Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Shinji Nagashima (1937-2005)

Shin'ichi Nagashima (永島 眞一, Nagashima Shin'ichi), better known by the pen name Shinji Nagashima (永島 慎二, Nagashima Shinji), was a Japanese manga artist born in Tokoy, Japan. His pseudonym came about due to a publisher's error when printing his name, and he continued using the pseudonym after that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinji_Nagashima


Japan’s own homegrown hippies, the fūten-zoku (“idler-tribe”), made news by lounging outside of Japan’s busiest train station, Shinjuku, wearing oddball sunglasses and sedated on their drug of choice (possibly their only option): sleeping pills.

The popularization of the term traces to a manga called Fūten by Nagashima Shinji that was serialized in the magazine COM starting in the spring of 1967. Nagashima explains at the end of the first installment that the main characters of his manga are less Nagahima Hinji—Nagashima’s alter ego, with plays on “spare time” (hima) and “poverty” (hin)—than the group of “fūten” friends he made over the previous years, including poets who do not write and jazz musicians who do not play.

Ridgely, Steven C.. Japanese Counterculture: The Antiestablishment Art of Terayama Shuji (kindle location 3639-3646). University of Minnesota Press.