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Hideo Azuma Wins Gran Guinigi Award for Disappearance Diary Manga

Manga creator Hideo Azuma won the Gran Guinigi award for "Riscoperta di un'opera" ("Rediscovered Work") for his Disappearance Diary (Shissō Nikki) manga. The awards ceremony will be held at the Lucca Comics & Games festival from October 30 to November 3 in Lucca, Italy.

Disappearance Diary recounts Azuma's years as a homeless man, a menial laborer, and a recovering alcoholic.

The manga shipped in Italy in 2019. Azuma is recognized in Italy as the creator of the Olympus no Poron manga that inspired the Ochamegami Monogatari Korokoro Poron anime, and Italian newspapers heavily reported on Azuma's experiences in Disappearance Diary.

Azuma published the manga in Japan through East Press in March 2005. Fanfare / Ponent Mon published the first Disappearance Diary volume in English. The manga won the grand prize in the prestigious Osamu Tezuka Cultural Awards in 2006. In 2009, Hideo Azuma became the first creator from Japan to be honored with an Ignatz Award nomination for Disappearance Diary. The manga was also a nominee at France's Angouleme International Comics Festival in 2008.

Azuma published the sequel manga Shissō Nikki 2: Al-Chū Byōtō (Disappearance Diary 2: The Ward for Alcoholics) through East Press in October 2013. The autobiographical story follows Azuma when he is admitted into a hospital for alcoholism. The manga depicts the addicted patients, doctors, and the caring yet strict nurses that Azuma encountered in the ward.

Manga creators who have previously won Gran Guinigi awards include Jiro Taniguchi (A Distant Neighborhood, Naoki Urasawa (Monster), Taiyo Matsumoto (Sunny), and Leiji Matsumoto.

Sources: Lucca Comics & Games, Comic Natalie