Ninja Sarutobi Sasuke

A classic character of Japanese literature is reimagined as a mischievous, shapeshifting adventurer in this zany, Pop Art-flavored gag manga by a titan of the genre.

Ninja! Samurai! Cowboys! Aliens! Amoebas! Join Japan’s favorite ninja, Sarutobi Sasuke, on this psychedelic romp across a land beyond time by the legendary manga author and Pop Art pioneer Sugiura Shigeru.

In this 1969 take on the beloved ninja, the carefree young Sasuke pranks his way through a radically reimagined old Japan, opening wormholes to America’s Wild West and outer space as he goes. This wild adventure overflows with eye-popping sights: UFOs, absurd monsters, Hollywood stars, gun-toting outlaws, submarines, towering mushroom clouds, and much more.

Available for the first time in English and with an essay by Ryan Holmberg, Ninja Sarutobi Sasuke is a must-read for its trippy visuals and outrageous storytelling.

Shigeru Sugiura (1908-2000) was a hugely popular and influential Japanese comics artist. Sugiura was originally trained as a painter, and early in his career his work was selected for the prestigious Teiten exhibition. He began creating manga in order to make a living, and by the 1950s had risen to major prominence, gaining renown through his comics for children and his pioneering role in the genre of gag manga. In the 1970s and 80s he experienced a second boom in popularity, this time for more absurdist, avant-garde manga geared towards adults.

Ryan Holmberg is an arts and comics historian, author, editor, and Japanese-English translator. His translations include Tezuka Osamu’s The Mysterious Underground Men, for which he won an Eisner Award, Tadao Tsuge’s Slum Wolf, and Yoshiharu Tsuge’s The Man Without Talent (New York Review Comics). He has contributed to publications such as Art in America, Artforum, The Comics Journal, and The New York Review of Books. He has taught about Japanese art and cultural history, most recently at the Art Institute of Chicago, UNC Chapel Hill, and Tokyo University. He lives in North Carolina.