[News Figure] 'Slam Dunk' Author Inoue Takehiko

Decided to Draw Basketball Manga During High School Basketball Team Days
Short Height Point Guard... Similar Setting to Song Taeseop
'Slam Dunk Scholarship' Established... Supporting High School Basketball Teams Too

[Asia Economy Reporter Seunggon Han] Takehiko Inoue (real name Takero Nariai), born in January 1967 in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan, dropped out of Kumamoto University’s Faculty of Letters and worked as an assistant to Tsukasa Hojo. Tsukasa Hojo is the famous author among manga fans in the 1990s. The dynamic yet detailed and realistic drawing style seen in Slam Dunk can be attributed to the solid drawing skills Inoue developed during his apprenticeship under Tsukasa Hojo.

After about 10 months as an assistant, he debuted in 1988 by winning an honorable mention with "Kaede Purple" in the 35th Tezuka Award at the Shonen Jump Newcomer Manga Contest. Although Kaede Purple was also a basketball-themed manga, it did not gain much popularity. Then, on October 1, 1990, he began serializing the high school basketball manga in , gradually building his reputation.

At that time, delinquent school stories were very popular, but Inoue wanted to create a basketball manga, which reportedly caused frequent clashes with the editorial department. Unable to tell the story solely through basketball, the early part of Slam Dunk included scenes focusing on Hanamichi Sakuragi’s friends and their conflicts with school seniors. However, as Slam Dunk’s popularity soared, Inoue was able to complete the work exactly as he had originally intended until the serialization ended on June 17, 1996.

A Slam Dunk promotional video at a movie theater in Seoul. Photo by Yonhap News

Slam Dunk also contains elements of Inoue’s own story. After entering Kagoshima Prefectural Ooguchi High School, Inoue had practiced kendo during his elementary and middle school years. In high school, wanting to try a ball sport and encouraged by a friend, he joined the basketball club. Although he initially joined the basketball club casually, he gradually fell in love with the sport as he stayed behind after practice to work on dribbling alone, eventually becoming the team captain. It is known that during this time, Inoue resolved to one day create a manga related to basketball.

Traces of his determination can be seen throughout the manga. The scene where Inoue practices alone resembles Hanamichi Sakuragi’s scene where he stays behind in the empty school gym to practice shooting, saying "The left hand is just for support." Also, the protagonist Song Taeseop in the currently released is 168 cm tall and plays point guard. Inoue, who is 167 cm tall, also played guard in the basketball club. Ultimately, the psychological portrayals of the players and the technical basketball content at a professional level in Slam Dunk could never have been realized without the author’s own experiences.

With a solid story, excellent depiction, and professional basketball content, Slam Dunk’s popularity was perfect at the time, selling over 120 million copies in Japan across 31 volumes (24 volumes in the complete edition), becoming a huge hit. When the total volume sales exceeded 100 million copies, Inoue made headlines by placing a self-funded thank-you advertisement on the front page of six major Japanese daily newspapers. Later, in 2006, he established the "Slam Dunk Scholarship" to express gratitude toward basketball, supporting high school students aiming to become professional basketball players and basketball enthusiasts. It can be seen as discovering and nurturing the manga characters like Hanamichi Sakuragi, Seo Tae-woong, and "Fire Man" Jeong Daeman, who say "There is no giving up" in Slam Dunk, in real life.

Inoue has also swept numerous manga awards. In 1995, he won the 40th Shogakukan Manga Award; in 2000, he received the 24th Kodansha Manga Award for , which depicts the life of Miyamoto Musashi (a legendary swordsman from the early Edo period); and in 2002, he was awarded the 6th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize Grand Prize. The Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize, hosted by the Asahi Shimbun, was established in 1997 to commemorate the achievements of Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka Osamu is known as the father and god of manga in Japan and is famous to us as the author of and .