Saito, Takao

Takao Saito was born in Osaka on November 3, 1936. Ten years younger than Osamu Tezuka (Phoenix, Adolf: A Tale of the Twentieth Century), Saito grew up reading him as part of Japan's own first postwar generation of manga fans. In the 1950s and 60s, however, Saito and his peers such as Yoshihiro Tatsumi (The Push Man & Other Stories) began to find an artistic voice of their own, creating adult-oriented graphic novels and magazine stories for the gekiga ("drama pictures") movement, whose name set itself apart from "manga"--a term then still associated only with works suitable for children.

Gek...