Sanpei Mihira is a boy from rural Japan who loves all kinds of freshwater fishing. Takao Yaguchi’s original Fisherman Sanpei manga was serialized by Kodansha from 1973 to 1983. It was adapted to an anime that got big in Italy. Some fishing video games were made in the late 80’s for MSX computers based on the manga. New volumes of the manga under the title Tsurukichi Sanpei Heiseiban [Heisei era version] came out from 2002 to 2010 by the original mangaka, and a live-action movie was released in 2009.

There were Tsurukichi Sanpei themed train cars on the Yuri Kogen railway to celebrate the release of the live-action movie from 2009 to 2011, as seen in the cover photo. I also found a video of one of these passenger cars from 2011 on YouTube with only 580 views.

In addition, the prefecture capital, Akita City, wrapped some buses in a Tsurukichi Sanpei theme. According to the Japanese Wikipedia article about Akita City’s bus service, “As of 2003, the paint was changed to regular paint, and the Sanpei design remained on the seat design”.

There’s a cool wall sculpture at Akita Airport which was unveiled in 2016 based on a impactful spread from the original manga. Yaguchi-sensei (center) was present for the unveiling.