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Masashi Tanaka

Japanese mangaka

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ523540
Source-derived summary

Masashi Tanaka (田中 政志, born June 10, 1962) is a Japanese manga artist best known for creating Gon, a silent manga starring a miniature dinosaur.

Biography

Masashi Tanaka was born in Gōtsu, Shimane. He graduated from the Osaka University of Arts in 1985 and published his first manga while still in school. That year he won the Grand Prize in the Kodansha Tetsuya Chiba Awards and moved to Tokyo. He began publishing Gon, his best-known manga, in 1991. Gon won multiple awards in 1998, including the Excellence Award in the Manga division at the second Japan Media Arts Festival in 1998, the Eisner Award for Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material and Best Humor Publication at the Eisner Awards, and the award for Best French Edition of Foreign Material at the 1998 Manga Festival in France.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Masashi Tanaka” is japanese mangaka. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Masashi, Tanaka and Japanese, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1962, 1985, 1991, 1998—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1962-06-10. For this dossier, Masashi, Tanaka and Japanese is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “japanese mangaka” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q523540. VIAF identifies the subject as 54254818. The Library of Congress control number is n96108109. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1962, 1985, 1991 and 1998.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Masashi Tanaka”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Masashi Tanaka primary sources, Masashi Tanaka archive and Masashi research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Masashi Tanaka”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Masashi Tanaka” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.