Out of a war-torn world: young Osamu Tezuka's wartime experiences forged the basis for Astro Boy - Upfront

Japan, Inc., May, 2003 by Dominic Al-Badri

THE HOT-SPRING RESORT town of Takarazuka is an incongruous birthplace for one of Japan's most enduring modern icons, Tetsuwan Atom, better known to his Western fans as Astro Boy or the Mighty Atom. It was here, in this genteel environment a short train ride from Osaka, that Osamu Tezuka, the single most important figure in the world of Japanese comics and animation, spent his formative years prior to the outbreak of World War II. The war rudely hijacked his adolescence, and the barbarities and ensuing hardships formed the basis on which Tezuka's resolutely anti-war vision was founded. Forced to work in a munitions factory, and a witness to the firebombing of Osaka by American bombers, Tezuka created an entire oeuvre espousing the core themes of peace and humanism.

By the time Tezuka created Astro Boy in 1951, he was already an established artist, heralded for his innovative drawing style and complex tales. Astro Boy was an instant success in a nation slowly rebuilding itself after the madness of the previous two decades, during which militarism had swept the land. A fantastic homegrown hero, Testuwan Atom, with its storylines of robot as human friend rather than mysterious techno-foe, was fundamental to the positive way in which robots are perceived to this day in Japan.

April 7, 2003, marked the date the little robot boy was born in the original comic strip, which made its first appearance just as the "Atomic Age" was getting under way. As an icon today, Astro Boy serves as a reminder of that bygone age, when the harnessing of atomic power was seen as a hugely positive achievement, one that, after the witnessing of its dark side in the twin horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would henceforth be used for the ultimate benefit of the human race. Slogans like "better living through chemistry" and "our friend the atom" hallmarked the immediate postwar Eisenhower era of technological progress and ,glorification, all fueled by the seemingly endless supply of atomic energy.

A huge success from the outset, Astro Boy's stock grew further in the 1960s with the advent of a black and white animated version of his stories, which was as popular in the US as it was in Japan when it aired on TV from 1963 to 1966. Contrasting markedly with the likes of Disney characters, Astro Boy was a robot boy with rockets in his legs, guns in his rump and eyes the size of saucers, while the show's storylines often alluded to serious social issues, like the struggle for civil rights in the US. Tezuka himself often struggled with the censorship problems of American--and, indeed, Japanese--TV stations, which deemed the cartoon show too violent.

Frederik L. Schodt, a San Francisco-based writer and translator, as well as Tezuka's personal interpreter when the artist traveled to the US, says, "Many people today remember that the show was very different from other shows at the time. Instead of an entirely gag-based show, it had a fairly serious narrative and message, and it starred a robot. At the time, almost all other shows featured furry animal characters or goofy humans."

The show's impact on the then-nascent baby boomers who tuned in religiously is one thing. But perhaps more important was the effect the show had on US TV programming as a whole. Schodt, who is currently translating the entire canon of Astro Boy comics into English, explains: "The biggest area of influence was not in character design or narrative construct; it was, instead, related to economics, Astro Boy was made on a shoestring budget compared to shows in the US at the time, and it was made in an extraordinarily short time frame, making it possible to have a weekly show on US TV. It was a result of Osamu Tezuka having refined the techniques of limited animation. Full animation, of the sort we are used to in many Disney classics, requires 24 frames of art per second; limited animation sacrifices fluidity of movement for economies and may use 12 or fewer frames per second."

In order to make up for this, Japanese animation producers and scriptwriters had an put much more effort into developing characters and plot so that viewers would not be as distracted by the relatively clunky, or at least less free-flowing images appearing on screen. Japanese animation, or anime as it is referred to by devotees, now has an enormous, worldwide following, yet its central tenet of good stories rather than high-speed animation remains the same 40 years after Astro Boy's birth.

Astro Boy's popularity has never waned in Japan, and his exposure has remained high thanks to a second, color, TV series in the 1980s, as well as his appearance on everything from T-shirts and lunch boxes to bread and bubble gum. Yet, though the little robot is a common feature on Japan's cultural landscape, exactly how popular Astro Boy is is difficult to gauge: The bureaucrats who guard Astro Boy's legacy are unwilling to divulge just how much they profit from the little robot's largesse. How ironic that humanity's friend should be caught up in the cogs of the machine.