Early Days for Hirohiko Araki
It’s not uncommon to see that some mangaka spend much of their careers as authors writing their defining series for so long, it spans across decades, becoming synonymous with the author themselves and representing them almost entirely.
Hirohiko Araki is inextricably linked to his almost 40 year old magnum opus, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. He had started writing the series when he was 27 years old, 7 years into writing manga.
Toshiyuki Araki, as the name he is more familiar with is in fact a pen name, was born on June 7th 1960 as the eldest of 3 children. His 2 younger identical twin sisters happened to be the cause of a fair amount of frustration for Araki in his youth. He states that apparently the twins would spend all their time together, leaving him mostly alone, and even eat his snacks when he was out of the house. He frequently got into arguments with them but his parents would scold him for causing problems. In fact, Araki’s parents seemed to have been quite strict on him as a young child. His father, an office worker and his mother stayed at home. Only through his connection with his grandfather did Araki discover art. Movies, music and of course manga were all introduced to him at his grandfather’s house. Araki grew up reading manga during the 60s and 70s, with series such as Ashita no Joe and Cobra while taking interest in authors like Osamu Tezuka and Kazuo Umezu. The fascination Araki garnered for more traditional art actually came from his own father and the various collections of art books his father owned. This early interest in art would be pivotal in how Araki would later choose to develop his personal style, taking huge inspiration from french painters like Paul Gauguin. What actually got Araki to finally start drawing manga was in his time at high school, it was as simple as a colleague complimenting one of his drawings, and the rest was history. The boy would spend his spare time drawing manga in secret, improving his craft and one day dreaming of creating his own series like those that inspired him in his grandfather's magazines.
Araki’s earliest works, such as Poker Under Arms and Outlaw Man were Westerns, something you would hardly ever see in Japan at the time, this interest in cowboys and gunslingers came from those films he had been seeing at his grandfather's house. One such film was A Few Dollars More, the second in the legendary Clint Eastwood Spaghetti-Western trilogy, this film left a big impression on the young Araki and its influence would reappear well into his career after JoJo had already begun.
His first major work, Poker Under Arms was submitted for the Tezuka Award, which Araki had hoped would elevate him to a prodigy status, and basically guarantee him a serialised work. Araki spent an entire day, working into the night and morning without sleep, writing and drawing Poker Under Arms where he would then take a 4 hour train ride to the front door of Shogakukan. The publisher of Weekly Shonen Sunday Magazine was located inside a huge building, and left Araki seriously intimidated, he took a turn and went inside the building next over for Shueisha, who published Weekly Shonen Jump, an at the time smaller magazine. That’s where he met Ryosuke Kabashima, the man who would form a lifelong partnership with and be the editor for Araki’s work on JoJo. The young editor proceeded to lambast Araki, criticising every single page he flipped through and commenting that he had forgotten to use his white-out. The most amusing part of this was that Araki didn’t even know white-out was a thing to be used in manga. The exhausted Araki returned home with the task to clean up his work for the eventual Tezuka Awards, which he did end up submitting the work to. Although the young manga enthusiast didn’t win the grand prize, he did win the runner up prize for the 1980 Tezuka Award. This would set him on the path to his long manga career.
The next seven years had Araki working hard to bring shonen manga to Shueisha for their Jump magazine, which would steadily increase in popularity and size until they became the titan of manga they are today. Some other series that he made in this time were Cool Shock B.T, Baoh the Visitor and Gorgeous Irene. Although these would spend some time in the magazine, none of them held attention for long and were cut before long.
It was in 1987 that JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure would finally see the light of day, and make its first mark on the manga scene, eventually becoming the easily recognisable landmark it has turned into. When Araki was making Phantom Blood, the first part of JoJo, he wanted to create a story with themes of mystery, travelling as a team of friends and the succession of bloodlines. He was determined to make something which at the time would stand out and be unique. He would definitely succeed in this regard.
What’s Next?
It’s been a fun ride through part 1 of JoJo. Taking turns I didn’t exactly expect and showing glimpses of the true nature of the series, what was to come for this generation-spanning story. Once I’ve posted this research topic, I’ll be working on the review on Phantom Blood and beginning my read of Battle Tendency, which is part 2. Since the second part is also fairly short, and I’m hot off the press of part 1 with an eagerness to see where things go from here, I’ll be picking another non-JoJo read after my next review. Stay tuned for what’s to come!
Thank You for Reading!
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