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Yamazaki Haruya

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author, TV.

(1938-2002) Japanese author and scenarist who wrote dozens of Anime scripts in the 1970s and 1980s. Having worked part-time for Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Production while still a student at Waseda University, Yamazaki found full-time employment at the studio as a production manager after graduation. He sold his first television anime script in 1966, and soon became a prolific contributor to many shows in the sports and children's genres. His sf work includes scripts for Uchū Kaizoku Captain Harlock ["Space Pirate Captain Harlock"] (1978), Space Cobra (1982), and Game Centre Arashi (1982).

Yamazaki's oddest, yet most enduring achievement as a scriptwriter came in the Baseball series Kyojin no Hoshi ["Star of the Giants"] (1968), in which he stretched a single baseball pitch, from throw to bat to catch, into an entire 25-minute episode, dawdling through flashbacks, crash-zooms, freeze frames and the internal monologues of both players and spectators. Originally a desperate attempt to prolong the staff's dwindling supply of adaptable chapters from the original Manga, it set a new standard in hyper-reality. Half a century later, it can be seen as a precursor of "bullet time".

Despite what must have been numerous contacts within the anime business, none of Yamazaki's original works were optioned for adaptation into other media during his lifetime. His published prose began with Ties to anime series, including a novelization of an anime that had itself been based on E E "Doc" Smith's Lensman series, followed by prose adaptations of Manga by Osamu Tezuka. His original work included Yūma and Yuri, which relocated the descendants of the famous samurai Ryōma Sakamoto to Africa, Europe, and Australia in the early twentieth century (see History in SF). Alexandria is a non-sf historical epic set in the last days of the Roman republic, in which a boy saves a young princess Cleopatra from drowning in a canal, and becomes thereafter a witness to her turbulent life. Yamazaki then drifted into generic Heroic Fantasy with Ōkoku ["Kingdom"] and finished his career penning Alternate History. Most notable is his Nobunaga series, rewriting World War Two as a conflict between Japan and Germany following the Nazi conquest of Europe in 1943, but even this seems derivative of earlier Japanese works in the same genre (see Yoshio Aramaki). [JonC]

Haruya Yamazaki

born Japan: 2 February 1938

died February 2002

works (selected)

series

Yūma and Yuri

  • Sahara no Namida ["Tears of the Sahara"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1988) [Yūma and Yuri: pb/Katsumi Matsuda]
  • Madrid no Asayake ["Sunrise in Madrid"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1988) [Yūma and Yuri: pb/Katsumi Matsuda]
  • Hakodate no Cosmos ["Hakodate Cosmos"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1988) [Yūma and Yuri: pb/Katsumi Matsuda]
  • Wien no Soyokaze ["Vienna Breeze"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1988) [Yūma and Yuri: pb/Katsumi Matsuda]
  • Melbourne no Yuriko ["Yuriko in Melbourne"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1988) [Yūma and Yuri: pb/Katsumi Matsuda]

Alexandria

  • Bara to Tsurugi ["Roses and Swords"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1989) [Alexandria: pb/Michi Himeno]
  • Sabaku no Lion ["Lion of the Desert"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1989) [Alexandria: pb/Michi Himeno]
  • Kaze no Ōkyū ["Palace of the Winds"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1989) [Alexandria: pb/Michi Himeno]
  • Nile no Koi ["Love of the Nile"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1990) [Alexandria: pb/Michi Himeno]
  • Serapis Ai no Hono'o ["The Burning Desire of Serapis"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1990) [Alexandria: pb/Michi Himeno]
  • Gekka no Hōyō ["Embrace Beneath the Moon"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1990) [Alexandria: pb/Michi Himeno]
  • Ōji Tanjō ["A Prince is Born"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1990) [Alexandria: pb/Michi Himeno]
  • Caesar Ansatsu ["The Murder of Caesar"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1991) [Alexandria: pb/Michi Himeno]
  • Ai no Arashi ["Storm of Love"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1991) [Alexandria: pb/Michi Himeno]
  • Kami no Kotachi no Tabidachi ["The Travellers are Children of the Gods"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1991) [Alexandria: pb/Makoto Hosoda]
  • Ai to Shi: Kiri no Shōtaijō ["Love and Death: An Invitation in the Mist"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1992) [Alexandria: pb/Makoto Hosoda]

Ōkoku

  • Higeki no Tanjō ["Born in Tragedy"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1991) [Ōkoku: pb/Yoshiharu Kiyomizu]
  • [Title Unknown] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1991) [Ōkoku: pb/Yoshiharu Kiyomizu]
  • Ma no Yama ["The Magic Mountain"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1991) [Ōkoku: pb/Yoshiharu Kiyomizu]
  • Daisōgen ["The Great Plains"] (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1991) [Ōkoku: pb/Yoshiharu Kiyomizu]

Nobunaga

  • Chōsenkū Senkan Nobunaga Shutsugeki ["Launch the Super Submarine Carrier Nobunaga"] (Tokyo: Kōzaidō, 1999) [Nobunaga: pb/]
  • Jashin Hōkō ["Cry of Demons"] (Tokyo: Kōzaidō, 2000) [Nobunaga: pb/]
  • Makai Dōkoku ["Lament on Haunted Seas"] (Tokyo: Cosmic International, 2000) [Nobunaga: pb/]
  • Madan Gekitotsu ["Attack of the Magic Bullets"] (Tokyo: Cosmic International, 2000) [Nobunaga: pb/]
  • Ketsurui Funka ["Eruption of Tears of Blood"] (Tokyo: Cosmic International, 2000) [Nobunaga: pb/]

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