By YASUJI NAGAI/ Senior Staff Writer
February 24, 2022 at 07:00 JST
“When the Rain Stops” from the revived first volume of “Gomic: Haikibutsu” (Provided by Hiroshi Takatsuki)
An academic has republished his satirical illustrations from the early 1980s because society has continued with its wasteful and environment-destroying lifestyles.
“The fact that many works dating from almost 40 years ago still have a message these days made me aware once again how terrible problems linked to the global environment and waste have gone,” said Hiroshi Takatsuki, 80, a professor emeritus of environmental protection engineering at Kyoto University.
Takatsuki has been examining the composition of waste from households and offices to determine the correlation between citizens’ lives and the environment.
A member of his school’s art club, he printed his first comic privately in book form when he was a postgraduate in 1966.
Takatsuki has released environment-themed works under his pen name High Moon--the English translation of his surname--and is currently a member of the Japan Cartoonists Association.
In 1982, as an assistant professor at Kyoto University, Takatsuki started presenting two single-frame manga in every issue of the monthly magazine Haikibutsu (Waste), published by Nippo Co.
His caricatures are still serialized in the specialized magazine. And with the January 2022 issue, Takatsuki’s cartoons have appeared 472 times in the publication.
His caricature series is named “Gomic: Haikibutsu” (Garbage comic: Precious waste), a parody of the phrase “Comic: Waste,” pronounced in a similar way in Japanese but written differently.
He said he came up with the title in the belief that “we may be unknowingly throwing away precious things through our lifestyles.”
The first of his nine volumes put on sale in 1986 was recently reintroduced at readers’ request, including a drawing of cheap disposable umbrellas littering a street and a painting in which hidden trash results in a far more serious problem.
In another work, children anxiously look at their parents wasting resources.
The revived edition costs 1,200 yen ($10.30), including delivery fee. For inquiries, contact Takatsuki by email at (highmoontakatsuki@gmail.com).
His past cartoons can be viewed at his website High Moon Gallery: (https://highmoonkobo.net/en/). The site also features Takatsuki’s explanations as a researcher for 10 categories, such as global warming, food waste and the novel coronavirus crisis.
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