Known as the “God of Manga,” Osamu Tezuka is the “most revered artist in the medium’s history.” Find out more in Yani Mentzas’ post “Is Tezuka God?” on WWB. (Read more of Mentzas’ posts on manga translation.)

Learn about the life and influence of Osamu Tezuka in “Godfather of Anime, Osamu Tezuka” from the tofugu blog. Scroll down to see video clips of his works.Then, take a virtual visit to the Osamu Tezuka Museum via Google’s Cultural Institute. 

Read sample pages from The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime, a graphic biography.

Thanks to Osamu Tezuka’s medical degree, his graphic depictions of surgeries are anatomically accurate, or, at the very least, convincing. Find out the real-life influence of Dr. Black Jack in “Osamu Tezuka: Father of manga and scourge of the medical establishment” from The Guardian.

Listen to pronunciations of the Japanese names and places from this story, read aloud by the translator Allison Markin Powell.

For more tips on pronouncing Japanese names and words, use this illustrated guide from wikiHow.com and this explanation of sounds, syllables, and stress from JapanesePod101.com.

Read an in-depth description of Black Jack from the site Tezuka in English, which calls the manga the first of the “medical thriller genre,” for which Tezuka drew from his own medical degree.

Then, read about Black Jack, Osama Tezuka’s manga magazine where “Tetsu of the Yamanote Line” was originally published as the 219th episode on June 19, 1978. (Scroll down to Episode 219 to see a synopsis of this story, “Light Fingers.”)

While Osamu Tezuka began his work with manga (comic books and graphic novels), he also played an important role in the development of anime (animated comics) in Japan. Learn about Tezuka’s anime, including Black Jack, in the second half of the article.

Take a look at the circular map of the Yamanote Line and learn a bit about its “storied history.”

Then, watch a video of the Tokyo subways and streets in the 1970s, when this story takes place.

(Watch the video on YouTube.)

Learn more about the lives of Japanese gangsters like the ones that menaced Tetsu: “Yakuza,” from JapanReference.com.

Read the BBC’s short country profile of Japan, or visit nippon.com for the latest news. 

Read other stories from the Black Jack series, also translated by Camellia Nieh.

Then, browse through the extensive collection of Osamu Tezuka’s works on the site Tezuka in English. 

Find out some of the artistic and technical reasons Osamu Tezuka was such an influential artist in this blog post from The Comics Cube.

Then, read about “masking,” a technique Tezuka used in his manga.

Osamu Tezuka used a “star system” in which “actors” rotated around, playing several characters. Learn more about Acetylene Lamp, who plays the Inspector.

The pickpocket Tetsu also appeared in the Black Jack television series. Read the Tetsu character profile to find out how he started pickpocketing, at least according to the series (which has plot differences from the manga).

How much was Tezuka influenced by Disney? Read “Tezuka Osamu and American Comics” for an exploration of this question through Tezuka’s personal writing and comics.

Take a tour of the Yamanote line—which is the largest and most important subway line in Tokyo—today in the video “Exploring the Yamanote Line.” 

(Watch the video on YouTube.)

Look at a photo of a full subway car in Tokyo from the 1970s or ‘80s.

Also look at a 1972 photo of the “Tokyo Push”—attendants helping passengers squeeze onto a very, very full subway car. (Click to enlarge.)

Look through subway etiquette posters that were on subway walls in 1970s Tokyo, and even include illustrations from manga artists like Osama Tezuka (with Astro Boy reminding passengers to take their umbrellas) and Tetsuya Chiba (with Uesugi Teppei giving up his seat).

Listen to the jingle that plays at the Takadanobaba stop of the Yamanote line—the theme song from Osama Tezuka’s “Astro Boy” anime show. A futuristic version of this stop is the setting of the show and the “Astro Boy” manga.

(Watch the video on YouTube.)

How might Tetsu fare in today’s Tokyo subways, which employ “nudge theory” to discourage bad behavior? Find out more in “The Amazing Psychology of Japanese Train Stations,” from citylab. 

Look through photographer Michael Wolf’s photographs of contemporary trains: Tokyo Compression.

Watch a 30-second video of a drive through Tokyo in the 1970s.

(Watch the video on YouTube.)

. . . And of people on the busy Tokyo streets.

(Watch the video on YouTube.)

Look at photographs from an exhibit on experimental Japanese photography from the time period of this story in “Radical Japanese Photography from the 1960s and ‘70s” from Flavorwire.

Photographer Issei Suda’s Tokyokei includes “dreamlike” photos of 1970s and 80s Tokyo.

Then, look through “Intimate Portraits from 1970s Tokyo,” from the exhibit Tokyo 1970s, which showcases the complexity of Tokyo through photos of people there (some nudity).

Read the “fictional memoir” A Drifting Life, by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, a manga artist who was influenced by Osama Tezuka. In the excerpt on WWB, Tezuka makes an appearance.

Osamu Tezuka’s manga works were influenced by his childhood visits to the Takarazuka Revue, an all-female musical theater group in his hometown. Learn about the “Disney-like” Tarazuka Revue and see pictures of the costumes that influenced Tezuka’s drawings.

Watch a brief video of a performance below:

(Watch the video on YouTube.)

Then, watch a trailer for a documentary about the Revue.

(Watch the video on YouTube.)

Find out how the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki influenced manga artists like Osamu Tezuka, whose works featured a futuristic Japan and themes of death and rebirth. 

Then, find out about other postwar manga influenced by Osamu Tezuka’s futuristic works in “Manga and the Bomb” from Al Jazeera.

The influence of Osamu Tezuka’s work on manga and anime has been so strong that some artists found themselves imitating Tezuka’s work until they deliberately “started from scratch”. Read about Tezuka’s influence on Yoshihiro Tatsumi, creator of A Drifting Life, also published on WWB, and Hayao Miyazaki (halfway down).

Note: There are some graphic images of nudity in the Comics Journal reproductions of Tatsumi’s work.

Watch the trailer for the anime film Metropolis, which was based on Osamu Tezuka’s early illustrations.

Read some haiku poetry from Basho, who wrote the lines Tetsu sings on the first page—“The Suruga road smells like tea.”

Want to read more manga? Read new manga in English published weekly in Shonen Jump online.

• O. Henry’s short story “The Ransom of the Red Chief” (PDF) 
• Oliver Twist, a novel by Charles Dickens 
• Native Son, a novel by Richard Wright

Meet other charming criminals, or Lovable Rogues, from television, literature, other manga, and many other mediums.

Then, meet the character that often comes alongside a Lovable Rogue: The Sympathetic Inspector. 

* For Teaching Idea 1

• Porfiry Petrovich and Rodion Raskolnikov in Dostoevesky’s Crime and Punishment
• Holmes and Lestrad in Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and novels, such as A Study in Scarlet, The Hound of the Baskervilles, “The Cardboard Box,” and other stories, all freely available via sherlockian.net.
• The “Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist” article on TV Tropes provides many additional examples across different forms of media.

* For Teaching Idea 2