Кэн Акамацу: Мангака и политик

Japanese manga artist and politician (born 1968)
the manga artist

Ken Akamatsu (赤松 健) is a Japanese manga artist and politician who has served since 2022 as a member of the House of Councillors. He made his professional manga debut in 1993, and is best known as the author of Love Hina (1998–2001) and Negima! Magister Negi Magi (2003–2012), both serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine; a sequel to Negima!, UQ Holder!, was serialized from 2013 to 2022. In 2011, Akamatsu founded J Comi (now Manga Library Z), a free digital distributor of out of print manga. Akamatsu has been a managing director of the Japan Cartoonists Association since 2018, and is a vocal advocate for protecting freedom of expression in manga and anime from expansions in censorship and copyright law. In the 2022 Japanese House of Councillors election, he won a seat as a candidate for the Liberal Democratic Party in the national proportional representation block on a free expression platform, becoming the first manga creator in the National Diet.

Ken Akamatsu was born in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, His father, a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, was often transferred, and the family lived in Yamagata, the Kita ward of Tokyo, Kumamoto, Higashikurume, and Kawasaki. He has cited Sailor Moon as his introduction to anime and manga. While in college, he was active as a doujinshi creator and sold works at Comiket under the pen name Awa Mizuno (水野 亜和).

In 1993, Akamatsu won the 50th Shōnen Magazine Newcomer Award for his debut work Hito Natsu no Kids Game, published in Kodansha's Magazine Fresh. The following year, he began serializing A. I. Love You (1994–1997) in the publisher's Weekly Shōnen Magazine. Love Hina, published in the magazine from 1998 to 2001, established his popularity, and in 2001 earned him the 25th Kodansha Manga Award (in the shōnen category). The volumes of UQ Holder! became the first to carry a "Doujin Mark" indicating explicit author permission for use as a source for fan made works, the result of a publishing initiative led by Akamatsu. As of 2022, Akamatsu's manga have a cumulative circulation of over 50 million worldwide. In 2011, he warned that proposed changes to copyright law under the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) would "destroy" Japan's derivative doujin scene; he continued to voice his concerns in following years. In December 2021, Akamatsu announced a candidacy in the 2022 election for the national proportional representation block of the House of Councillors, the upper house of the Diet, under the LDP banner. He stated that his major goal was to protect creative freedom of expression, and during the election campaign criticized "external pressure" (both foreign and domestic) to regulate Japan's "freedom of expression, especially for manga, anime, and games", elaborating that such regulations need to be "approached with rationality".

Akamatsu is married to Kanon Akamatsu, a professional cosplayer and former idol; they have two daughters.