Ninja Sarutobi Sasuke by Shigeru Sugiura

A classic character of Japanese literature is reimagined as a mischievous, shapeshifting adventurer in this zany, Pop Art–esque gag manga by a titan of the genre.

In the early 1960s, the Japanese manga artist Shigeru Sugiura took the well-loved literary character Ninja Sarutobi Sasuke and made him his own.

In this legendary gag manga, Ninja Sarutobi Sasuke, Shigeru sends the famous Ninja on a wild, eye-popping adventure: Sarutobi encounters cowboys and aliens, spaceships and sailing ships, mid-60s celebrity cameos, mushroom clouds, detectives with squirt guns, and more in a delightful and ever-surprising world.

Available for the first time in English and with a new essay by Ryan Holmberg, Ninja Sarutobi Sasuke is a must-read of trippy visuals and silly storytelling.

Publication History: Original

Shigeru Sugiura (1908–2000) was a hugely popular and influential Japanese comics artist. Sugiura was originally trained as a painter, and early in his career his work was selected for the prestigious Teiten exhibition. He began creating manga in order to make a living, and by the 1950s had risen to major prominence, gaining renown through his comics for children and his pioneering role in the genre of gag manga. In the 1970s and 80s he experienced a second boom in popularity, this time for more absurdist, avant-garde manga geared towards adults.

Ryan Holmberg is an arts and comics historian, author, editor, and Japanese-English translator. His translations include Tezuka Osamu’s The Mysterious Underground Men, for which he won an Eisner Award, Tadao Tsuge’s Slum Wolf, and Yoshiharu Tsuge’s The Man Without Talent (New York Review Comics). He has contributed to publications such as Art in America, Artforum, The Comics Journal, and The New York Review of Books. He has taught about Japanese art and cultural history, most recently at the Art Institute of Chicago, UNC Chapel Hill, and Tokyo University. He lives in North Carolina.

Author Residence: Japan

Author Hometown: Tokyo, Japan