Hitoshi Ikebe

Japanese painter and comic artist Hitoshi Ikebe was born under the name Yamashita. For one year he was a classmate of Tsuruzo Ishii. Enthused from pictures that he saw at an exhibition, Ikebe / Yamashita was accepted as a student by Shinya Watanabe, after he had been rejected by Ishii Hakutei. In 1910, Ikebe graduated from the Western Department of the Tokyo School of Arts. He was employed as an illustrator by several newspapers, in 1911 by the Korean Keijō Daily and three years later the National Newspaper. In 1916 he was one of the founders of the comic magazine Tobae and worked for several magazines during the following years.

In the late 1920s Ikebe started exhibiting oil paintings in the Teiten and Emperor’s Exhibitions, respectively. In 1938, he became a member of the Ichisuikai group and later a member of their steering committee. During the last decade of his life, Ikebe received several high awards. Aged 83 he died in a hospital during treatment for heart failure. He had a reputation for observing ordinary people sharply and a quick, grasping, and summarizing style. Ikebe had a son called Ryo, who became well-known to fans of Japanese science fiction and fantasy film. Ryo started out his film career in 1940 as a screenwriter at Toho, and shortly after World War II established himself as a top star and worked with a virtual hall-of-fame roll call of directors.

A manga by Ikebe shows a wrestling scene, an ink drawing (sheet 43 x 53 cm, drawing 24.5 x 33 cm) from the series 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō, produced in 1921 by 18 leading artists of the Tokyo Manga Association on a joint trip on the Tōkaidō railway line. It is a likely candidate for his submitted work A Wrestling Match.