Osamu Tezuka; Creator of Japanese Cartoon ‘Astro Boy’

Osamu Tezuka, 60, one of Japan’s leading cartoonists and creator of the country’s best-loved comic character, “Astro Boy.” Tezuka, a medical doctor, published his first cartoon in 1946 while he was a medical student at Osaka University. His masterpiece--”Tetsuwan Atom,” or “Astro Boy”--swept the nation when it was published in a magazine in 1951. The cartoon was animated and shown on Japanese TV in the 1960s and again in the 1980s. It also was shown in the United States and several other countries. The character is a boy-like robot with superhuman powers. Tezuka’s works won many prizes during his 40-year career. Among them were two experimental films--”Jumping,” a winner of the International Animation Festival in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, in 1984, and “Broken-Down Film,” which won the 1985 International Film Festival in Hiroshima. In Tokyo on Thursday of stomach cancer.