Anime songwriter and scriptwriter Shuntarō Tanikawa Dies at 92
Citing Kyodo News, Anime News Network reports that Shuntarō Tanikawa (also spelled in English as Tanigawa), known for contributing theme lyrics and scripts for several famous anime, has died. Outside of anime, Tanikawa also had an extensive career spanning decades as a poet, essayist and translator. Over the decades, Tanikawa won numerous awards for his literary works.
Tanikawa died November 13, with no specific cause of death reported. He was 92.
In addition to being an award-winning author, Tanikawa will be known to anime fans as the writer of the lyrics to the theme songs of several anime adaptations of Osamu Tezuka's manga — Astro Boy, Big X and Phoenix — as well as Studio Ghibli's Howl's Moving Castle. Additionally, Tanikawa also wrote the script for the feature-length movie adaptation of Tezuka's Phoenix manga, 1978's Phoenix: Chapter of Dawn.
Tanikawa's decades-long career of excellence
Tanikawa's involvement in the anime industry same him make major contributions to several of the most of iconic and influential anime series of all time. In addition to the original 1963 series that Tanikawa wrote theme lyrics for, Astro Boy has been adapted twice more as an anime first in 1980 and again in 2003. An America CGI Astro Boy movies was also released in 2009.
The Phoenix manga has been adapted into anime as both feature-length films and episodic anime series. Phoenix: Chapter of Dawn, featuring a theme with lyrics by Tanikawa adapts the fist chapter of the manga and has adapted into a movie in 1978. Other chapters of the manga were adapted at various points between the 1980s and 2020s. Although Tezuka left the Phoenix manga unfinished, every chapter that exists has been translated into English and published by Viz Media.
In addition to working in the anime industry, Tanikawa was also an award-winning author in Japan and worked extensively as a translator. In the decades since first publishing a poetry collection in 1952, Tanikawa published more than 60 further books of poetry. In 1989, his collection Floating the River in Melancholy won the American Book Award. He also won accolades at the 75th NHK (Japan's public broadcaster) Broadcasting Culture Awards, the Zhongkun International Poetry Award and the Noma Children's Literature Prize.
Tanikawa also wrote numerous translations of non-Japanese works in the Japanese language. Tanikawa's numerous translations include translating Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts comic strip, featuring Charlie Brown, Snoppy and friends, into Japanese.
The Anime Away team extends our condolences to Shuntarō Tanikawa's family, friends and fans.