Cartoonist Yoshiro Kato, known mainly for the newspaper strips he drew for decades taking a satiric look at ordinary life, died of respiratory failure Jan. 6, family members said Monday. He was 80.

Kato penned 13,615 episodes of the cartoon "Mappira-kun" ("Mr. No Way") for the Mainichi Shimbun from 1954 to 2001. It was the most cartoon-series episodes ever written for one national daily, the paper has said.

The Tokyo native headed the Japan Cartoonists Association for four years starting in 1992 and won an education minister's award for his work in 1999.