Photo/Illutration Cartoonist Takao Yaguchi in 2007 (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Muteki (Invincible), a sumo wrestler masked like a pro wrestler whose winning streak cannot be stopped, is the protagonist of the first work of cartoonist Takao Yaguchi.

Yaguchi, who died on Nov. 20 at age 81, created the manga when he was a bank employee.

He submitted it to a manga magazine, but it was rejected. When he asked why, the editor-in-chief said his drawing was pretty poor. This shattered his confidence, he later recalled.

Yaguchi was born in the village of Nishi-Naruse (present-day Yokote city), nestled at the foot of the Ou mountain range in Akita Prefecture. His boyhood passions were fishing and manga.

He was set to work at a brush factory in Tokyo, which was hiring teenagers like him en masse at the time, upon finishing junior high school.

However, his schoolteacher talked his parents into letting him go on to high school. He found employment at a local bank after graduation.

He was 30 and the father of two young daughters when he submitted his letter of resignation to the bank.

He moved to Tokyo to become a manga artist, a decision opposed by everyone who knew him, rented a room near the Tamagawa river and began drawing comics full time.

Still, he was consumed with anxiety and second thoughts, unsure if he could support his family and regretting having given up his bank job.

There were days he crawled under his blanket and wept.

Learning of his demise, I reread his best-known work “Tsurikichi Sanpei” (Fisherman Sanpei) for the first time in more than four decades.

The protagonist is a youth living without a care, testing his skills in the world’s rivers and seas.

Yaguchi’s passion can be felt in every frame that depicts bending fishing rods or sunlight dancing on the water’s surface. The scenes have a timeless quality.

Yaguchi’s other masterpieces, including “Matagi” (Traditional hunters) and “Oraga Mura” (My village), portray the unforgiving world of nature in remote mountain villages of the Tohoku region where the stories are set. Akita Prefecture is part of the Tohoku region.

In the talks he gave, Yaguchi would say, “Let’s loiter and roam all we want, away from prescribed paths.”

On his way home from school, Yaguchi hunted for insects and munched on wild grass, berries and nuts growing in the fields. Those experiences proved invaluable later, he explained.

He also said, “It was a good thing that I worked at a bank before I became a cartoonist.”

A denizen of Tokyo’s Nagatacho district, the seat of Japanese politics, recently introduced himself as “born on a farm in snow-bound Akita Prefecture.”

Yaguchi certainly was born from the earth in the northeastern prefecture. He turned all the rejections, setbacks and uncertainties he experienced into “fertilizer” to nourish his art, and his 50-year career produced a rich harvest.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 27

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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