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「ドラえもん」の生みの親として知られる漫画家。本名は藤本弘。長年の盟友・安孫子素雄と共同ペンネーム「藤子不二雄」で活動した後、1987年に独立し「藤子・F・不二雄」として「ドラえもん」「パーマン」などの作品を生み出した。
Fujiko F. Fujio (real name Fujimoto Hiroshi) was born on December 1, 1933, in Takaoka, Toyama Prefecture. As a child he was physically frail and poor at sports, but a boy utterly absorbed in drawing. He met a classmate at his elementary school, Abiko Motoo (later known as Fujiko Fujio A), and the two hit it off, beginning to draw manga together and submit their work. In 1951, their joint work “Tenshi no Tama-chan” was accepted by the Mainichi Shogakusei Shimbun (Mainichi Elementary School Students Newspaper), and from around 1953 the pair began using the shared pen name “Fujiko Fujio.” In 1954 they moved to Tokyo, where Abiko and Fujimoto both took up residence at the Tokiwa-so boarding house alongside Osamu Tezuka and other young artists who would go on to shape the manga industry, honing their craft together.
In 1963 the duo won the 8th Shogakukan Manga Award for early works “Tebukuro Tecchan” and “Susume Robocket,” and in 1964 they began serializing “Obake no Q-Taro,” which became a massive hit and later, together with other works, earned them the 11th Shogakukan Manga Award. In December 1969, serialization began of what would become his signature work, “Doraemon” (published simultaneously across six monthly children magazines January 1970 issues); the idea of a robotic cat combined with time travel is said to have come from fusing science-fiction novels Fujimoto loved with the image of a doll belonging to his daughter. Beyond Doraemon, he created a wide range of works spanning “Perman,” “Kiteretsu Daihyakka,” “Esper Mami,” and “Ninja Hattori-kun,” as well as a series of “SF Short Stories” aimed at adult readers. The duo received the 2nd Japan Cartoonists Association Award (Excellence Prize) in 1973, and Doraemon won the 27th Shogakukan Manga Award (children category) in 1982.
Between 1987 and 1988, the two dissolved their long-running joint pen name “Fujiko Fujio,” and from 1989 on Fujimoto published solely under the name “Fujiko F. Fujio.” Reported reasons include each artist wish to work independently in his own style, along with a desire to clarify, for the future, how copyright and royalties for works including Doraemon would be handled — though the two are said to have remained on good personal terms afterward. In 1994 he received the 23rd Japan Cartoonists Association Award, Minister of Education Prize.
On September 20, 1996, he collapsed while working on the third installment of “Doraemon: Nobita Wind-Up City Adventure,” and never regained consciousness; he died at 2:10 a.m. on September 23 of that year at Keio University Hospital in Shinjuku, Tokyo, of liver failure, at age 62 (he had undergone treatment for stomach cancer in 1986 and surgery for liver cancer in 1993). Posthumously, in 1997, Doraemon received the 1st Tezuka Osamu Culture Award Manga Grand Prize. On September 3, 2011, the Kawasaki City Fujiko F. Fujio Museum opened in Tama Ward, Kawasaki, jointly established by his widow Fujimoto Masako, Fujiko Pro, and the city of Kawasaki; the museum displays, on a rotating basis, around 150 to 200 pieces selected from roughly 50,000 surviving original manga pages. His hometown of Takaoka, Toyama Prefecture, is also home to the “Fujiko F. Fujio Furusato Gallery,” and his achievements continue to be celebrated today.