Cartoon by Taizo Yokoyama.
Taizo Yokoyama was a newspaper mangaka and cartoonist. Born in Kochi, he attended both the Kyoko Commercial School and the Kawabata Art School at the same time. He was drafted and sent to China 1938, but returned to Japan in 1941, where he enrolled at the Teikoku School of Fine Arts. Graduated in 1944, he became an illustrator for the daily Shinyukan in 1945. In the same year, he joined Manga Shudan, the cartoonists' association founded by his brother Ryuichi.
Cartoon by Taizo Yokoyama.
Yokoyama was a productive cartoonist for publications like the satirical magazine Van and the humor magazine Hopu. In 1952, he created his famous newspaper strip 'Pu-san', a character that was also featured in a motion picture, and continued his adventures in a weekly magazine format from 1965.
Yokoyama was best-known for his political four-panel manga 'Shakai Gihyo' ('Sarcastic Social Criticism'), serialized in the Asahi Shinbun newspaper for 38 years. Other creations were 'Shinjinbutsu Gihyo', in which he caricatured celebrities (1957) and his illustrated travelogue 'Gihyo no Tabi' (1963). He was also one of the founders of the satirical magazine Eheh. He was named chairman of the cartoon department of the Tokyo College of Design in 1965. He died of pneumonia at his home in Kanagawa Prefecture in 2007.
Cartoon by Taizo Yokoyama.