Osaka University

Osaka University appears in the novel through its account of Osamu Tezuka’s medical education: Tezuka pursued a degree there while publishing early manga, and graduated as his signature character Astro Boy was making his first appearance. The university thus marks one strand of a biography that joins medical training to an expanding career in comics and animation.

Tezuka’s Medical Studies

The account says that Tezuka’s application to study medicine at Osaka University was accepted while he was still a teenager. At eighteen, after publishing his first works, he began his medical degree and continued to study medicine alongside his growing body of manga. His education is presented not as a brief prelude to artistic life but as a commitment maintained while his publishing career gathered momentum.

Study and Artistic Work

At twenty-one, in 1949, Tezuka published the science-fiction trilogy Lost World, Metropolis, and Next World. Two years later, at twenty-three, he graduated from Osaka University; the same period saw the publication of Ambassador Atom, in which Astro Boy first appeared. The juxtaposition makes the university a concrete point in a chronology where professional achievement and formal study advanced together.

Place in the Novel’s Account

The university is part of the biography Adele relates to her father when explaining the origin of the name Miraijin, which she had taken from Tezuka’s manga saga. The story’s attention to the name leads into an extended account of its creator, including his medical studies and graduation. Osaka University therefore enters not as a setting for a dramatic scene, but as a biographical landmark within the novel’s chain of explanation: a detail that helps connect Adele’s chosen name to the history of manga and to the future-oriented figure it evokes.