Nonkina Tōsan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nonkina Tōsan (ノンキナトウサン; also spelled 呑気なとうさん or のんきな父さん; Easygoing Dad or Carefree Dad) is an early manga comic strip by Yutaka Asō, first published in 1923, in the newspaper Hochi Shinbun.[1][2]
The strip follows the antics created by the main character “Nonkina Tōsan (Easygoing Daddy)” and his partner “Neighbor Taishō" ( Tonari no Taishō (隣のタイショウ) ”. Inspired by American comics, especially Bringing Up Father, was one of the pioneering yonkoma, becoming a success, generating a number of merchandising items and adaptations to animated shorts and feature films.[3]
Nonkina Tōsan was originally an eight-panel cartoon titled “呑気なとうさん” (renamed “のんきな父さん” from the May 27 issue of the same year and changed to a six-panel cartoon from the October 28 issue of the same year) that had been serialized irregularly in the “Sunday Manga ”[4] section of the Hochi Shimbun since April 29, 1923. In an attempt to soothe the pain of the people affected by the Great Kanto Earthquake in September of that year and the chronic recession that preceded it, Tomoichirō Takada, then editorial director of the Hochi Shimbun, considered serializing a cheerful comic strip in the paper and selected the work by Asō, a rookie comic strip artist.[5] At the time, George McManus' Bringing Up Father, (serialized as Oyaji Kyoiku in Asahi Graph) was a popular comic strip, and Aso was reluctant to start serializing it, saying that he did not think he could compete with it in any way, but eventually accepted.[3]
After the serialization began, the circulation of Hochi Shimbun increased, and Asō became a popular manga artist. The color version of the book became a bestseller, and it became a social phenomenon at the end of the Taishō era, with advertisements using characters and merchandise such as dolls and hand towels being created. It has even become a buzzword, with men with a carefree demeanor being called nontou (ノントウ). In October 1926, the series ended temporarily due to Asō's trip to Europe. After returning to Japan, in 1929, serialization resumed under the title Zoku Nonkina tosan (続ノンキナトウサン) in the Yomiuri Sunday Manga page of the Sunday edition of Yomiuri Shimbun.
From the November 26 issue of the same year, it was moved to the Yukan Hochi Shimbun, with the title changed to ノンキナトウサン and the format changed to a 4-panel comic, serialized every day on the top left of the front page. It seems that the panel layout, speech bubbles, and simplified character depictions were influenced by Bringing Up Father, and in the early serializations, the dialogue was written horizontally and in katakana. Over the course of the series, the panel layout changed from 2x2 to 1x4 vertically.
After the war, in 1945, Asō serialized Nonkina tosan again in Daiichi Shimbun.[4] Asō died in 1961, so the copyright ended before 2019, when the copyright was extended to 70 years after the author's death, and the work entered the public domain.
