17 Facts About Shinji Mizushima

Shinji Mizushima is best known for several baseball manga, such as Yakyu-kyo no Uta, Dokaben, and Abu-san.

Shinji Mizushima is a two-time recipient of the Shogakukan Manga Award.

Shinji Mizushima's works have been collected into more than 540 tankobon volumes, making him one of the most prolific manga artists of all time.

Shinji Mizushima moved to Tokyo in 1964, where he began to publish numerous works for the Shonen King magazine.

Shinji Mizushima began to work for the Shonen Sunday and Shonen Champion magazines in 1970, where he published his first major hits in Otoko do Ahou Koshien and Zenikko.

Shinji Mizushima received the Shogakukan Manga Award in 1974 for Otoko do Ahou Koshien and Deba to Bat, and again in 1977 for Abu-san.

Shinji Mizushima's serialized works gained major standing around this period, making him a fixture in the manga industry and the foremost author of baseball manga.

In 1983, Shinji Mizushima published Dai Koshien; a work featuring characters from Dokaben, Yakyu-kyo no Uta, Otoko do Ahou Koshien, Ikkyu-san, Kyudo-kun, and many of the other popular high-school baseball manga he had authored up until then.

Shinji Mizushima continued to author numerous works through the 1980s, most notably Niji wo Yobu Otoko and Ohayo K-jiro.

Shinji Mizushima continued this trend with Shin Yakyu-kyo no Uta and Dokaben Super Stars hen, and has continued to author Abu-san, which has spanned over 90 volumes since its inception in 1973.

In 2004, Shinji Mizushima auctioned off the right to appear as a character in Abu-san for over 3 million yen as a fundraiser for Mangajapan.

Shinji Mizushima marked his 50th anniversary as a manga artist in 2007, and Shonen Champion placed Dokaben on its front cover along with messages and illustrations from many other manga artists such as Osamu Akimoto, Takao Saito, Mitsuru Adachi, Takehiko Inoue, Rumiko Takahashi, Fujiko Fujio, and Hiroshi Takahashi to celebrate Shinji Mizushima's achievements.

Shinji Mizushima remained the oldest active manga artist to serialize on weekly publications, 13 years older than the next-youngest artist.

Shinji Mizushima's last manga was an Abu-san one-shot published in August 2018.

Shinji Mizushima died from pneumonia in a Tokyo hospital on January 10,2022, at the age of 82.

Shinji Mizushima is known as an avid Hawks fan, and the title character of Abu-san spends his entire career playing for the Nankai Hawks team.

Shinji Mizushima depicts real baseball players, coaches, and managers in many of his manga, and the events taking place within his manga often mirror those of the real Japanese baseball world, with his fictitious characters interacting with real existing players.