Japanese manga artist Jiro Taniguchi has died at the age of 69, the South China Morning Post reports. His most notable works, all intricately hand-drawn with pen and craft knife, include: The Times of Botchan (1987), A Distant Neighbourhood (1998) and The Walking Man (1992). Taniguchi’s comics, the content of which tended towards scenes and occurrences of the everyday, had earned him praise for portraying more gentle subject matters; The Walking Man, for instance, follows the story’s protagonist as he wanders through suburban neighbourhoods, focussing on the minutiae of what he finds and who he meets along the way. Taniguchi’s works became especially popular in France, and in 2011 he was awarded the Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters. Casterman, Taniguchi’s French publishing house has said in a statement: ‘Jiro Taniguchi was deeply kind and gentle. The humanism which passes through all his work is familiar to his readers, but the man himself is far less known, more reserved and more inclined to let his stories speak in his place.’
15 February 2017
