Noburo Kawasaki's art fro Kyojin no Hoshi
Noboru Kawasaki, the artist of the classic baseball manga, Kyojin no Hoshi (Star of the Giants) has just refused to received the Tokyo Anime Award (an award that recognizes his contribution in manga and anime) according to Takeshi Nogami's Twitter account!
This award is planned to be given at the Tokyo International Anime Fair (TAF) and he was able to made this decision of not receiving this award after consulting Machiko Satonaka (Lady Ann), the executive director of the Japan Cartoonist Association and decided to turn it down considering the issue regarding the Youth Ordinance Bill.
Because of this refusal, the people from Tokyo proposed to give the award to him any other day asides from TAF but he still refused. Nogami said Tokyo officials got flurried by his unexpected refusal.
Source: MyAnimeList, ANN
It seems that next year's Tokyo International Fair will not be that successful considering that a legend has just refused to receive an award to recognize his achievement. Here's a little trivia, Kyojin no Hoshi is the first sports anime and it has three anime adaptations!