Leiji Matsumoto Obituary

Captain Harlock creator Leiji Matsumoto died on February 13, 2023, at the age of 85.

Matsumoto passed on in Tokyo, following an acute heart failure.

Tributes have poured in from across the globe from notable people such as Yasuhiro Nightow, Nozomu Tamaki, Masako Nozawa and Zack Davisson.

Matsumoto is survived by his wife, Miyako Maki.

Who Was Leiji Matsumoto?

Leiji Matsumoto was a Japanese manga artist, and “creator of several anime and manga series” including Captain Harlock.

Born on January 25, 1938, in Kurume, Fukuoka, Matsumoto started drawing at age six until he embraced full manga artistry as a teenager.

Matsumoto first public expression was in 1954, with Mitsubachi no bōken in the magazine Manga Shōnen, under the name Akira Matsumoto.

He became famous when he created the series, Otoko Oidon, and this was followed by “the mature-themed dark comedy Western seinen series Gun Frontier for Play Comic magazine in the 70s.”

Matsumoto celebrated six decades of his career in 2014, with the unveiling of the manga Captain Harlock, illustrated by Kōichi Shimahoshi, in the pages of Akita Shoten’s Champion Red magazine.

It “retells the story of the original 1978 Space Pirate Captain Harlock manga”, and is now licensed in the United States by Seven Seas.