Anpanman Creator Yanase Takashi’s Heartfelt Message of the Joy of Living

A Weak Hero

Yanase Takashi donned many hats over his long life, including soldier, poet, illustrator, and author. He is best known, though, as the creator of one of Japan’s most beloved superheroes, Anpanman, a caped champion with a bean-bun head.

Beloved by small children, Anpanman is selfless and brave, but in most other respects he is an unusual hero. He is capable of great feats of strength, just as long as his bun head remains in pristine condition—a splash of water or a single dent renders him powerless, and only a new one can be baked by his patriarch Jamu Ojisan (Uncle Jam). Yet this glaring vulnerability does not keep him from selflessly flying to the side of those in need, protecting them from the dastardly Baikinman (Bacteria-man) or gleefully offering up a piece of his face to calm their rumbling tummies.

For a character symbolizing love and courage, Anpanman’s origins lie in a dark corner of Yanase’s life—his wartime experience. Serving in the Japanese Imperial Army in China, Yanase experienced firsthand the deprivations and destruction of war.

In early 2013, shortly before his death that year at the age of 94, I interviewed Yanase several times for a book about his wartime experience. Our meetings ran well over the scheduled hour as a matter of course as the garrulous author expounded on the human condition. “I’m of the mind that wars arise from greed and desire,” he once offered. “Countries may be blessed with land and resources, but if their appetite outgrows their means, leaders begin to cast ravenous eyes on neighbors. The result is almost always war.”

With his ability to feed those around him, Anpanman thwarts such avarice. Offering up a piece of his head, he curbs greedy tendencies by freeing the world from the pressures of hunger.

Yanase Takashi (center), then 90, at a ceremony in Tokyo in July 2009 marking the Anpanman series being named by Guinness World Records as the animation franchise with the most characters, at over 1,760. (© Jiji)

Early Life

Yanase was born in 1919 and spent the formative years of his life in Kōchi. His childhood was marked by the absence of his father—a newspaper correspondent, who spent most of his time away from the family in Tokyo and died of illness while on assignment in Shanghai. When his mother remarried, Yanase and his younger brother Chihiro were sent to live with a paternal uncle, a physician with a private practice.

A naturally gifted artist, Yanase went on to study design at an industrial arts college in Tokyo and remained in the capital after graduating to pursue a career in the advertising department of a pharmaceutical firm. However, with Japan at war, he was conscripted into the army in 1941 at the age of 22. He was initially stationed in Kokura in Kyūshū, but in 1943 he was sent to Fuzhou in China. There he worked on encrypting and decoding messages and took part in propaganda campaigns aimed at winning over the local populace, including writing and performing kamishibai, a traditional storytelling style that uses illustrated panels.

Like countless others, Yanase was swept up in the chaos that followed Japan’s defeat. While retreating toward Shanghai, his unit was ambushed by Chinese forces and Yanase was deeply affected by the ensuing horrors as exploding shells and flying bullets indiscriminately cut down soldiers on both sides. He survived the onslaught, but the senseless carnage left him with a bitter disdain for war.

He was taken prisoner, and while being held on the outskirts of Shanghai, he contracted malaria that racked his body with a bone-chilling fever. Hunger was also a constant companion. Yanase recalls that to save on scarce provisions, meals were limited to thin rice gruel served twice a day, and how out of desperation he took to picking and eating grass in a dire attempt to ease the pangs in his belly. The agony and desperation he felt from not having enough to eat stayed with him throughout his life.

A US solider watches over Japanese prisoners of war captured in Shanghai in September 1945. (© Photo12/UIG/Getty Images)

Speaking in his 2013 book Boku wa sensō wa daikirai (I Hate War), Yanase described how defeat transformed his fellow Japanese soldiers into a pitiable lot: “All of us, even my superior officers who had once flaunted their authority, were stripped of all signs of rank. We went from being soldiers to a huddled mass of defenseless bumpkins. We were herded onto transports and summarily sent back to where we came.”

Life’s Questions

Yanase returned to Kōchi in 1946 to the heartbreaking news that his brother Chihiro, a junior officer in the navy, had been killed in action off the Philippine coast. The loss of his sibling, two years his junior, was a bitter pill to swallow that, along with his own wartime experience, weighed heavily on him.

He struggled to come to terms with how he and his fellow soldiers were expected to sacrifice everything for what the military leaders claimed was a righteous cause. They made for pitiful heroes, pursuing an illusory justice that, once the war ended, was summarily replaced by a wholly different set of ideas of right and wrong. Yanase wrestled with what it meant to be a hero and what true justice was, musings that in time became the driving force behind the creation of Anpanman.

In penning the upbeat “Anpanman March,” the theme song of the animated version of the Anpanman series, Yanase poignantly asks, “Why was I born?” “What should I do with my life?” While he never claimed the words carry any deeper meaning, it is easy to hear them as a requiem for his brother Chihiro and the countless others who had their lives cut short by World War II.

In his book Boku wa sensō wa daikirai (I Hate War), Yanase expresses his hope for lasting peace. (© Shogakukan)

Late Bloomer

After the war, Yanase settled in his native Kōchi and worked in the editorial section of a monthly magazine published by the local newspaper, Kōchi Shimbun. It was there that he met his bride Komatsu Nobu, who was an encouraging force in his life. The couple married in 1947 and settled in Tokyo, living at first in a friend’s one-room apartment.

The capital still bore the scars of the war and suffered food shortages, but Yanase managed to make ends meet by taking an array of jobs, including working in the PR office of department store Mitsukoshi and illustrating manga for newspapers and magazines. With Nobu’s full support, he went freelance in 1953 and quickly earned a reputation as a jack of all trades, including designing sets and writing lyrics for stage productions, appearing on television, creating characters for animated movies, and serving stints as editor-in-chief at a literary magazine. Although Yanase made a name for himself within the publishing industry and elsewhere, he lamented not having a hit of his own.

This would change with the appearance of Anpanman in 1973. That year Yanase published the story of his bean-bun hero in a monthly anthology of children’s story books by publisher Froebel-kan. It was initially poorly received by adult readers—droves of kindergarten teachers harshly disparaged the main character as being absurd and cruel—and the work seemed doomed to a single printing, with Yanase’s editor even writing it off as a failure.

However, the response among small children was markedly more upbeat. Anpanman captured the hearts of toddlers and kindergarteners with its hero who saved the day not with brawn but by spreading happiness. The book quickly became a favorite at nurseries, a fact the author learned when the owner of a camera shop he frequented professed how his child demanded the story be read at bedtime every night.

Books in the Anpanman series. (© Froebel-kan)

In 1975 Yanase wrote the first of many sequels, Sore ike! Anpanman (Let’s Go! Anpanman). As the popularity of the character grew, an animated version of the series was launched in 1988. Airing only in the Tokyo metropolitan area at the inopportune time of 5:00 pm, it was not expected to be a success, but it quickly climbed the ratings ladder and was picked up for national syndication, making Anpanman a household name and providing Yanase, then 69, the success he had long sought after.

A Modest Champion

I once asked Yanase why he chose to create his hero from something as mundane as a bean bun, to which he replied matter-of-factly that there is more to the bakery staple than meets the eye. “It’s a distinctly Japanese bread that’s cheap and plentiful,” he explained. “It has a decent shelf life to boot, making it a filling and nutritious option as a snack or as a lifeline to people in desperate need of food.”

It is the bread’s familiarity and versatility that is at the heart of Anpanman’s popularity with younger audiences, as illustrated by the sales of books in the series. According to 2018 data by publishing and distribution firm Tohan Corporation, the vast number of original books Yanase penned and those based on episodes of the animated show had sold over 81 million copies in total.

As the series progressed, Yanase steadily added a range of supporting characters, often taking inspiration from popular types of bread and other culinary delights. In 2009, the animated series marked its thousandth episode and a world record 1,768 characters. The second most recognizable member of the cast is Anpanman’s arch nemesis Baikinman. A prankster, he is never vanquished outright. Rather, Anpanman accepts him as part of the world they inhabit, choosing instead to sidetrack his mischievousness with a trademark an-punch that sends the gravelly voiced Baikinman over the horizon, to return another day.

Bread in the shape of popular Anpanman characters on sale at the Fukuoka Anpanman Children’s Museum in Mall, a facility in the Hakata district of Fukuoka. Photo taken in April 2014. (© Jiji)

Enduring Legacy

Yanase passed away in October 2013 at the age of 94. Over his life he touched millions through his works and his words, and in celebration of his life, friends and colleagues came together at an array of gatherings in honor of the author.

A poster of Yanase Takashi surrounded by dolls from his Anpanman series at a celebration of his life on February 6, 2014, in Shinjuku, Tokyo. (© Jiji)

I first interviewed the author at the Yanase Studio near Akebonobashi Station in Shinjuku in 1998, and over the years I had the pleasure of hearing him expound on topics ranging from his approach to staying healthy to his fellow manga artists to memories of his hometown. He remained busy up to the end, writing Anpanman stories and composing lyrics. In our last meeting, shortly before his death, he reflected candidly on his life, his words making a deep impression. “I’ve had a blessed life,” he declared. “There have been hard times for certain, but without fail, someone has come along to help me through whatever difficulty I faced. Just like Anpanman.”

(Originally published in Japanese. Banner photo: Yanase Takashi is joined by his most famous character Anpanman on May 1, 2013. © Tsuno Yoshikazu/AFP/Jiji.)