Shigeru Sugiura(杉浦茂Sugiura Shigeru, 3 April 1908 – 23 April 2000) was a Japanese manga artist famous for his surreal, nonsense gag manga. After initially studying painting, Sugiura became an assistant to the manga artist Suihō Tagawa. He soon began drawing his own manga in 1933 and came to fame after World War II with a series of comedic manga for children based on stories like those of Sasuke Sarutobi, Jiraiya, and Journey to the West. Sugiura closely followed popular culture and thus his manga were also influenced by such contemporary fads as Godzilla, pro wrestling, and American science fiction films. The philosophy of his manga "is of yukai, pleasure and amusement, pursuing the path as far from seriousness as possible. . . . The praxis of yukai is essentially the body in free motion, a