Jirou Tsunoda didn't actually live at Tokiwa. Instead, he'd ride over on his scooter and visit almost every day. I wrote a review of his "Scary Newspaper" series. I really like some of the designs he has for female characters, but he's very erratic, and can't seem to draw profiles to save his life. In "Tokiwa Monogatari", he provides a street map showing the west side of Ikebukuro and a number of places that the Tokiwa gang liked to go to. He'd started out as a manga artist and heard about Tokiwa by reputation. Between 1955 and '56 he was invited over by Ishinomori to join the new "manga movement" they were starting. The problem was that every time he dropped by, all the gang would do was talk about movies they'd just seen. Jirou was desperate to compete against them as an artist, so he set himself the task of drawing at least one page of finished work a day, and would draw while standing at bus stops or when he visited the zoo. The idea that the Tokiwa gang never seemed to do anything manga related while he was there infuriated him to the point where he finally quit the group and wrote a letter of protest which he mailed it to the manor. Weeks went by and he didn't hear anything back. Feeling lonely, he sheepishly returned to the manor where Shimada told him to watch the staff more closely. Eventually, Jirou realized that all of the movie watching, manga reading and magazine collecting going on was actually research occurring parallel to the drawing that they'd do. Jirou finally accepted the possibility that there was more to art than just practicing, and he fell in with Kunio Nagatani and Ishinomori. They'd go out drinking at night, then stop at a cafe and throw story ideas at each other. This routine took place often enough that the taxi drivers taking them home at night knew them on sight.
Tokiwa Story
| Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 |
| Page 5 | Page 6 | Page 7 | Page 8 |
| Page 9 | Page 10 | Page 11 | Page 12 |
| Page 13 | Page 14 | Page 15 | Page 16 |
Sample Manga Page
Supernatural Phenomenon