Yoshiharu Tsuge

Yoshiharu Tsuge (30 October 1937 – 3 March 2026) was a Japanese cartoonist and essayist best known for the surreal, dreamlike works he produced for the avant-garde magazine *Garo* in the late 1960s. Born in Tokyo, he began making comics in 1955 for the rental-comics industry that served post-War Japan, initially working in the hard-boiled *gekiga* style—dark, realistic tales with bleak endings. When that market collapsed in the mid-1960s, Tsuge was struggling until *Garo*’s publishers gave him a platform. From 1965 to 1970, he entered his most celebrated phase, crafting introspective, often surreal stories; the June 1968 issue featured his most famous work, the dream-based *Neji-shiki* (commonly translated as *Screw Style*). After this success, Tsuge grew reclusive, and by the 1970s he had stopped publishing in *Garo*. His later work alternated between autobiographical pieces and erotic fantasy until health and psychological issues drove him from comics after 1987. Though rarely translated into English—only five short works have appeared—Tsuge became a cult figure in Japan, often compared to Robert Crumb in the West. His influence endures, with his stories adapted for film and television multiple times. After his wife’s death in 1999, he lived quietly in Tokyo with his son, occasionally cooperating on adaptations and reprints of his earlier work.