The color catalog of the International Cartoon Festival in Saitama 2025, Japan

Received a week ago the color catalog of the International Cartoon Festival in Saitama 2025, Japan. 2025 was the 35th year of the festival. I participated in the event with two cartoons of mine, one titled "Thinking the future" on the theme of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and the second one titled "So hot" of Free theme. Works on both themes by 29 Japanese and 27 foreign artists are included in the catalog of the exhibition that took place at Plaza North in November 2025. 

Saitama City is the place where Rakuten Kitazawa - the father of modern cartoon in Japan - spent his later years. The Saitama Municipal Cartoon Art Musem in the home to Kitazawa in his later years hold the Saitama-City Rakuten-Kitazawa Manga Awards competition each year. In 2025 they held the 40th edition and the winning cartoons are displayed on the museum website here (They are not included in this cartoon book anymore). See the Kitazawa Rakuten Manga Award winning cartoon down this post.

The standard A4-sized (21x29.7 cm) catalog of "The Best Cartoons of Nippon" has almost 70 pages this time, about 45 of them covering the color and the monochrome cartoons participated in the festival and selected for the catalog. The remaining pages are the lists of the Japanese and the Foreign artists with their personal histories in both Japanese and English. With this perfectly designed book of art in hand, it is possible to compare the style and wit of the native and overseas manga/cartoon artists and enjoy the great humour in their works.

From Turkey are published the works of the following cartoonists in the catalog: Hüsnü Berkalp Üstün, Kamil Yavuz, Kemal Özyurt, Muammer Kotbaş, Seyit Saatçi, and Hüseyin Çakmak from Cyprus.

Thank you to the festival organizers and the staff of Plaza North who sent me this great collection of manga/cartoon art.