Samurai Executioner

Though widely respected as a powerful writer of graphic fiction, Kazuo Koike has spent a lifetime reaching beyond the bounds of the comics medium. Aside from co-creating and writing such classic manga as Lone Wolf and Cub and Crying Freeman, Koike has hosted the popular Shibi Golf Weekly instructional television program; founded the Albatross View golf magazine; produced movies; written popular fiction, poetry, and screenplays; and mentored some of Japan's best manga talent. Koike started the Gekiga Sonjuku, a college course aimed at helping talented writers and artsts - such as Ranma 1/2 creator Rumiko Takahashi - break into the comics field. His methods and teachings continue to influence new generations of manga creators, not to mention artists and writers around the world. Examples of Koike's influence range from the comics works of Frank Miller and Stan Sakai to the films of Quentin Tarantino. The driving focus of Koike's narrative is character development, and his commitment to the character is clear: "Comics are carried by characters. If a character is well-created, the comic becomes a hit." Kazuo Koike's continued success in comics and literature has proven this philosophy true. Kazuo Koike continues to work in the entertainment media to this very day, consistently diversifying his work and forging new paths across the rough roads of Edo-period history and the green swaths of today's golfing world. Goseki Kojima was born on November 3, 1928, the very same day as the godfather of Japanese comics, Osamu Tezuka. Art was a Kojima family tradition, his own father an amateur portrait artist and his great-great-grandfather a sculptor. In 1950, Kojima moved to Tokyo, where the postwar devastation had given rise to special manga forms for audiences too poor to buy the new manga magazines just starting to reach the newsstands. Kojima created art for kami-shibai, or "paper-play" narrators, who would use manga story sheets to present narrated street plays, and later moved on to creating works for the kashi-bon market, bookstores that rented out books, magazines, and manga to mostly low-income readers. In 1967, Kojima broke into the magazine market with his ninja adventure, Dojinki. As the manga magazine market grew and diversified, he turned out a steady stream of popular samurai manga series. In 1970, in collaboration with Kazuo Koike, Kojima began the work that would seal his reputation, Kozure Okami (Lone Wolf and Cub). Many additional series would follow, including this related series, Samurai Executioner. In his final years, Kojima turned to creating original graphic novels based on the movies of his favorite director, the great Akira Kurosawa. Kojima passed away on January 5, 2000 at the age of 71.Koike, Kazuo is the author of 'Samurai Executioner ', published 0014 under ISBN 9781593072070 and ISBN 1593072074.