Kasuga Akira 春日章
Nawapedia records illustrations under the name Kasuga Akira in Uramado in 1960; Dō Shōichi (1926–2011) also illustrated period fiction, including serials by Matsumoto Seichō and Sasazawa Saho.
Kasuga Akira was another name used by the illustrator Dō Shōichi for illustrations in SM magazines. Nawapedia, which files the artist under Kasuga Akira, gives the years 1926–2011 and lists the SM magazines Kasuga illustrated: SM Fan, SM Select, SM Kitan, SM Club, SM Spider and Uramado. The illustrators’ association JPAL and the Nikkei newspaper both record the death on September 25, 2011.
Two names
The book designer and illustration historian Ōnuki Nobuki, writing on the blog Sōtei Sashie Tankentai in September 2011, notes that the book 堂昌一挿絵画集 (Dō Shōichi illustration collection) does not mention the Kasuga Akira name at all. The four Kasuga Akira items Ōnuki could find online ran from the August 1963 issue of Uramado to a 1990 paperback, which in Ōnuki’s reading shows the name in use for a long period and suggests the artist kept the two names apart by subject. Ōnuki mentions an unnamed person who had been associated with Dō in the Ginza group exhibition Tsuya and the Japan Publication Artists League. The title of Ōnuki’s 2014 article in the JPAL journal 粋美挿画 (no. 3) describes the same split: period-fiction illustration under one name, alluring pictures as Kasuga Akira.
Nawapedia lists two collections connected with the name: a 1969 Tanbikan anthology of work by several SM illustrators, Expressions of Aesthetics, and a 1993 Green Door Bunko volume, Akira Kasuga – Fascinating Picture Collection. Its image gallery shows Kasuga Akira illustrations from Uramado between 1960 and 1961.
Dō Shōichi
Under the name Dō Shōichi the artist had a long career in mainstream fiction. When the illustrator Iwata Sentarō died suddenly in February 1974 with several serials unfinished, the JPAL article explains, the work passed to Dō, who had a near-disciple relationship with Iwata; that included Matsumoto Seichō’s Saikaidō Danki in Shūkan Bunshun, which Dō illustrated until May 1976. Judged by the space they take in the 1992 collection, the article counts serials by Gomi Yasusuke, Morimura Seiichi, Matsumoto Seichō, Sasazawa Saho and Takigawa Kyō, mostly period fiction, among the representative works, and notes that the collection was published by Nobel Shobō. The Nikkei obituary singles out the serial illustrations for Sasazawa Saho’s Kogarashi Monjirō. Ōnuki’s 2011 blog post reproduces the funeral notice of the Japan Publication Artists League, which names Dō as its former chairman.