This summer, my translator and I stood in Izumi Matsumoto's home-cum-office in Tokyo, where he had just been searching in vain for any original drawings from "Spring Wonder," which was, 27 years ago, the first manga serial he pitched to leading comics magazine Weekly Shonen Jump.
Its prompt rejection back then paved the way for the next series he conceived, "Kimagure Orange Road," an instant success that came to be known as "the Bible for Japanese teenagers" throughout the 1980s.
"But 'Bakumatsu,' I think I know where those sketches are," he told us mid-search on that occasion, the last of our several meetings with him.