Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball, has died

Question

Mangaka Akira Toriyama died March 1st, which was just announced in the news.

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Here, the LNAB is correctly 鳥山 (Toriyama), but the given name 明 (Akira) seems to have been put as a prefix, which is weird. Note that he is known in the West as Akira Toriyama, but in Japan his name is 鳥山明 (Toriyama Akira.) とりやま and Toriyama should be in "Other surnames" (I think they may be already but I'm not sure.)

Totally unsure either if there are people on Wikitree doing research in Japan who could add to his tree.

RIP to that icon of my childhood.

Comments

P.S. 'Manga' is the word for a Japanese comic book. The 'ka' is likely the person or artist who creates a comic book. Comic books and Anime were really big when I lived in Japan. I don't recall them getting really popular in the U.S. until a few years after I returned. It was after I returned to the U.S. that Pokemon caught on, but was way popular in Japan before then.

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Yes, that's exactly what the "ka" is!

漫 "man" is "purposeless, free"

画 "ga" is "drawing"

漫画 "manga" is originally "purposeless/free drawing", but it is the name for comics in Japanese (including Western comics!), and as a loanword, specifically Japanese comics in English and many other languages.

家 is home/house, but also a professional at something. For instance manga -> mangaka, but also 音楽 "ongaku", music -> 音楽家 "ongakuka", musician or composer. People may also be familiar with judo -> judoka and karate -> karateka when referring to martial arts and their athletes.

Manga (and its animated version, "anime") is extremely popular here in France. We're actually the country that consumes the most of it, only second to Japan itself!

But of course a lot of manga is popular worldwide and has been since the 80s or 90s depending on the place. I'm sure a lot of people my age or a few years older grew up with Dragon Ball everywhere!

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Profile has been opened for editing. Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi Lea,

Just a couple of comments on Akira Toriyama (for what they are worth). I lived in East Asia for 3 years while teaching for the U.S. Military. I was in Korea (1990-91) and on Okinawa (1991-1993), but traveled to mainland Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and elsewhere.

While in Japan, I studied the language (nearly all but forgotten now) and also studied the art of making letters (Katakana and Hiragana) using brushes. Akira and Toriyama are two that I recall rather well. First of all, in Korea and Japan, the last name does come first. It is something I had to get used to. Akira is a great name for me as it is the first name of my favorite film director, Akira Kurosawa (or Kurosawa Akira).

The name Toriyama is made up of two characters. 'Tori' is 'bird' and 'yama' (one of the first letters I had to master with brush letters) mean mountain. So the meaning would be something like bird mountain, or mountain bird. Akira was a very popular name when I lived there. It is made up of two kanji if you look closely. The first looks like two little squars on top of each other. That is the kanji for 'sun' (another letter that I first learned. The second part is the Kanji for 'moon', which was a little more advanced in my letter learning. When the two 'sunlight' and 'moonlight' are put together, it could mean 'bright.' It had other meanings, but has been a long time since I have spoken or written Japanese given that it as been 33 years.

I just wanted to share this with you because the Kanji for his name brought back fond memories of learning my letters as a then 45 year old in a classroom of children around 5 years of age. These were some of my first letters.

Comments

Carol thank you for this sharing. I would not have known. Thank you for your teaching for the US MIlitary.

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Thank you Carol! I actually knew that (I have a very small knowledge of Japanese, but these 3 kanji are quite well-known and simple), but it's nice you wrote a detailed explanation because I'm more people would be interested and happy to know more. "Bright" is indeed the meaning of this kanji when used as a name.

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@Lea, thanks for your feedback and your great interest in Japanese! I just thought of another work that I enjoy. Karaoke (カラオケ) caught on in the U.S. about 2 years after I returned. I found out in Japanese class that it meant "empty orchestra"! Isn't that just the coolest? And so appropriate.

I used my middle name (May, my maternal grandmother's name) when I lived in Asia. The 'r' in Carol is difficult to pronounce as it does not really exist in Korean or Japanese as we pronounce it in English. Korean and Japanese are high context languages (need to be there) and high in vowels and more like Navajo (non-causal) than English. Fore example, in English we would say 'It is raining.' Japanese students had trouble understanding the concept of 'it'. What is 'it'. Japanese, Korean and Navajo would just say 'rain' (which could have occurred in the past or will occur in the future), or 'raining' which would indicated current water falling from the sky. I find these diverse language concepts sooooo interesting.

Getting back to May. It turns out that it is a very popular and common name for girls/women in Japan, Korea and China. It means 'plum flower' and this is the Chinese character for the name 梅 . It is one of the first more difficult characters that I learned.

P.S. There has been a 'remake' of James Clavell's Shogun ( 将軍 ) and is showing on FX and Hulu. There was a great interview on our National Public Radio today about the remake and a greater emphasis from the Japanese perspective. One of the writers mentioned that she would write the script in English, then send it to writer's whose first language was Japanese. They would revise where needed, then provide the English subtitles. It sound like the program with a proper interpretation of Japanese has enriched the story even more.

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@Susan Laursen...どうもありがとうございます (Dōmo arigatōgozaimasu) Thank you very much!