A recent issue of trendy men’s design and lifestyle magazine Brutus was given over to manga artist Inoue Takehiko. The story coincided with a gallery exhibition that was both about Takehiko-san’s work and also acted as the final installment in his long running manga series Vagabond (バガボンド). It this man’s art is good enough to warrant an exhibition in a gallery, it’s about time Of Rice and Zen did our part to make him a household name abroad as well.

Inoue Takehiko is the man behind a long-running and successful samurai themed manga series called Vagabond. A cursory glance around Takehiko-san’s workplace, however, reveals a wealth of NBA merchandise, including basketballs, Kobe and Jordan models. A little at odds with his “swords and sandals” manga hit, you may well muse. It is then that a Japanese acquaintance will be happy to remind you that his first big hit in Japan was not the highly respected Vagabond, but the slightly more ubiquitous charms of basketball series Slam Dunk, for which Inoue Takehiko is best known. Of Rice and Zen expects all that to change soon enough.

In addition to winning the Tezuka Prize in 1988 for his manga Kaede Purple which appreared in Shonen Jump, magazine and the 2006 Osamu Tezuka Culture Award for his project Vagabond (which he based on fictionalised accounts of the lives of legendary swordsmen Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro) he also helped popluarise basketball in Japan through his series SlamDunk, Buzzer Beater and Real.

From Of Rice and Zen’s point of view Slam Dunk is still an interesting read. Apart from anything else reading mainstream manga will give the you a rather illuminating view of what is marketable and profitable in Japan. The manga market is largely glutted with a great deal of content that revolves around simple fantasy fullfillment. Dreams of enormous strength, power and girls who’s clothes fall off easier than a Benny Hill nurse’s reveal a lot about what Japanese men, in particular, are ready and willing to lap up.

Another reason Slam Dunk remains an interesting historical document is that it shows a real development and growth in Inoue’s art style. While Slam Dunk was an occasionally crude and less than attractive visual package, Vagabond shows a clear progression towards grace, style, originality and control. One can see that through years of hard work and practice Takehiko-san honed his craft and willed himself into becoming one of the foremost artists in Japan today. If that doesn’t make Of Rice and Zen Studios work harder at our illustration then nothing will.

So profitable has Takehiko’s distinctive illustration style become that he, like Akira Toriyama of Dragonball fame, is being recruited by the highest bidder to brand, package and flair Microsoft video games to improve their marketability in Japan. Whether or not Microsoft is correct in its assumption that it’s primarily anime-style packaging that sells games in Japan is up for debate, but for now the point is that Inoue has, through effort and determination, made himself an artistic and economic tour de force whose name deserves to become known outside of a small enclave of Japan-based manga fans.

Click below to buy a book of Inoue Takehiko’s art for Vagabond called sumi (”ink”).