Katsuji Matsumoto

Katsuji Matsumoto (松本かつぢ) was a Japanese illustrator and shōjo manga artist.

Following the devastation of Tokyo, including its publishing industry, in the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, Matsumoto decided to try his fortunes overseas, and managed to obtain free passage to Shanghai.

His hope was to eventually make his way to Paris.

In Shanghai, he earned money by contributing illustrations and articles to the "Shanghai Daily Newspaper" (上海日日新聞), but when he turned twenty years of age, he was forced to return to Japan to report for the draft.

He was rejected for military service because he was flat footed.

Matsumoto's first forum for steady work was the magazine "Girls' Illustrated" (少女画報), to which he contributed from 1928 to 1938.

His illustrations were popular from the 1930s through the 1950s, and he contributed illustrations to numerous popular girls' novels by some of the period's most famous authors, including Yasunari Kawabata and Nobuko Yoshiya.

He was also a prolific illustrator of children's books and created merchandise for babies, small children, and girls.

The Gallery Katsuji Matsumoto in Tokyo is managed by his surviving children.

Matsumoto was born in Kobe, the son of Toraji (寅治) and Ishi (いし) Matsumoto, but moved with his family to Tokyo at the age of eight.

At the age of 13, he began attending what was then called Rikkyō (St. Paul's) Middle School.

Through the introduction of a teacher at Rikkyō, Matsumoto began drawing illustrations for the magazine "New Youth" (新青年) at the age of 17.

Matsumoto withdrew from Rikkyō at the age of 18 and began attending the "Kawabata Art School" (川端画学校).

During this time he contributed drawings to such magazines as "Girls' World" (少女世界) and "Boys' World" (少年世界).

It was during this period that Matsumoto was inspired by illustrator Kōji Fukiya to become an illustrator in the field of girls' media.

(Matsumoto's younger sister, Ryōko (龍子), would eventually marry Fukiya.)

Matsumoto first ventured into manga in Shōjo Gahō, creating a series of illustrated narratives featuring a lively Chinese girl named Poku-chan, which was irregularly published between November 1930 and March 1934.

The Poku-chan strips were drawn in a stylized, almost abstract, Art Deco manner.

At around this time, Matsumoto took on Toshiko Ueda as an apprentice.

Matsumoto could draw in a wide range of styles, from the realistic to the near-abstract, but all of his work was distinguished by clean, almost geometrical lines and a strictly Modern sensibility.

While he illustrated numerous dramatic girls' novels, his style was better suited to sunny, playful, or humorous work.

Sakō Shishido (宍戸左行), influenced by American newspaper strips, had used similar techniques in his 1930 "Speed Tarō" (スピード太郎), but in a far cruder drawing style than Matsumoto's. The Mysterious Clover had been neglected for decades by manga scholars until it was displayed at a 2006 exhibition at the Yayoi Art Museum, where it caught the eye of Fusanosuke Natsume, who then wrote about it on his blog and in a newspaper column.

In 1932, at the age of 28, Matsumoto was wed to Ayako Nimori (二森あや子).

They went on to have seven children (four boys, three girls) together.

Because Ayako was an only child, the decision was made to have the firstborn male child legally adopted by her parents in order to carry on the Nimori name.

On official records, therefore, Ki Nimori (二森騏, born 1933) is listed as the younger brother of Ayako, and therefore the brother-in-law of Matsumoto.

Matsumoto's 16-page The Mysterious Clover (1934) is recognized as a pioneering work in the field of manga, but he is best known for his shōjo manga Kurukuru Kurumi-chan, serialized from 1938 to 1940, and again from 1949 to 1954.

In 1934, Matsumoto drew his first full-fledged manga, a 16-page story titled "The Mysterious Clover" (？（なぞ）のクローバー).

Printed as an over-sized pamphlet with a sturdy cardboard cover, and included as a premium in the April issue of Shōjo no tomo, The Mysterious Clover was a variation on The Scarlet Pimpernel and Zorro.

The protagonist of The Mysterious Clover is a young girl who protects the poor peasants from the cruel and greedy nobles.

This work is remarkable for its use of varying angles, including bird's-eye views, and variation in the size of panels.

In 1935, Matsumoto began to work for the magazine that would become his primary forum, "Girls' Friend" (少女の友).

Shōjo no tomo, with its modern, stylish image, was the ideal magazine for Matsumoto.

Matsumoto's most famous work is his manga Kurukuru Kurumi-chan (くるくるクルミちゃん), which was serialized in Shōjo no tomo from January 1938 until December 1940.

Featuring the daily antics of a little girl named Kurumi (クルミ, meaning "walnut"), each episode was a self-contained story, usually running 4 pages and 22 panels.

The strip rarely ventured far from everyday reality, and was characterized by a gradually building absurdity that rarely descended to simple slapstick.

In the earliest episodes, Kurumi-chan is roughly four heads tall, and would seem to be roughly nine or ten years old.

The strip was revived after the war in the magazine Shōjo ("Girl") under the title Kurumi-chan and ran from November 1949 to February 1954.

While working on Kurukuru Kurumi-chan, Matsumoto continued to do freestanding illustrations, in both color and black and white, and also to illustrate girls' fiction and poetry.

Over the years, though, Kurumi's proportions changed, until by the 1950s she had become an extremely stylized character no more than two heads high, and of unknown age.