extended family owned Satō Clock, a clock manufacturing and sales company. His father was assigned to build and manage a new manufacturing plant and office in Ōsaka, so the family moved to Tennōji-ku when Satō was between 3 months and 2 years old.While growing up, he enjoyed manga such as Tank Tankuro and Norakuro. Satō became skilled at drawing, and was selected to enter a drawing contest in Ōsaka. While attending Ikuno Junior High School, was conscripted and put to work at a munitions manufacturing plant where he worked on a lathe creating shells for anti-aircraft guns.
After junior high school, he wanted to pursue painting and enroll in the Imperial Art School by taking advantage of a special post-war exemption that allowed entering a technical school instead of high school. His father objected, and rationing and post-war scarcity forced him to instead study dyeing at Kyoto Technical College. While attending school there, Satō became a fan of the Yaneura 3-chan manga by Shōtarō Nanbu. He later became friends with Nanbu and joined a Kansai-area manga group with Nanbu.
After graduating from Kyoto Technical College, one of Satō's professors introduced him to the advertising manager at Daimaru. He interviewed for the job, but the advertising manager lost his resumé. Because he was unable to take the exam required for the job, he instead submitted a comic detailing his previous experience, which got him the job. He started in sales in the womens' clothing department before moving into the advertising department, where he worked on newspaper advertisement layout and copywriting.
At some point, the manga he wrote to replace his resume found its way to someone at the Shin Ōsaka newspaper, and he made his manga debut in 1953 with the yonkoma manga Son of Ōsaka. He chose his pen name, "Sanpei", because he didn't think he would ever be as good as Okamoto Ippei. While working at Daimaru, high school student and future manga artist Sou Nishimura would sometimes visit Satō at work asking for advice. After working on his manga part-time for a few years, Satō quit his job at Daimaru in 1957 and started working on his manga full time.
Satō moved to Tokyo in 1961, beginning his Instant Madame series that year in the Sankei Shimbun evening edition. He began serializing Fuji Santarō in The Asahi Shimbun in 1965, and he won the Bungeishunjū Manga Award in 1966 for Asakaze-kun and Fuji Santarō. The latter ran for 26 years until ending in 1991.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government honored Satō in 1991 with the Tokyo Metropolitan Cultural Honor Award. The Emperor of Japan, Akihito, presented the Medal of Honor with a Purple Ribbon to him in 1997 for his contributions to the arts. In 2006, he received the Order of the Rising Sun 4th class, Gold Rays with Rosette from the government of Japan. The Japan Cartoonists Association recognized his complete body of work in 2017 with the Special Award at the Japan Cartoonists Association Awards.
Satō died in a Tokyo hospital on 31 July 2021 from aspiration pneumonia at age 91.
Works
Works are listed chronologically, from oldest to newest.Manga
- Son of Ōsaka
- Ossu Messu
- Instant Madame
- Asakaze-kun
- Fuji Santarō
- Lunch-kun
- Hanabē
- Sukatan Company
- Yūhi-kun
- Dotanba's Manners
- *''The Stylish Japanese: Dotanba's Manners Foreign Edition''
Awards and recognition
Satō received numerous awards over the course of his career.| Year | Organization | Award title, category | Work | Result | |
| 1966 | Bungeishunjū | Bungeishunjū Manga Award | Asakaze-kun Fuji Santarō | Won | |
| 1991 | Tokyo Metropolitan Government | Tokyo Metropolitan Cultural Honor Award | - | ||
| 1997 | Akihito, Emperor of Japan | Medal of Honor, Purple Ribbon | - | ||
| 2006 | Government of Japan | Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette | - | ||
| 2017 | Japan Cartoonists Association | Japan Cartoonists Association Award, Special Award | For his full body of work | Won |