is a Japanese manga artist

Mangaka

is the Japanese word for a comic artist or cartoonist. Outside of Japan, manga usually refers to a Japanese comic book and mangaka refers to the author of the manga, who is usually Japanese...

 best known in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 for the samurai

Samurai

is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...

 manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 series Satsuma Gishiden, which is published in the United States by Dark Horse Comics

Dark Horse Comics

Dark Horse Comics is the largest independent American comic book and manga publisher.Dark Horse Comics was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson in Milwaukie, Oregon, with the concept of establishing an ideal atmosphere for creative professionals. Richardson started out by opening his first comic book...

. Hirata's works belong to the subset of manga known as "gekiga

Gekiga

is Japanese for "dramatic pictures." The term was coined by Yoshihiro Tatsumi and adopted by other more serious Japanese cartoonists who did not want their trade to be known as manga or "irresponsible pictures." It's akin to Will Eisner who started calling his comics "graphic novels" as opposed...

" ("dramatic pictures"), and his artwork has a realistic style comparable to Goseki Kojima

Goseki Kojima

was a Japanese manga artist.-Biography:Kojima was born on the same day as Osamu Tezuka. After getting out of junior high school, Kojima painted advertising posters for movie theaters as his source of income....

's work on Lone Wolf and Cub. He's also known for his use of elaborate calligraphy for dialogue, which has been preserved (though still translated) in the American editions of his work.

According to Frederik L. Schodt

Frederik L. Schodt

Frederik L. Schodt is an American translator, interpreter and writer.Schodt's father was in the US foreign service, and he grew up in Norway, Australia, and Japan. The family first went to Japan in 1965 when Schodt was fifteen. They left in 1967 but Schodt remained to graduate from Tokyo's American...

's Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga

Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga

Dreamland Japan is a 1996 book by Frederik L. Schodt published by Stone Bridge Press that was intended as a "sequel" to Schodt's 1983 book Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. It includes information on several major manga magazines and manga writers and artists, including many who are...

, famed Japanese author and militarist Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima

was the pen name of , a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and film director, also remembered for his ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup d'état...

 admired Hirata's work. Also, Usagi Yojimbo

Usagi Yojimbo

is a comic book series created by Stan Sakai in 1987. In 2011 IGN ranked Miyamoto Usagi 92nd in the top 100 comic books heroes.-Concept:Set primarily at the beginning of Edo period of Japan , with anthropomorphic animals replacing humans, the series features a rabbit ronin, Miyamoto Usagi, whom...

creator Stan Sakai

Stan Sakai

is a third-generation Japanese American Cartoonist comic book creator. He is best known as the creator of the comic series Usagi Yojimbo. -Biography:...

has praised Hirata's artwork. http://www.usagiyojimbo.com/intro/faq/faq_lettering.html

External links

• Comic creator: Hiroshi Hirata