Tetsuya Chiba, the Japanese manga artist who drew the boxing epic Ashita no Joe, died on October 22, 2026, at a hospital in Tokyo. He was 87. Kyodo News and NHK reported that he died of myelodysplastic syndrome. His publisher Kodansha announced the death on October 27, and Shogakukan confirmed it separately.
Ashita no Joe
Ashita no Joe (Tomorrow’s Joe), written by Asao Takamori and drawn by Chiba, ran in Kodansha’s Weekly Shōnen Magazine from 1968 to 1973. It follows Joe Yabuki, a drifter from Tokyo’s slums who finds purpose in the boxing ring. Its gritty story and famous final image of Joe, “burned to pure white,” made it a landmark of Japanese sports manga. It became a hit anime series and a cultural touchstone for a generation.
Seventy years of manga
Chiba was born in Tokyo on January 11, 1939, but spent much of his early childhood in Shenyang in northeast China, then under Japanese occupation, where his father worked at a paper factory. He drew his first manga in 1956 and made his professional debut in 1958 in the girls’ magazine Shōjo Book.
His other works included Harris no Kaze, Ore wa Teppei, which won the Kodansha Culture Award, and the sumo comedy Notari Matsutarō, which won the Shogakukan Manga Award. Two of his younger brothers, Akio Chiba and Shigeyuki Chiba, also became manga artists.
Honours
Chiba became chair of the Japan Cartoonists Association in 2012 and later its president. He received the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2002 and the Order of the Rising Sun in 2012, and became the first manga artist to receive the Order of Culture, one of Japan’s highest honours.
Kodansha paid tribute to his seven decades of work and to the Chiba Tetsuya Award, set up 46 years ago in his name to find and nurture new artists. Shogakukan described him as a figure who supported the growth of postwar Japanese manga.