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Demon Slayer Calligrapher Tsunanori Sakaguchi Passes Away

The Minami Nihon Shimbun newspaper reported that calligrapher Tsunanori Sakaguchi passed away on Monday due to heart failure. He was 86 years old. Sakaguchi, who worked under the name Eisen Tsunanori, created 57 different types of calligraphy fonts spanning 400,000 different characters. His fonts were widely used in television, books, and games, including in the Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba anime series.

Sakaguchi was born in November 1935 in Satsuma in Kagoshima prefecture where he also passed away on Monday. During his life, he briefly lived as a child in Taiwan and enjoyed both drawing and painting. According to his biography on Adobe.com, when he was in the fourth grade he was tasked to help raise funds for his elementary school by selling paintings.

Sakaguchi went on to apprentice as a sign maker in Tokyo before returning to Kagoshima to open his own sign business. His calligraphy was converted to fonts and commercialized in 2004, achieving popularity. He established the font production and distribution company Shо̄wa Shо̄tai in 2013 where he worked with both his son and grandson. It was his grandson who first informed him that his fonts where used in Demon Slayer. Two of his fonts from the anime series, Kokuryu-sоu and Shinryu-sоu, were added to the Adobe Fonts service last year.

Sakaguchi spent his later years eating, watching television, and drawing Japanese characters. He continued to draw up to 100 characters every day in order to create new fonts. He had intended to continue his work until he turned 90.

Source: Minami Nihon Shimbun