, known by the pen name , was a Japanese manga artist, best known for his series Lupin III. Life and career Katō was born in Hamanaka, Hokkaido; he began drawing at a very young age, but did not draw manga until junior high school, when his manga strips were used in the school newspaper. After graduating, he moved to Tokyo to look for work and began going to a technical school for electronics, continuing to draw for fun. While working in a dōjinshi group with other artists, he was recruited by Futabasha and drew yonkoma. He was an assistant to Naoki Tsuji on Zero-sen Hayato and Tiger Mask. Lupin III made its debut on August 10, 1967, in the first issue of the magazine Weekly Manga Action; the cover was also drawn by Monkey Punch. It went on to become an extremely popular and successful media franchise, spawning numerous manga, six animated television series, seven animated feature films, two live-action films, three OVAs, near-yearly television specials since 1989, music CDs, video games, and a musical. Monkey Punch himself even directed the 1996 film, Dead or Alive. In April 2005, he became the professor of Manga and Animation at Otemae University, in its Faculty of Media and Arts, and was a visiting professor at Tokyo University of Technology in May 2010. On April 21, 2007, Monkey Punch participated in a series of lectures on the "interaction of manga and culture throughout the world" at the Freer Gallery of Art. In 2008, Monkey Punch was a judge at the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Second International Manga Awards. He designed the characters for the pachinko game CR Ginroku Gijinden Roman in 2012. The following year an anime adaptation of the game began airing on January 7, 2013, with Monkey Punch's designs adapted by Satoshi Hirayama, and was streamed with English subtitles on Crunchyroll. Monkey Punch participated in the writing of the 2014 live-action film adaptation of Lupin III. Personal life and death Monkey Punch resided in Sakura, Chiba, until his death. He died on April 11, 2019, due to pneumonia. Pen name Katō first started to work as a professional manga artist, under the pen name . In 1965, he made his debut with Playboy School, writing under the name of . The editor of the magazine that "discovered him" then suggested the pen name Monkey Punch. Katō claims that he