Manga artist Tetsuya Chiba reflects on his family’s repatriation from Manchuria, in Tokyo’s Nerima Ward, March 12, 2026. “Japan has somehow managed to preserve peace for the 81 years since the war ended, but now we are in danger again,” he said. (Mainichi/Tsutomu Kobayashi)
TOKYO — On Aug. 15, 1945, the day Japan announced its surrender in World War II, manga artist Tetsuya Chiba, 87, best known for “Ashita no Joe” (“Tomorrow’s Joe”), was in Fengtian, then part of Japanese-occupied Manchuria and now Shenyang in northeastern China. His family of six finally reached Hakata Port in Fukuoka in the summer of 1946. They had survived the winter while moving from place to place in hiding, traveling vast distances on foot and in freight cars.
About 6.6 million Japanese were living overseas when the war ended, and some 6.3 million ultimately returned to Japan. For the Chiba family, however, Aug. 15, 1945, did not mark the end of the war. It marked the beginning.
Chiba, then 6 and the eldest son, lived with his parents and three younger brothers, the youngest of whom was a newborn. They lived in employee housing provided by the printing company in Fengtian where Chiba’s father worked. Located on the company grounds, the housing complex was surrounded by high walls separating it from the neighborhoods where Chinese residents lived.
An illustration by Tetsuya Chiba depicting his family’s repatriation from Manchuria. Dozens of families fled on foot under the cover of darkness, but after Chiba injured his foot, his family became separated from the group. (C) Tetsuya Chiba
In retrospect, signs of Japan’s impending defeat had gradually become apparent. Local residents had once shown affection toward Chiba and other Japanese children when they slipped outside the walls, sometimes even giving them food. But as Japan moved closer to defeat, their attitudes changed. When the children played outside the walls, local Chinese residents began exchanging glances.
Then came Aug. 15. The positions of the Japanese occupiers and the Chinese people they had oppressed were suddenly reversed. Some Chinese residents became part of a violent mob, prompting the Chiba family to flee in the middle of the night with the families of his father’s co-workers.
But the police station had already been ransacked and abandoned. The police had become a target of public resentment.
“The place we thought would be the safest turned out to be the most dangerous of all,” Chiba recalled.
Riots were breaking out across the city. The family began hiding out of sight during the day and moving toward safer places after the city had fallen quiet at night.
An illustration by Tetsuya Chiba depicting his family’s repatriation from Manchuria. Immediately after the war ended, the family of six made rice balls with all the rice they had, put on as many layers of clothing as they could and fled their home in Fengtian. (C) Tetsuya Chiba
One day, a nail protruding from Chiba’s shoe pierced his foot, causing it to bleed. He endured the pain and kept walking, but he could not keep up with the group. Eventually, his family became separated from the group.
It was then that they encountered Xu Jichuan, a Chinese co-worker of Chiba’s father whose name was known to the family by its Japanese reading, Jo Shusen.
Jo spotted the family crouching behind rubble and peered into their hiding place. Not realizing who he was, Chiba’s mother pleaded, “Please spare us. We have a newborn baby with us.”
“Aren’t you the Chibas?” Jo replied, extending his hand.
Jo sheltered the family in the attic of his home. Although it was still autumn by the calendar, snow was already falling, and ice formed late at night and around dawn.
“Without Mr. Jo, someone in our family would surely have died,” Chiba recounted.
An illustration by Tetsuya Chiba depicting his family’s repatriation from Manchuria. The family was sheltered in the attic of the home of Jo Shusen, a Chinese friend, but the children grew bored because they could not go outside. In the cold room, Chiba made picture books and “kamishibai” picture-story shows to entertain and look after his younger brothers. (C) Tetsuya Chiba
It was around this time that Chiba began drawing pictures to accompany the stories he read to his younger brothers. Looking back, he sees his life in that attic as the starting point of his career as a manga artist.
Several weeks later, the family managed to rejoin a group of fellow Japanese awaiting repatriation. They parted from Jo and headed for Huludao Port, where repatriation ships were departing. Along the way, Chiba saw numerous bodies lying by the roadside.
Everyone was starving.
“I never saw my parents eat,” Chiba recalled. “When someone gave us some kaoliang (a type of sorghum), which was difficult to digest, my mother cooked it until it was soft, held it in her mouth and passed it directly into my baby brother’s mouth.”
Reaching Huludao did not guarantee their survival. On the ship, Chiba witnessed the death of a childhood friend named Kyo-chan, with whom he had been playing shortly before.
The harrowing experience of repatriation remained deeply etched in Chiba’s memory and influenced his works.
Joe Yabuki, the rootless drifter who is the protagonist of “Ashita no Joe,” was inspired by war orphans Chiba saw in Tokyo. Chiba called an episode in which the Korean boxer Kin Ryuhi kills his own father while suffering from hunger during the Korean War “cruel, but realistic.”
His feelings toward Jo also found their way into his works. The sound “Jo” appears in the names of both Joe Yabuki and Jotaro Taki, the protagonist of “Shidenkai no Taka,” which depicts the harrowing experiences of a young trainee fighter pilot.
Long after the two works were published, a foreign poet pointed out that both characters’ names contained the sound “Jo.” “It was only then that I realized it,” Chiba said.
After the family returned to Japan, Chiba’s father would say whenever he drank, “I want to thank Mr. Jo. I wonder how he is doing.”
Perhaps because Jo had left such a deep impression on him, Chiba had unconsciously incorporated “Jo” into the names of his characters.
Tetsuya Chiba is seen in his studio in Tokyo’s Nerima Ward, March 12, 2026. Marking 70 years since his debut as a manga artist, he smiled and said, “I grew up but remained a child at heart. Perhaps that is why I can still understand how children feel.” (Mainichi/Tsutomu Kobayashi)
Chiba’s manga “Hinemosu Notari Nikki” continues to run in Shogakukan Inc.’s Big Comic magazine. Now 87, he chronicles memories of the past and scenes from his everyday life in the series, including his wartime experiences.
As Japan-China relations deteriorate once again and wars continue around the world, Chiba spoke slowly, as if weighing every word.
“Even if I raise my voice alone to say ‘No War,’ it may not make any difference. … Still, no one wants war. I hope people will gradually recognize the mistakes humanity has made in the past and grow wiser, and I have a feeling that they will.”
(Japanese original by Misaki Morokuma, Kyushu News Department)
Profile
Born in Tokyo in 1939, Tetsuya Chiba left Japan with his family in November of that year and went to Manchuria, now northeastern China, in 1941, when he was 2. He began drawing manga and made his professional debut in 1956. His manga “Ashita no Joe” (“Tomorrow’s Joe”) became a social phenomenon. In 2024, he became the first manga artist to receive the Order of Culture. He is president of the Japan Cartoonists Association and a member of the Japan Art Academy.