Shinichi Ishizuka’s popular jazz manga BLUE GIANT, which was serialized in Shogakukan’s semi-monthly manga magazine Big Comic from 2013 to 2016, has been adapted into an anime film and became an exceptionally long hit. NUMBER 8 (he wrote the novel under the name Eito Namba) has been working as an editor and story director with manga artist Ishizuka to create the manga story. In addition, he wrote the script for the movie and published the novel Piano Man, which depicts the life of the character Yukinori, in conjunction with the movie adaptation. We interviewed the key person behind BLUE GIANT, who creates not only the manga and the movie but also the novel, about his thoughts on the movie, the reason for writing his first novel, and the charms of the character, Yukinori.

I wanted to write the script because I was confident in my level of understanding of the work.

── You served as editor and story director for “BLUE GIANT” and wrote the screenplay for this film adaptation. I saw the movie too, and I couldn’t stop crying towards the end.

Eito Namba (Namba): Thank you very much. I am delighted to hear from those who have never heard of jazz music that they were so moved by it that they went to the theater many times.

── As in this film, you and Ishizuka-san have worked together in the past. How did you come to be in charge of the screenplay for this film?

Namba: It was a kind of due to pure motivation. As I worked with Ishizuka-san on the story, I had a relatively high level of understanding of this work, so I had always wanted to be in charge of the script if it were to be made into a movie. It was also decided that Hiromi Uehara would be in charge of all the music, and since I had been in contact with both Ishizuka-san and Hiromi-san, I asked the director if he would allow me to write the script. Fortunately, I was put in charge thanks partly to Ishizuka-san’s support.

── I suppose there were some differences in your experience between making a manga and the script for a movie. What was it like to actually be involved in script writing?

Namba: I usually write original stories for manga works, but the way the story was put together for this movie was unique and fun. In the movie, some live scenes constitute essential factors, and the film’s storyline is different from that of the manga in that characters are heightening their sentiments in a process towards the shows. Of course, it wasn’t easy, as we had to make many adjustments to the script by incorporating the opinions of the director and producers. Still, in the end, the film became a pretty emotional work even for me.

“We all project our teenage selves onto Yukinori”; Depicting the depth of the characters that was not visible in the manga or the movie.

──Along with the film adaptation, you also wrote the novel Piano Man, which describes the life of the character Yukinori. What prompted you to write a novel in addition to the screenplay?

Namba: When the movie BLUE GIANT‘s release date was decided, the publisher asked me if I would like to publish a novel version of the work. Generally, a novelized version is released in a paperback edition in conjunction with the release of a movie. However, in the case of BLUE GIANT, a novelization of the film as it is would not be a good fit. I had seen the spectacular recording sessions by Hiromi and the rest of the music team, and I knew how hard the anime production team worked, so I thought that if I were going to write a novel, I wanted to write something as “sturdy” as theirs.

──Did you feel anxious about writing a novel for the first time?

Namba: Of course, I was anxious about whether I could write something as “sturdy” as a novel because a novel is entirely different from an original story for a manga or a screenplay. Therefore, I then wrote about 50 pages of the first part of the story and asked a novel editor, who seemed most unlikely to have a flattering word for it, to read it. Then, I got beaten up to a pulp (laughs). But that editor told me that there were some good points, so I asked him to bear with me just a little longer. Anyway, after that, I put all my effort into every single sentence. Finally, when I had written more than half of the book, he said it would be possible to publish it.

── The main character in Piano Man is not Dai, the main character in the manga and the movie, but the pianist Yukinori. Why did you focus on him in this work?

Namba: Initially, I intended to write a story about a trio. However, my editor advised me to deepen the perspective of one of them because if I switched the perspectives of the three, the reader would have difficulty in following the story. If I were to write the story from the point of view of Yukinori, I would have to dive deeper into his personality, which I think would make this story “sturdy.” So I decided to give it a try.

── It is true that in both the manga and the movie, we see Yukinori overcoming his suffering, and I had the impression that he was like a second main character, constituting an essential part of the story. How do you position Yukinori?

Namba: The main character, Dai, is always strong and straightforward. On the other hand, Yukinori, a pianist, appears to be strong, but inside, he has a lot of pain that he does not show to others. But we all have such problems and distress, don’t we? Yukinori has a kind of instabilities of body and mind that young people his age face. He wants to be kind but can’t, tries to make himself look cool, and sometimes acts dryly, which are all part of the charm of Yukie. We all go through that phase, right? As for me, there are many experiences I don’t even want to remember. When I first moved to Tokyo, I tried to overextend myself, thinking, “I mustn’t lose to the people from Tokyo” (laughs).

── Ah, I see. I certainly had that phase myself (laughs).

Namba: The character of Yukinori has that kind of imbalance. Maybe I wanted to write about the feelings of myself and the people around me in my teenage years, when I was desperate not to lose, in this novel.

Three lonely months devoted to novel writing. I turned my gut upside down and let my pen do the writing.

──This novel is said to have “sounds that can be heard.” What did you do to convey the real feeling of jazz to the reader through the novel, which has its own limitations in expression as a medium?

Namba: Having seen many jazz performances over the past ten years, what particularly attracted me to jazz was improvisation. It is a place where sounds are piled up to create melodies improvisationally at a tremendous speed. It is as if players are turning over their internal organs. There were no lies or calculations, only courage, which is moving. So I tried to write it with the same feeling as if I was turning over my internal organs. I tried not to think about anything else and wrote it only with my thoughts, concentrating intensely. The scenes depicting music in this novel have a very particular way of expression, but if that didn’t work, I thought I would think about it later. The book has many live scenes, but that strict editor said to me, “Let’s just go with it” for all the scenes. I was happy that my improvisational style may have worked.

──So you really wrote as if you were playing jazz music, did you?

Namba: Yes, I did. So I don’t really have any particular things with which I struggled, but I struggled with everything. The three months until I finished writing the book were genuinely lonely. I was going back and forth between the feeling of being extraordinarily lonely and the joy of having successfully registered some part of it. I used to let it all out in front of Ishizuka-san, whom I occasionally met during that time (laughs).

──So you put your heart and soul into this novel and gave it everything you had, right?

Namba: Yes, indeed. So I feel that I could write something more than I was capable of. I aimed to create a work that was as good as the manga and the movie, and I think I was able to come close to that. Both the manga and the movie have received excellent reviews, so I hope this novel will reach many people and follow suit. Ultimately, I would be happy if the manga, the movie, and the book could help to boost jazz music, which has given me such wonderful inspiration, even if only a little.

Text & Interview Ryo Takayama

The post Depicting The Spirit of Jazz; Interview with “BLUE GIANT” Story Director NUMBER 8 on His First Novel “Piano Man” and The Background of Its Creation appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

We at TOKION asked Peppe to create a manga series to find out what an Italian man thinks of Japanese culture. In the series, Peppe will experience Japan’s unique culture and introduce it in the form of a short manga story. For the 6th edition, as a spin-off, we asked Peppe, who is currently back in Italy, to try a popular ramen dish in Milan.

–This time, since you are in Italy, we asked you to try ramen, one of the most typical Japanese foods. How was the taste when you actually tried it at a restaurant that is said to be delicious in Milan?

Peppe: Hmmm……….If you want good food in Milan, you would definitely be better off going for the risotto! So far, I have been impressed by it no matter where I’ve eaten it or what ingredients were in it.

–What flavor was the ramen you had this time?

Peppe: It was hard to choose because all the ramen had strange combinations of ingredients, not like in Japan where they are categorized into miso(salty soy bean paste), shoyu(soy sauce), tonkotsu (pork bone), and shio (salt). I was surprised to find sashimi in some of them. I tried the vegetarian ramen this time.

–Is there any kind of ramen that is unique to Italy? 

Peppe: The restaurant I went had peperoncino ramen, so I guess that would be it (laughs).

— Do you remember the first time you ate ramen in Japan? 

Peppe: I remember it well. I had champon ramen at a famous Chinese ramen restaurant in Nippori called Bazoku. It was really delicious and brought tears to my eyes. I took a picture and even wrote “Thank you, Champon” on Facebook.

–When you come back to Japan, what would you like to eat first?

Peppe: Rice. I want to eat good rice. Since I haven’t eaten it for a long time, I long for that first bite of warm, soft, and delicious Japanese rice. Oh no! I think my taste buds have totally turned Japanese.

Translation Shinichiro Sato

The post How good is Ramen in Milan? : Italian Manga Artist Peppe’s Encounter with Japanese Culture Vol. 6 appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

Winning the Heritage Award for Watashi wa Shingo at the Angouleme International Comics Festival inspired the manga artist to create his 101 paintings titled “Zoku-Shingo: Chiisana Robot Shingo Bijutsukan.”

Once you read this interview, there’s no doubt you’ll feel the esteemed Umezu’s energetic spirit. 

In the latter half of the interview, Umezu brings up Taro Okamoto, who believed humanity hadn’t progressed. He created the primitive-feeling Tower of the Sun and blew Expo ’70 out of the water, which had the theme “Progress and Harmony for Mankind.” You’ll see that Umezu shares a similar sentiment and soul, too. 

Kazuo Umezu
Kazuo Umezu was born on September 3rd, 1936, in Wakayama prefecture. He decided to become a manga artist in fifth grade after becoming inspired by Osamu Tezuka. Umezu made his professional debut in 1955 at 18 with Mori no Kyodai. He gained nationwide recognition as a horror manga artist with titles like Nekome no Shojo and Reptilia. In 1975, he won the 20th Shogakukan Manga Award for The Drifting Classroom. Umezu published hits like Makoto-chan and Orochi afterward. In the 80s, he published mangas that depicted the near future, like Watashi wa Shingo and Fourteen. He’s gained an international fanbase with his creative world-building. “Kazuo Umezz The Great Art Exhibition” is now being held at Abeno Harukas Art Museum in Osaka.
http://umezz.com/jp

The predilection for using pretty colors

――It’s been a while since your exhibition, “Kazuo Umezz The Great Art Exhibition,” was held in Tokyo from January to March this year. Have you received any responses and thoughts about the exhibition?

Kazuo Umezu (Umezu): People talk to me a lot whenever I’m walking down the street, so it seems like many people went to the exhibition. No one has told me it was boring (laughs). 

Everyone seems to have been moved by the exhibition; it gives me strength whenever they say words of encouragement in a lively way. It makes me happy when someone says, “It was great!” People saying hello or coming up to me proves they pay attention to my work. It’s reassuring that many people are like that. It makes me feel like it’s all been worthwhile.

――I also went to “The Great Art Exhibition,” and the thing that stuck with me is how beautiful the paintings and colors you used were. It seems like you made a point to use both primary and vibrant colors. Did you pay special attention to anything in terms of painting or incorporating colors?

Umezu: I realized I’m the type who tries to use beautiful colors to draw.

I used such colors to draw in middle school too. Aside from colors, I was also particular about using various kinds of paint. As a middle schooler, I would use red ink for red, dyes for blue, and food coloring for yellow. 

I used acrylic gouache for “Kazuo Umezz The Great Art Exhibition.” I was excited to choose which colors to use because they were all so beautiful. The dark colors are pretty too. Each color has a distinct beauty, but when you mix another pretty color, both colors can hold their own. That’s why I did my best to use beautiful ones. 

Some say you shouldn’t mix different colors or apply paint onto a canvas without anything else in art, but modern-day paint is pretty [so it doesn’t matter].

――Paints do look more beautiful nowadays.

Umezu: You can get paint that already looks like it’s been mixed, so you don’t have to do extra work. 

The theme for the exhibition is “A series of paintings.” I could draw whatever I wanted, but it was inevitable for me to create rules. If a random color popped up in a series of connected paintings, people would ask, “What’s going on?” One rule was to use red and pink for Marin, a girl, and blue and green for Satoru, a boy. I used those colors everywhere they went in the paintings. With that said, the color of his pants is yellow in some instances and brown in others. 

It wouldn’t be a problem if each painting were a complete piece, but using disjointed colors wouldn’t have worked since the paintings are all connected; the entire series wouldn’t be coherent and impactful. I’m sure there are rules to art that people from long ago created, but I think you can develop your craft by creating new ones for yourself.

“Kazuo Umezz The Great Art Exhibition” Tokyo (Closing), Tokyo City View (Roppongi Hills)

Wanting to make people thrilled and surprised

――You held your exhibition first in Tokyo and then in Osaka in September despite the pandemic. What was the significance of holding a big exhibition during times like these?

Umezu: I, too, was thrown into the pandemic, so I gave this some thought. Even in a world with covid, a recession, and conflict, we will always want stimulation and fun as long as we’re alive.

As the title of the paintings suggests, to feel “Zoku [zoku]” is to feel excited in any situation, even if the world is upside down. We should have things that draw us to them and make us go, “Wow! That’s so cool!” We need spiritual nourishment no matter the situation. 

But even without thinking about all that, I still believe we need things that excite us no matter what. I painted with the desire to make everyone excited and surprised, regardless of covid. I feel like your focus shifts on what you’re looking at [if it’s interesting], thus making you forget about your pain, even if it’s just for a second. That’s essential.

――I feel the same way. I read in another interview that the words “human deterioration” popped up when you were working on “Zoku-Shingo: Chiisana Robot Shingo Bijutsukan.” How did you try to reflect those words in your work?

Umezu: The paintings depict somewhat of a competition between robots and humans. I just thought that humans would deteriorate the more robots advance because they wouldn’t be able to keep up with robots. I feel like people are convinced that everything should and will progress. They don’t think about deterioration. 

I started thinking about this because people cause harm to others daily. I’m sure each person has their reasons, but seeing such things made me think, “Well, we’re going downhill.” When things are progressing, things go in a good direction. But things are going in the wrong direction, making morale low. I feel like the future is about returning to nature. Once there’s no civilization left to progress, the only choice would be to return to nature. We’ve reached a point where the forefront of progress is almost out of reach.  Modern progress is about numbers. Once we get results using them, we won’t be able to revert the process. Things will only continue moving forward. We listen to science telling us what to do and operate accordingly without understanding what’s at stake. If electricity stops working, progress will also stop. Then, we humans wouldn’t be able to do anything. We’d disintegrate. That’s why I feel like the direction we’re heading in is that of deterioration. I call it the reformation of deterioration (laughs).

“Kazuo Umezz The Great Art Exhibition” Tokyo (Closing), Tokyo City View (Roppongi Hills)

I won’t continue drawing unless I hear a voice inside me saying, ‘That’s good”

――(Laughs). Change of topic: you’ve been living in Kichijoji for a long time. I also live in an area not too far from you, and I sometimes see you walking around. Does Kichijoji influence your creativity or ideas?

Umezu: Not at all. Whenever I draw something based on Kichijoji, it’s more like a journal of my everyday life. Rather than it being dramatic, it’s more like nonfiction. But that’s not what I strive to do. Kichijoji, San Francisco, or New York; where I live doesn’t matter because I live in my head. However, I will say that Kichijoji is convenient for shopping (laughs).

――Your mangas are highly appreciated abroad too. How do you think your foreign audience perceives your work? What sort of responses do you get from them?

Umezu: I’m not sure since I’ve never met them, but some movies make me say, “They took that from my work,” so I think my work is recognized abroad. I also read a Spanish book that was written about me. 

I also read God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand in Japanese because I heard the translated version was published abroad. I don’t read my own manga once I’m done working on it. So, when I reread it, I was like, “Wow, look at that! That’s amazing!” I read it from the perspective of a reader. Not to toot my own horn, but it was impressive. I thought about watching the film adaptation, but I stopped because I felt like my manga would win (laughs). 

I sound like I’m praising myself, but that’s how impactful the manga seemed to me. People might hesitate to read it because the human aspect of it sticks out, but the story is excellent. My career abroad has only just begun.

――It’s as though your mangas predicted modern-day society. In Watashi wa Shingo, you illustrated the computer, for instance. I still get surprised when I read your work today. How did you come up with this idea? Amid an era where so many things are happening, what does progress and the future look like to you?

Umezu: People still believe advancement is inevitable but must realize they have the wrong impression. That’s the only way to improve the future. At one point, I realized the job of the manga artist was to draw what would happen next. 

I used to think of different stories in my head, but I never thought about reality or what was happening in the world. Looking back, every manga I drew aligned with whatever became popular afterward. There’s no other way to say it; my work has remained relevant through the years. But it’s not like I predict the future using logic. 

――What was the process behind Watashi wa Shingo like?

Umezu: When I drew Watashi wa Shingo, there was a curse of mangas with a lot of research that went into them not doing well. I knew the manga wouldn’t perform well if I half-heartedly looked into robots and incorporated that into the story because of the curse. I used photos taken at a factory to reference realistic designs, but back then, you would see rows of square computers that weren’t interesting at all. I had to come up with an exciting design on my own. The robots at the factory differed significantly from what I drew, but I asked computer experts whether the robots I drew would function. I tried my best to merge my imagination and reality.

I won’t continue drawing unless I hear a voice inside me saying, “That’s good.” Once I hear it, I draw obsessively, no matter what anyone says. You run into hindrances if you work on one manga for six years. If you pay attention to them, you’d be discouraged, and your work will be confused. It’ll fall apart because of the lack of cohesion. Even if whatever I’m working on isn’t well-liked, once I hear my inner voice saying, “That’s good,” I have to trust it and complete the process.

――You stick to your gut once you start drawing.

Umezu: Another good thing is that I feel like there’s something other people and I have in common. As long as my intuition is correct, the things I like will begin spreading among the rest of society. I believe this is something that happens to me.

Whenever I draw something new, the content naturally becomes about the future. I foresee future events before I even know it. I feel like having a childlike spirit plays a significant role in this. Just because something is made into reality through science and logic doesn’t mean a new story is born. If you write about what happens in reality, nothing is exciting or fun about it. 

Truth exists, of course, but it’s different from fiction. I want to create interesting stories. Having a childlike spirit is a profound thing. It’s a great thing I picked up. My stories feature children, so there’s a connection (laughs). The difference between adults and children is that adults might think something is childish, but children might think the opposite. Whenever I draw stories, the direction is usually determined by the protagonist. The age kept getting younger and younger, and in Fourteen, the protagonist became as young as three years old. That’s no longer about having a childlike spirit, as three-year-olds are children (laughs). 

――True (laughs).

Umezu: I recently read an article in which Yasunari Kawabata-san said, “You need to have a childlike spirit.” I felt there was a disconnect because his works were moving and dealt with everyday subjects. But I realized you need a childlike spirit to have an artistic and dramatic one, or else you wouldn’t be able to create a good piece of work. 

That’s why having a childlike spirit is an important criterion. But that doesn’t mean I’m disregarding nonfiction. Everyday life is nonfiction, so you must connect the two to establish a narrative. How that could look depends on the artist’s skills.

――That allows the artist to show off their skills.

Umezu: Old mangas have a childlike spirit, but recent mangas are about jobs, to put it simply. I believe mangas should have a wonderful youthful spirit; they shouldn’t portray work. It’s vital to have both a childlike spirit and polish. In that sense, I guess I’m the best at what I do (laughs).

The content of God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand, is chaotic, but I feel like it represents a childlike spirit. It’s like, “Now, this is what I want to draw! This is it!” The term youthful spirit can also be linked to artistry, which is why it resonates with me to this extent. 

With that said, I’m not making fun of reality. I can’t change reality, so all I ask for is to have a free inner world. If we’ve been able to evolve as humans regardless of the era, then I want to say that I’ve used my imagination to the fullest to create things.

“Kazuo Umezz The Great Art Exhibition” Tokyo (Closing), Tokyo City View (Roppongi Hills)

“I painted to the best of my ability, so I want everyone to see my works”

――Your exhibition in Osaka opened in September. What part of the exhibition do you want to highlight for prospective visitors? Also, what’s your image of Osaka? Do you have any memories there?

Umezu: I’m so grateful people want to visit my exhibitions many times. Those who saw my paintings in Tokyo and those who haven’t will find something about the paintings that move them. I painted them during covid, so I’m sure there’s something people could be drawn to. I hope they can look for that element. I feel like something about the paintings will resonate with people and make them say, “Oh wow, look at how detailed this part is!”

When I think of Osaka, I think of a big city. I’m from Gojo, Nara, so Osaka is the closest big city for those from Gojo. When I started drawing manga, I submitted a story to Shojo Book published by Shoeisha, and they decided to feature and serialize it. Haha Yobu Koe was serialized for a year, and I also drew other stories, but I felt that I still didn’t have enough skills. I brought my story to a publisher in Osaka because I wanted to start over. I drew mangas in Osaka until that publisher went out of business. After that, I came to Tokyo.

――I didn’t know you drew manga in Osaka!

Umezu: Unlike the culture in Tokyo, Osaka’s culture has no pretense. There were many unashamedly childlike mangas, so that was fun (laughs). People said pulp fiction books were low-brow, but that made them good. Yaneura 3 Chan is funny. I feel like mangas in Osaka were more open with their emotions, and the same could be said about the people there. It’d make me happy if people in Osaka could view the exhibition in a different light from people in Tokyo. I hope they could see the humor in my work and be like, “That was funny,” or “That part was a gag.” Some might also see the scary parts as a gag (laughs). 

I painted to the best of my ability, so I want everyone to see my work. When I think of Osaka, I think of Taro Okamoto-san, who was powerful and brilliant. I have my strengths in other areas, and I can proudly say I can come up with stories like no other! I’m just as good as Taro Okamoto-san! Picasso drew comics, but I’m just as good as him! I’m just as good as anyone else! If people could view my paintings thinking about how I feel just as capable as people from Osaka, then I believe they could feel even more excited (laughs). 

■Kazuo Umezz The Great Art Exhibition
Dates: ~ November 20
Venue: ABENO HARUKAS Art Museum, Osaka
Address: ABENO HARUKAS 16F 1-43 Abenosuji 1chome, Abeno-ku, Osaka 545-6016 JAPAN
Hours: [Tues. – Fri.] 10:00-20:00, [Mon., Sat., Sun., & national holidays] 10:00-18:00
*Last admission is 30 minutes before closing.
Admission:  Adults ¥1,700, University students / Senior high school students ¥1,300, Junior high school students / Elementary school students ¥500, and kids under 12 are free
Web: https://umezz-art.jp

The post Manga Artist Kazuo Umezu’s Undying Urge to Create appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

We at TOKION asked Peppe to create a manga series to find out what an Italian man thinks of Japanese culture. In the series, Peppe will experience Japan’s unique culture and introduce it in the form of a short manga story. In the fifth installment, Peppe goes to Sumida-ku, Tokyo, to experience for the first time the design of “Edo Kiriko” (a generic name for faceted glassware produced in Tokyo from the end of the Edo period to the present). Discover how it turned out.

–This time, you tried your hand at designing “Edo Kiriko,” a traditional form of Japanese glass art designated as one of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s traditional crafts.

Peppe: I was truly committed to it for an hour and a half, so it was just as or even more tiring than when I concentrate on drawing manga. Or it was probably because I am just getting older (laughs). I had a vague idea of what “Edo Kiriko” was, but it was great to know that this is how it is made.

–How was it to actually sharpen and design the glass?

Peppe: At first, as a manga artist, I was really worried that I might cut my hand on the machine. So this time I tried to express that fear in the manga as well (laughs). But in reality, I was able to work safely. And just as I had expected, it was fun to create things with my hands.

Just like when I drew manga for the first time, I couldn’t do it right at first. I really wanted to try a more complicated design, but I thought I must not fail, so I decided to keep it simple this time, using the form of a bamboo thicket. Now that I know how to do it, I would like to do it again after developing a specific design.

The post Is the “Edo Kiriko” Workshop Dangerous? : Italian Manga Artist Peppe’s Encounter with Japanese Culture Vol. 5 appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

Fumi Yoshinaga is known for her big hits including Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, which depicts the rise and fall of the Tokugawa family in the world where the Ōoku becomes a harem of men serving the female shogun, Antique Bakery, a story about a bakery where only men work and What Did You Eat Yesterday?, a slice of life series focusing on a gay couple. 

She has been an artist whose approach naturally values the notion of diversity as can be seen from a work in which women assume the reins of government instead of men, or a story of a gay couple serialized in youth manga magazines. However, she herself describes her own activities as simply depicting manga works that she wants to read.

In the interview book 仕事でも仕事じゃなくても　漫画とよしながふみ(Regardless of Whether Work or Not Work: Manga and Fumi Yoshinaga), released on July 26, she describes in detail her life trajectory from her childhood to the present. She says that she draws manga freely, but how did these works, which are somewhat socially conscious, come about? 

My student life was just like the life of hidden Christian

–You have drawn many works that questions gender roles of men and women, but are you particular about that?

Fumi Yoshinaga (Yoshinaga): I have never been particularly conscious of that. I have always just created stories I wanted to read. I think those stories just happened to be set up that way.

I think it’s only been five years or so since people came to appreciate my works in relation to the notion of diversity, probably due to the diffusion of the concept of LGBTQ, the fact that working all their lives has become so common for women, and many other social movements. 

If there are people who take my works seriously, I think that’s wonderful and I’m glad.

–You originally made a name for yourself by making fanzines of SLAM DUNK and BL magazines, how did you end up working on them?

Yoshinaga: Ever since I was a little girl, Patarillo! has been my favorite, so I enjoyed reading stories about male and male relationships. I didn’t think of it as a homosexual story at the time. I also loved reading Kaze to Ki no Uta (Poem of Wind and Trees) and Hi Izuru Tokoro no Tenshi (Emperor of the Land of the Rising Sun).

I first encountered doujinshi culture when I was in the first year of junior high school and a friend lent me a copy of a story about the relationship of Kojiro Hyuga and Ken Wakashimatsu from Captain Tsubasa. I was shocked because it was a very profound story. I couldn’t believe that they could come up with such a story from that major sports manga (laughs).

However, when I was in junior high and high school, bullying was a social problem, and I thought that if I stood out, I would be bullied. So I tried my best to hide the fact that I was an otaku so that it would not be obvious. Although I read major popular manga to keep up with everyone, I tried to avoid talking about the manga I really liked outwardly.

–You had friends who lent you doujinshi copies of Captain Tsubasa, but you “held your breath” not to stand out?

Yoshinaga: Yes, I did. I had friends who were otaku, but when I graduated from high school, not only me but also all of my otaku friends “mimicked” normal people by reading the atmosphere. I dressed as normal as possible so that I didn’t look like an otaku, and I didn’t join manga club. I would go to coterie events, though (laughs).

–It sounds like being a hidden Christian.

Yoshinaga: Exactly. So when I joined the manga circle in college, my friends worried about me, saying “Will you be able to get along with others in school?” For me personally, I thought I would be fine since we didn’t have any classroom-relationship at the university, and I had a strong desire to talk about manga with someone, so I have no regrets about joining the manga circle.

I think it was when I was in my third year of college. A friend recommended me to read SLAM DUNK, and when I saw Kogure and Mitsui, I just came up with the idea of making their story (laugh). I couldn’t stay away from that idea and decided to publish a doujinshi.

Since then, I have not been able to do anything other than creating fan-fictions, and I even went to graduate school to continue my doujin activities for as long as possible. During that time, various BL magazines sprang up. A friend I met through doujin activities became the editor of one of the BL magazines called Hanaoto. And the opportunities I have been given to be involved in it have helped me build the career I have today.

–Did your parents not oppose you? Going to graduate school seems quite a big deal.

Yoshinaga: They were not against it. My mother was only worried if I could make a living off of it though. 

Love is love, even if it is BL, and I was strict with myself

–Your career as a BL manga artist began as an extension of your doujin activities, but did you ever feel difficulty or feel that it was better to hide that fact?

Yoshinaga: I did not feel a sense of oppression that I had felt as a teenager. Also, at the time of my debut, the term “BL” was coined and there was an atmosphere in which the entire market was gradually gaining momentum.

At the time, it was seen as pornography for adult women. Although I was embarrassed in the sense that I was creating erotic manga, I had no special feeling about the fact that I was depicting male/male love stories.

–Why didn’t you draw male-female romance?

Yoshinaga: It’s not that I don’t draw, it’s more like I can’t draw. I drew one once when I was in high school, and that was the first and last time. I don’t enjoy reading them myself.

–Why is that?

Yoshinaga: It is probably because I myself am not very interested in and dispassionate about romance. However, I can easily broaden my imagination as to stories starting from “comradeships,” “master-slave” relationships or the kind of friendship that becomes too passionate and then turns into romance. Nevertheless, although I debuted as a BL manga artist, it was not at all easy for me to draw many variations of romance.

–Why was it difficult for you who were drawing doujinshi to draw many different kinds of romance?

Yoshinaga: Even though I was drawing BL, love is love. At that time BL was basically short stories, characters in manga met and fell in love each time. I was troubled by the fact that they were another kind of love stories after all. Also, due to the policy of the magazine, I had to include sex scenes, which was very difficult for me. So I tried to move to a general magazine soon.

It should be possible to live without romance

–What was your intention in creating All My Darling Daughters, which focuses on the difficulties women face in life?

Yoshinaga: At first, I was going to depict something like a light romantic comedy, but as I went on working on it, it turned out to be something completely different.

–It portrays a daughter who cannot celebrate her mother’s remarriage, a woman who cannot fall in love with anyone, and a woman who continues to have a complex about her appearance because of her parents. The emotions of each character were vividly portrayed.

Yoshinaga: Yes, that’s right. In this work, I straightforwardly express the feelings I have had since childhood, such as the oppression I received from my parents and the speculation that I could be happy without falling in love. I didn’t want to use manga as a means to convey my ideas, but I was conflicted because I had to touch on these feelings in the creation of the story.

–In the interview book, you mentioned that you incorporated a lot of what you have seen and heard. Is that right?

Yoshinaga: Yes. For example, For example, when I saw a life counselor saying to someone who felt that it was unacceptable that her mother would remarry, that she should be happy for her, I wondered if that was true. I think it is hard for children, even if they are adults, to be shown the sexual side of their parents. I think that a mother’s life is her mother’s, and she is free to remarry, but I thought it was okay if this person couldn’t congratulate her. 

–I agree that even if you don’t congratulate her on her remarriage, you can still build a proper relationship with her.

Yoshinaga: In the manga, I expressed the idea that we can continue to have a normal relationship, but we don’t have to agree with her fully, and we may take ambivalent attitude to it.

–I was surprised by the personality of the main character’s friend, Sayako, who has no romantic feelings for anyone.

Yoshinaga: Yeah. She is what we now call “asexual,” but I didn’t even know that category at the time. I think it is very important to be named and recognized. It has certainly made life easier for many people.

–What was the story behind the character “Sayako”?

Yoshinaga: It all started when a friend said to me, “I pay my taxes, I take out the garbage on garbage day, and I live a decent life, so why should I feel as if the world is blaming me just because I am not in love?”

I nodded deeply at her statement because I too had been uncomfortable since I was a student because I was not passionate about love. I guess I had to go with the flow of society, where people who have never loved others are considered to be living a pitiful life. I have been skeptical that loving someone is the highest good. If I say, “I don’t want a boyfriend,” people say, “Don’t try to act tough!” so I had to pretend to want a boyfriend, which is too much of a bother (laughs). I felt like I was mimicking them all the time in my life.

–I also think that love is not the only thing that colors people’s life.

Yoshinaga: In the past, I think women chose marriage partly because it was in fact very difficult for a woman to work and live alone. It was a world where people were really starving to death, not metaphorically. But I don’t think we are in such an urgent situation now, so I feel that we don’t have to be concerned about marriage and love.

I am not skeptical about the institution of marriage; I think it would be good if we could have a society where people could have enough economic power to break up with the person they married if he or she was a terrible person.

I have vaguely thought since I was a child that I wanted to work all my life. But my childhood was a time when most women basically “got married, quit working, and became housewives,” so it was difficult for me to talk about my true feelings even with my friends.

–Why was that?

Yoshinaga: To say that “working all my life” was a good thing might sound like denigrating my friends who want to get married and become housewives but also my mother who made that choice. I have been really struggling with how to deal with my true feelings because I like my friends even if their ideas are different from mine, I want to be friends with them, and I didn’t want to argue with them. I didn’t want to tell lies, but I didn’t want to make a negative comment about them.

But times have changed so much now. It has become easier to make such statements. When I first released All My Darling Daughters, I was a little upset, thinking that I had made something that would not sell as entertainment, but now I am glad that I did.

The moment I felt I had to apologize

–Gay people appear in many of your works, not only in What did You Eat Yesterday?. In Antique Bakery, Ono stood out as a “mysterious and alluring gay man.” In the interview book, you also said that you had been wondering if it is okay to portray that character in that way. Was there any change in your mind? 

Yoshinaga: I drew my BL and other works thinking that gay people might read them. So when gay people read my works, they may think “this is different,” but I was careful not to make them feel that they were being denied. I thought it was still okay to be unrealistic, but I never wanted to portray them in a way that might give an unusual impression to the readers.

But Ono was in a way the only exception. I had no intention of making him a laughingstock, but I felt bad if I had given readers a mistaken impression about gay people by portraying him in a funny way.

–This feeling was expressed in the conversation with the character Ato in You Can Make a Living Without Love, right? 

Yoshinaga: Yes, that’s right. I have a gay friend who reads my works. When I apologized to him for how I portrayed Ono, he said, “If you get angry at every little thing like that, you can’t live as a gay person,” which baffled me. At that time, I felt very sorry. Since then, I have been careful not to change the attitude mentioned above. As for the depiction of gay men, I am not really conscious of whether it is realistic or not.

I think there are not many male-female love stories that depict realistic dramas. Rather, I enjoy reading them while thinking, “How could this happen? ” or “I hope this kind thing really happens in my life.”

–In terms of What did you eat yesterday?, I feel that the daily life of a gay couple is elaborately depicted. What was your intention behind this?

Yoshinaga: For me, What Did You Eat Yesterday? is more of a cooking manga than a gay love story. I have sometimes been called socially conscious, but I really wanted to depict the daily life of a middle-aged man, which I love (laughs).

It is about those who have a job and worry about the difficulties of living with someone else (laughs). What Did You Eat Yesterday? is strongly focused on the difficulties of communal living. It is difficult to adapt one’s lifestyle to someone else’s, even if that someone is someone you like.

–It is a problem that many people have, not only gay people.

Yoshinaga: Yes, exactly. I wanted to read a gay story that wasn’t based on romance supremacism myself.

–The serialization of it in the youth magazine Morning received plenty of attention from readers.

Yoshinaga: At first, I presented the idea to the editor of a BL magazine, but that person didn’t respond well to it. In the context of BL, the relationship of the two who have already gotten together was not interesting. There is no description of sex, no indication that the two are growing closer. For the readers of ordinary BL manga, there is no part of the story they want to read.

I was talking to various editors about how I wanted to draw this kind of new work, and the editor of Morning approached me and said, “Please work with us.” I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but after the serialization started, I realized how influential it was. I personally thought that Morning had female readers who read the magazine because their partners buy it, so I even thought that it would be accepted as a cooking manga by such readers.

Thankfully, the first episode was featured in the opening color pages and even on the cover. I drew Kenji and Shiro, being very thankful, but I was horrified by the response.

–Can you say more about it?

Yoshinaga: I received a lot of email from my friends and they were like, “You work in Morning doesn’t look different from your previous ones, but is it okay?” or “Are you sure it is okay for you to put this in Morning?” The editor-in-chief of the gay magazine also contacted me politely and said, “It is epoch-making for a story like this to be published in a youth magazine like Morning, so please feel free to ask me anything if you have any questions.”

I was just drawing what I wanted to draw, which was not much different from what had been published in BL magazine, so the objective opinions made me raise my consciousness and feel horrified at the same time.

–Did you have to change the way you drew in response to the feedback?

Yoshinaga: When I started the series, I had already decided on the plot of the story and had drawn some of the episodes, so I couldn’t change it. I couldn’t do anything dexterous like that, so I just focused on drawing the story a little by little. 

One thing I changed was that I made sure to draw the recipe and ingredient quantities properly because I received a postcard from a reader saying that she had made the strawberry jam that appears in the piece. Although I was able to make some adjustments to it in the aspect of cooking manga, I thought I couldn’t change much about the setting of the gay couple, so I continued the manga as it was. However, the editor-in-chief of Morning changed around the time I published the second volume, and when I greeted him, I was surprised to hear from him that Morning is a conservative magazine for middle-aged men.

–In the past, you also said that you were worried about expressing yourself in a place where many people would see your work.

Yoshinaga: That’s right. Doujinshi is simple; people who want to read it read it, but that is not the case with commercial magazines, so I was worried in the beginning.

As long as it is a concrete expression, it will definitely hurt someone

— I heard that you also felt conflicted that your work might hurt someone. But if you think too much about not hurting anyone, you might not be able to draw anything.

Yoshinaga: It’s a struggle every time. When I was young, I once told an editor that I wanted to draw a manga that didn’t stand out in any way, and he admonished me, “That won’t make for an interesting work” (laughs). As long as it is a concrete expression, it will definitely hurt someone. So, in a way, I gave up on that point.

–Was there any trigger for it?

Yoshinaga: When I heard a classical musician say, “No matter how much emotion you put into classical music, it will never hurt anyone because it is an abstract expression without lyrics,” I came to the realization that concrete expressions definitely hurt someone.

–How do you deal with it?

Yoshinaga: Even now, I still can’t deal with it well. I think I am probably in a kind of trance when I am drawing. I am outputting what I wanted to read and reading it myself, so there’s definitely an adrenaline rush. That kind of pleasure is what keeps me going with this job.

Of course, I have to be considerate, but if I don’t have the energy to say, “This is definitely interesting, and I want to give it shape,” then I can’t possibly complete a single story.

–I hear that you are also conscious of political correctness.

Yoshinaga: I value political correctness as something that makes the story even more interesting.

–It is said that today, “expressing something is difficult” because excessive consideration for every kind of thing is demanded.

Yoshinaga: On the contrary, I think that the range of content that we can depict has become much wider. Even in terms of BL, there are now not only love stories with sexually explicit descriptions, but also love stories in which couples gradually deepen their relationship. Manga featuring argumentative but attractive girls are also popular. The number of stories that do not depict romance has also increased dramatically. But as a reader, I also love romantic stories.

The range of manga I enjoy reading has expanded and now I like manga even more than before. As a reader, I look forward to the future.

Fumi Yoshinaga
Manga artist who made her commercial debut with The Moon and the Sandals. Her works include Ichigenme… The First Class is Civil Law, A Child’s Temperature Antique Bakery and Flower of Life. Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, serialized from 2004 to 2020, won numerous awards including the 13th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Award Manga Grand Prize and the 42nd Japan Science Fiction Grand Prize. Her work What Did You Eat Yesterday?  which has been dramatized and made into a movie, is now published in serial form in the magazine.  

仕事でも仕事じゃなくても　漫画とよしながふみ (Japanese Edition)
(Regardless of Whether Work or Not Work: Manga and Fumi Yoshinaga)

This first book of interviews with manga artist Fumi Yoshinaga includes many stories from before her professional debut. In more than twenty hour-long extensive interview, she talks not only about her own work, but also about her childhood memories, influential manga for her from elementary and junior high school days, interesting stories from the manga club she belonged to in high school, and the circle activities she was involved in at university before she debuted as a professional manga artist. She also talks about her future plans after Ōoku is completed. The interview was conducted by writer Fumiko Yamamoto, who is well versed in BL and has interviewed Yoshinaga many times.

Author: Fumi Yoshinaga
Interviewer: Fumiko Yamamoto
Release date: July 26, 2022
Specifications: 127 × 188, Paperback
Number of pages: 362
Price: ¥1,980
Publisher: Film Art Inc.
http://filmart.co.jp/books/manga_anime/yoshinagafumi/

Translation Shinichiro Sato
Photography Yohei Kichiraku
Edit Atsushi Takayama（TOKION）

The post Manga Artist Fumi Yoshinaga Talks about Her Own Works and Changes in Society: Expanding Manga Expression appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

For the book release of The Song About Green – Gather the Wind this past May, Happy End member Takashi Matsumoto and Haruki Murakami wrote the blurbs for the first and second volumes, respectively. This collaboration demonstrates the power of culture that transcends time and borders.

What did Gao entrust to Midori, who is also her alter ego, and what did she try to depict through the character? How did this story come about, and how did it grow to be what it is now? Musician Haruomi Hosono plays an important role in Gao’s work. Yusuke Monma, author of the definitive biography of Hosono, Haruomi Hosono and Their Era (Bungeishunju, 2020), conducted a Zoom interview with Gao, who lives in Taiwan.

The Song About Green’s origin story: Encountering Haruomi Hosono’s music while in Shinjuku to purchase Happy End’s Kazemachi Roman

– The first thing I’d like to ask you is about the inspiration for this book. In the afterword, you wrote, “The birth of The Song About Green dates back to the summer of 2017.” How did the story come about that summer?

Gao: As mentioned in the afterword, I visited Japan for the first time in the summer of 2017, when I was twentyone. Japan was filled with things I couldn’t find in Taiwan, and I already had a fondness for Japanese culture because I grew up watching Japanese anime and reading manga.

The one thing I wanted to accomplish while in Tokyo was to buy Happy End’s album Kazemachi Roman. The rest of the story is as told in the manga. Coincidentally, Haruomi Hosono’s music was playing at the Shinjuku Disc Union I went to. Once I worked up the courage to ask a staff member what was playing, I found out it was“Koi Wa Momoiro” from Hosono House. That led me to purchase both Machikaze Roman and Hosono House. I later realized that Haruomi Hosono was a member of Happy End after looking at the lyric sheet.

It felt like I instantly fell in love with Mr. Hosono, and I did a lot of research on him once I got back to Taiwan. He was still making music at seventy, and was on tour in Japan to promote his new album. I wanted to go see him play, but I was a college student who had classes to attend and no money, so I decided against it. A mixture of that feeling of wanting to go but unable and Midori Kobayashi’s “strawberry shortcake theory” in Norwegian Wood is what led me to start writing a journal series titled “The Song About Green.”

Then one day, someone I had a crush on told me that Mr. Hosono was coming to Taiwan. I used that momentum to ask if he wanted to come with me. He agreed to go, and my “The Song About Green” journal series became something of a prophetic dream. I wanted to write a manga based on this strange experience, which is how this came about.

— So the story in the manga is basically the same as what you actually experienced?

Gao: Yes, although it’s a bit embarrassing (laughs). It’s basically 90% a personal essay.

Reasons behind feelings of nostalgia when listening to “Kaze Wo Atsumete.” Why music, movies, and literature are referenced in Gao’s work

— The song “Kaze Wo Atsumete ” from the album Kazemachi Roman plays a significant role in The Song About Green. Upon her initial listen, protagonist Midori wonders “why it feels so nostalgic, hearing the song for the first time.” Did you feel the same way when you first heard “Kaze Wo Atsumete”?

Gao: I first heard “Kaze Wo Atsumete” when I was in high school. The song was featured on Inio Asano’s A Girl by Seaside, a manga I was reading at the time, which then led me to look up the song on YouTube. But I wasn’t a music fanatic back then, and only casually listened to popular Taiwanese music. I was still young and didn’t understand Japanese that well, so to be honest, even though I thought it was a good song when I first heard it, I didn’t immediately obsess over it or do any deep research.

Just like Midori in the manga, I was unfulfilled with my high school environment, and had high hopes for a new life to begin in college. However, my expectations were completely different once I entered university. There were points when I couldn’t even draw the things I loved, just like Midori. I decided to challenge myself to do something new, because I knew I couldn’t keep going like that. I started focusing my unused energy on listening to Taiwanese indie bands. Just like Nanjun in the manga, I made friends with people around ten years older than me, and became interested in their favorite books and music, including Haruki Murakami’s novels.

The time I spent going to live shows, reading books, and taking film photos probably exceeded the time I spent at school. When I came across the song “Kaze Wo Atsumete” again, it sounded different than it did before. There was a new nostalgic feeling to the song, maybe because I was in a completely different state of mind than when I was in high school. It was strange to experience such a dramatic shift when listening to the same song. That experience led me to become interested in Happy End.

I’m part of a generation that was born in the digital age, so I have an admiration for the pre-Internet era, when people would go to record shops to choose their records. Back then, you couldn’t test out a record or look up reviews online. You had to rely on the cover art to choose records. I find that way of choosing very romantic. When I became interested in Happy End, I knew I wanted to buy the record that that song was on in Japan.

– Norwegian Wood was also an important influence on The Song About Green. Haruki Murakami’s novels often reference music and novels like you do in your manga.

Gao: Perhaps I was subconsciously influenced. I would often look up songs and authors and listen to the tunes I didn’t know that were referenced in Murakami’s novels. It’s nice to be able to encounter new works of art through another. I don’t do it on purpose, but I draw my favorite works in my manga, too. Some of my readers may encounter new works and worlds through that.

– In The Song About Green, there are many books and records on Midori’s bookshelf and in the room of Nanjun, who she falls in love with. Are those books and records that you personally like?

Gao: They are. But because it was a while ago that it was serialized in Monthly Comic Beam, I went back and read it again before making it into its own book. Upon reading it over, I thought Midori, who is a 19-year-old still in search of her goals in life, would like different books, so I secretly revised the titles of the books on her bookshelf (laughs).

Gao’s feelings towards Taiwanese culture and what she wants to express to Japanese readers

– That makes me want to compare the two (laughs). You also touch on Director Edward Yan’s Yin Yin (Japanese title Yanyan Natsu No Omoide) in your work. Japanese films have been heavily impacted by Taiwanese cinema, just as Hirokazu Kore-eda was influenced by Hsiao-hsien Hou. Many audiences like Taiwanese films, and I myself have long been a fan of directors such as Hsiao-hsien Hou, Edward Yang, Ming-liang Tsai, and Yu-hsun Chen.

Gao: Yu-shun Chen is fantastic! Actually, I gifted him a copy of The Song About Green.

– Is that so? In The Song About Green, you express your thoughts on Japanese culture. How do you feel about Taiwanese culture, on the other hand?

Gao: I’ve always thought of Taiwanese people as lacking self-confidence, even now. If someone tells them that they’re “very Taiwanese,” many people may interpret that negatively. Recently, due to the efforts of the government, more people have become interested in their surrounding environment, but many Taiwanese people still don’t think of their culture as a culture.

I fell in love with Japanese culture as a child, and grew up watching anime and reading manga in that environment. I think my whole generation in Taiwan had a similar experience. Since we didn’t consider our culture to be culture, we valued cultures that were imported, and absorbed that instead. Before we knew it, it became a part of our culture, and grew up alongside it.

On the other hand, and this may come across as condescending, as a foreigner who’s witnessed Japanese culture since a young age, I feel like many Japanese people don’t appreciate their own culture. It’s the exact opposite of Taiwanese people, who have tried so hard to search for outside cultures because of their lack of confidence in their own. What’s depicted in The Song About Green is a Taiwanese town, Taiwanese atmosphere, and a Taiwanese story. But the new world the protagonist in the story discovers is Japanese culture. I wanted Japanese people to understand how fascinating their culture is through this manga, and wanted to share with those Japanese people who had never left Japan that there’s an interesting world outside of Japan, too.

On the contrary, I wanted to tell Taiwanese people to be more confident, and that works by Taiwanese creators can be interesting, as well. With this in mind, I decided to first present this work in Japan and then again in Taiwan. Though the process may have been roundabout, I thought gaining recognition in a foreign country first would help with its acknowledgement in Taiwan.

– I see. When I read The Song About Green, I felt like I could actually hear the music and feel the breeze and sun on my skin. What aspects of your work do you think makes your readers feel those things?

Gao: The type of manga I seek to create is a sensitive and essay-like one. I want my readers to feel like they’re watching a movie while they read my work. My manga includes a lot of monologues and simple compositions, which may be different from the expressions of mainstream Japanese manga. I tried my best to figure out how to use my brush and paper to express sounds, wind, sweat, and complex emotions to my readers. I think I researched more films than manga while thinking about how to best express those thoughts through my drawings. I watched many movies and used the transitions between cuts in a movie as inspiration for my sketches.

The Song About Green’s journey from journal, ZINE, to long-form manga

– The Song About Green was originally a journal, then made into a 32-page ZINE, and was finally made into a long-form manga over 500-pages long. I’m sure you made various efforts to try and properly express what you wanted throughout that process.

Gao: I did. I already wanted to rewrite The Song About Green into a longer version when I initially presented it as a ZINE, because there were some parts I couldn’t express the way I wanted to due to my lack of ability at the time. As I mentioned earlier, I have a habit of keeping a journal, and The Song About Green was based on events I experienced between the ages of 19 and 23, inspired by my past diaries.

I had already decided on reconstructing the short story as a 500-page book in two volumes. That  required a lot of creativity because I needed to include all the experiences I had between the ages of 19 to 23. The process was also quite painful because there were a lot of memories I never wanted to relive. I had to figure out how to convey the sensibility and memories of my youth through manga in a sophisticated, cinematic way.

– As far as expression goes, The Song About Green possesses its own unique rhythms and pauses. There’s a scene in the book where Nanjun shows Midori a post-rock album and explains the beauty of the pauses in the music. The lulls in The Song About Green have clearly been influenced by those in post-rock music.

Gao: This is the first time someone has described my manga as being like post-rock music. That

comparison makes me very happy. I often think of nature and the sounds that derive from it when I listen

to post-rock, like wind, rain, thunder… Similarly, rhythms and pauses are something that exist in nature.

I’m honored that you felt as though you were listening to post-rock while reading my manga.

– You mentioned that you had decided from the beginning that this would be a two-volume book. Does that have anything to do with Norwegian Wood?

Gao: Yes, the two-volume format is a tribute to Norwegian Wood (laughs). The reason why the first volume is pinkish and the second volume has a green-ish color is also because I wanted to pay homage to Norwegian Wood.

Inscribing important memories that would have eventually been forgotten

– Right, because Norwegian Wood is known for its first volume cover being red and its second volume cover being green. One line in the book that was particularly moving was when Nanjun says to Midori, “It’s not because of me/It’s because you were brave/You found them on your own and fell in love.” The Song About Green fully affirms the stance of loving something unconditionally and fearlessly. It also communicates how wonderful it is to love something. Perhaps that was one thing you particularly wanted to convey through your work.

Gao: That line actually has an interesting metaphor. For Midori, the figure of the man she accidentally witnesses on the beach – who we don’t know committed suicide or not – continues to haunt her to the point where writing becomes impossible. She regrets talking to him, imagining if things would’ve turned out differently if she hadn’t approached him.

But that’s not the only reason why she has trouble writing. She wanted to escape from herself, and from her surroundings. She thought her life would change once she was in college, only to find out nothing had changed even after moving to Taipei. In other words, the man on the beach had become a metaphor or an excuse to justify why she was doing poorly.

The only way to get out of her writer’s block slump was to face herself. Nanjun didn’t save her. Meeting him and falling in love with him made her come to terms with herself, which I think is a very pure and beautiful emotion. Just as Nanjun tells Midori that it’s “not because of me,” she is able to get out of her slump through finding songs like “Kaze Wo Atsumete” and through Mr. Hosono’s music. She becomes a stronger person by liking someone, which only happens because Midori herself was brave. Nanjun’s kind words personally resonate with me, also.

— Perhaps those were words you wanted to tell your 19 to 23-year-old self. It felt like you were affirming your past self through this work.

Gao: That’s true. Maybe they were words I needed to tell my old self.

– Finally, I’d like to ask about how The Song About Green is filled with a sense of anticipation of loss, amidst this sense of affirmation. How did this sense of loss emerge?

Gao: The Song About Green is a manga based on my own encounters and experiences, all of which may not have been remembered if I hadn’t recorded my thoughts in my journal. It’s strange how something so seemingly important when you’re young can gradually be forgotten about as time goes by. But forgetting is not always a negative thing. I believe it can also be a symbol of growth.

I wanted to express the important things you experience as a young person that are eventually forgotten about through The Song About Green. For example, the anxiety you feel riding an airplane to go abroad for the first time, reading your crush’s favorite book to feel closer to them, actively listening to music, among other things. I know the process of growing up is different for everyone, but I’m sure we all share the complex and very sensitive emotions during that time in life. If my readers can remember their experiences during their youth through reading this book, I’d be very happy and honored as an author.

Gao Yan
Born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1996. After graduating from the National Taiwan University of Arts as a visual communication design major, Gao participated in a short-term study abroad program at the Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts as a painting major. Gao’s first manga series The Song About Green was published in Monthly Comic Beam (KADOKAWA) from June 2021 to May 2022, and was published as a book in May 2022 as The Song of Green – Gather the Wind (KADOKAWA). Other works include binding and illustrations for the Haruki Murakami novel Abandoning a Cat: Memories of my Father (Bungeishunju).
Twitter：@_gao_yan
Instagram：@_gao_yan

Photography Kazuo Yoshida
Edit Takahiro Fujikawa
Translation Mimiko Goldstein

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Tatsuki Fujimoto is a manga artist who is primarily characterized by his indifferent  eyes on the subject matter that drives his stories. 

When one takes a look at his career as a manga artist, one would notice that, despite the spectacular success of Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man, he has spent much of his career as a “one-shot manga” artist. Fujimoto’s career as a manga artist began with his first award-winning work, Niwa ni wa Niwa Niwatori ga ita (庭には二羽ニワトリがいた, “There Were Two Chickens in the Garden”) (2011), which means that until 2016, when the first episode of his first full-length work, Fire Punch, appeared on the Jump+ web magazine, Fujimoto Tatsuki had spent roughly seven years working on short manga. The pace of his work was so extraordinary that he sent one story to his editor every day, and used the prize money from his one-shots to cover his living expenses when he was out of work for a while after graduating from university.

These facts and anecdotes demonstrate Fujimoto’s precociousness as a full-length manga artist and at the same time clearly show his lack of attachment to the subject matter of his stories. Even taking into consideration the fact that in the realm of shōnen manga, a “one-shot” manga is basically a stepping stone to forthcoming serialized manga in a magazine, it is clear that Fujimoto is not afraid to generate one pattern after another without regard to the subject matter of his own stories. Rather, it seems as if he sees a story as an interchangeable tool for developing his storytelling skills and achieving great success as a manga artist.

This kind of his artistic quality is demonstrated in a paranoid sort of way in his first full-length work, Fire Punch, in which the protagonist is an avenger, a hero, a god, and nobody at the same time, changing his name and even his identity from time to time. Such interchangeability is also evident with regard to the multiple female characters surrounding the protagonist, and the overall structure of the story is barely stabilized by the half-forcible maintenance of their one man-one woman relationships that the protagonist and female characters have. This bizarre fluidity in the narrative, which has been described as a “plot twist,” is precisely what reveals Tatsuki Fujimoto’s indifference to the subject matter in the story.

At the same time, it is important to note that the fluidity of the narrative in Fire Punch is optimized for the so-called “buzz marketing strategy,” which increases the number of views by inducing communication on SNS. Considering that the serialization of Fire Punch started as part of the “New Serialization Spring Campaign” of JUMP+, it is clear that the extreme nature of the story, with each episode taking a completely different turn, was accepted as a novelty mainly on SNS, and contributed greatly to the increase in JUMP+ site accesses. 

The situation surrounding Fire Punch can be summarized as a collusion between Fujimoto’s indifferent attitude toward the subject matter of the story and the SNS-centered consumer environment, but what is more suggestive is that the reader’s desires seem to have intervened in the story itself. The peculiar style of manga production, in which an interchangeable and open-ended story is brought together into a single form through the reader’s desire, is very important when considering the manga artist Tatsuki Fujimoto. This second characteristic was manifested in his next full-length manga work, Chainsaw Man. I will unfold it step by step.

The Complica​ted Narrative Structure Behind Chainsaw Man

Denji, the protagonist of Chainsaw Man, is an orphan who is underage and has no job or education at the time the story began . He is a devil hunter who hunts the monstrous demons that infest the world in the story, and is exploited by the yakuza. He is living in extreme poverty, even selling his own organs and one eye to help pay his debts. He is a demon exterminator who seeks a “normal life,” but at the same time he is somewhat satisfied with his days with his partner, Pochita, a demon. However, his small happiness does not last long. Denji is cut into pieces by a Yakuza traitors, and he dies. However, his partner, Pochita, replaces his heart and Denji is reborn as a half-human, half-demon, saw-headed, deformed being. After Denji, who has fused with Pochita, kills the yakuza who betrayed him, a woman named Makima, who claims to be a devil hunter for the Public Security Bureau, comes to the scene. That is how the first episode goes. 

The next several volumes depict how Denji, who works as a devil hunter under Makima’s command, interacts with Aki Hayakawa, a public safety devil hunter, and Power, a demon who has taken over a human corpse, and gradually develops a pseudo-family-like relationship.

It is important to note that the “normal life,” a situation where he would not have to worry about food, clothing, or shelter as long as he did the work he was given, that he consistently seeks and temporarily obtains is a wish that is driven by Denji’s origins of extreme poverty, and is by no means an intrinsic wish. This is tragically revealed in episode 82. In this episode, Makina confesses that she dared Denji to establish a pseudo-familial relationship with Aki Hayakawa and Power, and then had him destroy it irrevocably by his own hand, in order to mentally break down Denji, who was poor but self-sufficient, and force him to give up the “normal life” he was seeking. The episode, in which Denji becomes mentally incapacitated after it is revealed that the “normal life” he was seeking for was nothing more than bait to draw Denji into her plot, is one of the turning points in Chainsaw Man. What is revealed here is that his success as a devil hunter and the motives behind it were all planned and fictitious by someone else. Needless to say, the author of Chainsaw Man Tatsuki Fujimoto’s indifference to the subject of the story, which was discussed above, is linked to the absence of a basis for the motive of Denji, the protagonist of Chainsaw Man.

Nontheless, what complicates The Chainsaw Man is that the author who plays with the story and Makima who plays with the motive somewhat overlap, while the storyline that follows seems to criticize such a way of being. Specifically, it is Denji’s interaction with Aki Hayakawa and Power, which was only a stage set to hunt down Denji, that becomes the driving force behind his resurrection and revenge against Makima. In other words, by depicting how the accumulation of micro-relationships outfoxes the plot depicted by the antagonist, it suggests to the reader the allegorical theme of the antagonist being rebelled against by the subject who was supposed to be merely a replaceable pawn.

However, as a matter of course, the plot in which such an uncertain element in the work becomes the decisive factor in the storyline is merely something that has been skillfully designed by Tatsuki Fujimoto. What we have here are three layers of subjectivity: the subjectivity of Denji before episode 81, the subjectivity of Makima who controlled it behind the scenes, and the subjectivity of the author who designs the storyline, including the miscalculation of Makima’s plan. In the story of Chainsaw Man, the protagonist’s subjectivity is first denied, followed by the denial of the antagonist’s subjectivity. But it should be noted that by the avoidance of identification of the author and the characters, the existence of Fujimoto, the subject of the story’s designer, is brought into the background. In other words, the story of Chainsaw Man is within the author’s control, and it is not a thorough criticism of the author’s failure to recognize the inherent value of the subject matter, be it the protagonist’s motivation or the development of the story, and toying with them as he pleases.

Why, then, did Tatsuki Fujimoto present such a complex narrative structure that could be called an act of false self-criticism? The answer is simple: to deceive readers. Even taking into account the fact that the series of Fire Punch on JUMP+ was followed by the serialization of Chainsaw Man on Weekly Shonen Jump after its favorable reception, the difference in readership between JUMP+ and Weekly Shonen Jump is obvious and Chainsaw Man was subjected to more severe scrutiny with the possibility of discontinuation of the series in consideration. The extremely tricky plot-twist technique embraced in Fire Punch could not be used because of the readership of Weekly Shonen Jump above all, So I believe he had to be conscious of the formula of expressing some theme through story manga. In the process, he may have created the narrative structure of Chainsaw Man.

Tatsuki Fujimoto’s recent strange style, formed through the collusion of the absence of a subject matter and the reader’s gaze, does not, however, seem to be adopted in the one-shot manga form, which is created solely by the artist’s hand. While both Look Back and Goodbye, Eri are technically sophisticated, the subject matter they deal with is quite general: the former deals with the acceptance of the sudden death of a close friend, and the latter with overcoming middle-age crisis by bringing an end to adolescent memories. There is no unique and remarkable twists like in Fire Punch, which abandoned the theme in advance, or The Chainsaw Man, which deals with a self-critical theme. In this sense, Tatsuki Fujimoto certainly needs readers.

The second part of The Chainsaw Man has just started in JUMP+ magazine on July 13 of this year. With his reputation as a manga artist, his position in the media in which he is published, and above all, the way readers look at him, all of which are different from the past, what kind of relationship Tatsuki Fujimoto will establish with his readers?

Translation Shinichiro Sato
Photography Yohei Kichiraku

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We at TOKION asked Peppe to create a manga series to find out what an Italian man thinks of Japanese culture. In the series, Peppe will experience Japan’s unique culture and introduce it in the form of a short manga story. In the fourth installment, he visits the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum in Koganei, Tokyo. The museum restores historic buildings from the end of the Edo era to the beginning of the Showa era, and visitors can experience what life was like in the past. What did Peppe feel at the museum, which he went to use as a reference for his next manga?  

–We visited the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum because you wanted to use it as a reference for your next manga. How was it? 

Peppe: I’m thinking of depicting the early Showa era in my next manga, so I really wanted to visit the museum. I found it so helpful. There are many photos of the exterior of [the buildings], but I’m glad I could witness the details, such as the reconstructed interior, tools, and advertisements. It was bigger than I expected, so I got exhausted (laughs). 

–I see. I went there thinking it would be an easy trip, but I was surprised by how spacious it was. The museum’s seven hectares big. You took so many photos of the buildings. Which ones stood out to you? 

Peppe: I took about 2,000 photos (laughs). I’ve seen the exterior of the House of the Leader of the Hachioji Guards from the late Edo era, but the interior was bigger than I imagined. There was a recreated bathroom as well. I was happy to see a glimpse of the world of Vagabond because I like that manga. I enjoyed how the House of Kunio Maekawa, built in 1942, had a blend of the East and West. It made me want to live there. 

–What do you think is the difference between Italian and Japanese architecture?  

Peppe: In Italy, people don’t rebuild buildings frequently like in Japan. Most of the buildings there are old. There are many skyscrapers in one part of Milan, but not as many as in Japan. There are just so many in Shibuya. I personally like old Japanese houses with tatami mats and sliding doors.  

Translation Lena Grace Suda

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©Eisaku Kubonouchi

The drawing seems like it is about to move, like it is smiling at me, and I can even catch a whiff of the character’s hair wafting through the air — Eisaku Kubonouchi churns out such realistic line-drawings. Now 36 years out from his debut, Kubonouchi is a distinguished artist who has cultivated his career with a single pencil in hand.

Kubonouchi is best known as a manga artist for his masterpiece, Tsurumoku Dokushin Ryō (“Tsurumoku Bachelor Dormitory”), serialized in Weekly Big Comic Spirits. It has been more than 30 years since the manga came out, so it may seem gauche to unearth the past, when he wrote the story. Ultimately, it should be the reader’s gratification to flip through the pages and read again the old manga as many times as they want. Kubonouchi, however, is the creator who brought such an amazing work into the world. Given the honorable opportunity to meet him in person, I thought I might as well take the chance to be blunt and rattle off all the prying questions I’d always wanted to ask him. There may be things he has been avoiding to think about, or had forgotten already. But by posing these questions, I believe I can draw out his honest sentiments, and deliver his bona fide words to admiring readers.

“Yeah…I forgot something here…”

“Forgot something?”

“Something important…I forgot something important…”

“Okay…”

(Alright, starting from here!! This is the starting point of my second life!)

“Ah, a freshman, again…This is the beginning…the beginning of his beautiful drama…”

(From the final episode of Tsurumoku Dokushin Ryō)

After the conversation, the protagonist Shota and Miyuki leave the dorm holding each other’s hands. As the characters walk off, a freshman enters the dorm. A parting message is faintly written on the shrub— this final scene is portrayed on a two-page spread. It is the first and the last two-page spread of the eleven-volume manga.

I was stunned when I first saw this scene more than thirty years ago. It was the most perfect ending I could have possibly asked for. Since then, I have thought about this last scene every time I make a two-page spread; it has greatly influenced me and my life as an editor. I was blessed with the opportunity to interview my inspiration, Eisaku Kubonouchi, in person.

Tsurumoku Dokushin Ryō
©Eisaku Kubonouchi/Shogakukan

I don’t really look back at my old work

――I read in a previous interview you gave that Tsurumoku Dokushin Ryō (Tsurumoku) becoming a huge hit was a good thing but also an obstacle for you. Do you look back at your most major work?

Eisaku Kubonouchi (Kubonouchi): Almost never. Maybe two or three times in the past, and that’s it. My face blushes whenever I re-read my manga. I’m embarrassed by it.

――Do you remember the stories, though?

Kubonouchi: I remember almost nothing, except that when I was writing, I didn’t feel present in the real world; I was immersed in the fictional world, living every moment in it. Most of my memory from the time is gone, probably because I was too busy and didn’t have enough time to sleep. Once, my assistant told me, “You were passed out with a pencil in hand.” I thought I had only blinked, but apparently I napped a whole hour.

――How about your illustrations? Don’t you at least look back at your recent drawings?

Kubonouchi: Not really. I only look at my past work to look search for any improvements. Even if I did go through it again, I wouldn’t want to look at it too much because it makes me upset— so I focus my attention on imagining what I’ll draw next instead.

©Eisaku Kubonouchi

All the characters I draw mirror myself

――It’s a shame that you don’t remember much about the manga, but I was following every chapter of Tsurumoku in real time, and vividly remember each single scene. So please forgive me for asking questions about the manga.

There were scenes that showed a character having a peeping habit, slapping his girlfriend, smoking during meetings or while eating, littering cigarettes, pulling down pants and flashing a banquet, endorsing overtime work…I think these were essential to convey the reality of the characters and their workplace [the setting] and the significant contrasts of the story. But nowadays, these types of depictions are difficult to show in a way that would comply with TV or other media outlets. And that’s not limited to manga, I think many films and novels are affected by the restrictions. Since your work remains as time passes, what are the things you’re careful about or keep in mind while drawing?

Kubonouchi: You’re right, one’s work remains in the future. Maybe that’s why I like to compartmentalize myself from my work. I’m the same creator, but I keep a distance and see them like the work of my ignorant youth, when I was a greenhorn. I never deny my works, though. I may be embarrassed, but they’re my creations from the past, and I shouldn’t reject that.

――Michael Jackson and Jesus Jones. A designer suit. Sugi-chan’s hairstyle [beautiful long hair reminiscent of Yosuke Eguchi in Tokyo Love Story]. These portrayals project the trends of the time, like Reiko opening an eponymous restaurant under the concept of “ecology.” But if you read the series now, such depictions may appear dated. I’m assuming Tsurumoku was conveying trends from the day, but what was your life like right before starting the series? Back then, it was towards the end of the bubble era. Do you think the lifestyle and vibe from the time influenced the manga?

Kubonouchi: I was at my poorest in my life during the economic bubble. When the Tsurumoku series started, I lived in a place with a rent of about 20,000 yen. There was no bath, no toilet, and no A/C. It was a bleak room with only a kotatsu [a low table with a heater] all year round. So, as far as I know, I didn’t earn any boon from the economic bubble. Since I was writing Tsurumoku under such circumstances, I depicted trends from two different perspectives: one in a way that the majority of the readers would resonate with, and another from an ironic perspective. Reiko Shiratorizawa was an important character that represented both. Initially, I was drawing her as a parody of hyper-outgoing women in the bubble era, but as the story went on, she gradually ended up becoming cute.

――I noticed that. As the story goes on, Reiko Shiratorizawa becomes more likable as a character.

Kubonouchi: Anyway, I wrote the story from two different perspectives, and that approach hasn’t changed to this day; I depict the positive aspects of trends without forgetting to look at them slightly askew. 

――Do you view the characters differently from one other? Are there characters you’re especially attached to, or who reflect yourself?

Kubonouchi: All the characters I depict mirror myself. Tabata, Sugimoto, and Shiratorizawa, for example, each represent a part of me taken to an extreme so as to become an individual character. Even the protagonist, Shota, has a side that represents a piece of me. So, instead of looking at them differently from one another, I look at them all like myself.

©Eisaku Kubonouchi

“The bitterness of wanting to connect with someone but being unable to connect”

――I wonder what would have happened if the characters had a cell phone.

Kubonouchi: It would have been entirely different. What I wanted to convey with Tsurumoku was the bitterness of wanting to connect with someone but being unable to connect. Like a multi-protagonist drama portraying various kinds of bitterness from different perspectives. So if everyone had a cell phone, it would be a different story, and it would be about the exhaustion of being too connected. They would understand each other too well and see each through other too well. There could be a scene where a character finds out about another character’s fake social media account and is shocked, like, “What!? I can’t believe he’d say something like that” (laughs). I guess that could also be an interesting youth story, though.

――Of course! Tsurumoku is a story that captures the complex, at once youthful and mature emotions of a 20-year-old. It also ponders whether dreams of youth are self-contained or something that becomes re-scaled by society. Many of the characters, including the protagonist, Shota, harness such conflicting emotions to show us their different ways of living life. Of all the characters, I find Yasaki and the musician Satoshi have minds that would resonate with young people today. As a young man coming from the countryside to Tokyo to work and walk the road of a manga artist and illustrator, you had probably projected your own dreams onto the characters. What is your sentiment now, after achieving and living through your dreams?

Kubonouchi: The modern world is inundated with information, so young people today are missing out on the perks of being a youth (being prone to indiscretion.) I think these people are extremely clever and smart. Back when I was young, information wasn’t as accessible as it is now, so we just acted on hunches. That impulsive, young momentum was all that I had. And older people around me were forgiving of us young people. But I think that’s not the case for kids today, so in that sense, I feel a bit sorry for them.

――If you were the resident advisor of the Tsurumoku dormitory, what kind of advice would you give to the youths?

Kubonouchi: I would tell them that it’s okay to quit their jobs whenever they like. But only if they are determined about what they want to do in life. I think it takes about ten years to know whether you like a job or not, but you’ll know immediately if it’s something you genuinely want to do.

©Eisaku Kubonouchi

To me, writing manga is equivalent to playing sports for athletes

――Reading interviews of manga artists, I often see them say, “I fell into a such a slump at one point that I couldn’t make it by the deadline and had to halt the series.” I feel like a manga artist succumbs to that feeling as often, if not more often than a pro baseball player. Do manga artists have a constant fear of hitting a slump?

Kubonouchi: I think so. I think writing manga is equivalent to playing sports for athletes. You can’t guarantee that you’ll always hit your best. But if you’re working on a series, you’re expected to perform your best and turn in a masterpiece every week. If the ante keeps being upped, you’ll eventually lose sight of where the benchmark for your potential is. That also leads to Gestaltzerfall, where you lose the full picture and feel like you’re only drawing a piece of an illustration. I didn’t even know what I was doing…. I was at the threshold of losing my mind while Tsurumoku was running— I was so opposed to seeing anyone that I even pulled out the phone line.

――When the manga was remade as a novel, I remember each chapter’s subtitle was “NORUMA” (“Quota”). Typically, chapters are in numeric order or have a subtitle representing the content. Were you calling it “NORUMA” because writing each chapter felt as tough as being forced to meet a quota?

Kubonouchi: That’s right. To me, writing each chapter was exactly like working to meet quotas. Before the series started, I worked for a brand called Karimoku, assembling furniture. Back then, I had a set quota of how many parts I had to assemble in a day, so the word “quota” was never a pleasant word for me. So I think I was feeling so pressured writing the manga that I ended up using the word as a subtitle. I dreaded the idea of writing a series. I still remember the moment I finished drawing the last illustration of the final chapter— back then I was living in a loft apartment, and I remember it was cloudy outside, but suddenly sun beams poured in from the skylight, and the entire room was wrapped in bright light (laughs). In that otherworldly moment, I burst into tears.

――That reminds me of a fable of the monk Kūkai— while meditating at the Muroto Cape in Kochi, your hometown, a beam of light from Venus plunged into his mouth.

Kubonouchi: No way, you can’t compare me with Kūkai— we’re leagues apart. (Laughs)

――What would be the greatest quota you would like to achieve in your lifetime?

Kubonouchi: To make people smile, make people happy with my illustrations. That’s all I could ever ask for. To me, the act of drawing is directly connected to people’s entertainment. People enjoy my illustrations, and I think that’s my quota, or purpose. I don’t want to sound cheesy, but that’s the only purpose I’ve got. I’ve always been like this, ever since I was little; I drew pictures to entertain my classmates.

――After Tsurumoku, you only had four other series, and none of them had more than eleven volumes. I wouldn’t say you are a prolific manga artist. As an illustrator, however, you’ve continued to produce many amazing works, especially line drawings. You’ve continued to draw on a daily basis to this day. But do you ever feel like drawing a manga or writing a story again?

Kubonouchi: Simply put, writing manga requires enormous effort. (Laughs) The process was so traumatizing and petrifying that I even had a physical breakdown. Writing a manga means you have to forget about your personal life and focus solely on writing, which is debilitating. If I began writing one now at my age and current physical strength, I would need to prepare myself with a great deal of commitment. 

――But then, how different is it from producing the line-drawings and illustrations you churn out every day?

Kubonouchi: It’s a huge difference. There’s so much thinking required to write a manga. The whole story, the whole world happens all in my head. So I can’t ask someone to help draw any part of it.

――Usually, manga artists have assistants and editors to support them. It’s probably the same with illustrators, too. Which do you prefer, working alone, maybe with a select few talented people, or with a big team?

Kubonouchi: I’d say I prefer working alone — I feel more comfortable controlling the world or story on my own.

Creating a world entirely on your own is the distinction of a manga artist

――You’ve done cover artwork for musicians such as Nokko (from the band REBECCA) and RAM WIRE; more recently, you’ve also done character design for a Nissin Cup Noodles TV commercial, the “One Piece Hungry Days” series. I heard that you give small notes and corrections on the creative directions when you do client work. What are the important points for you when doing video work, and how much are you comfortable deferring to others?

Kubonouchi: That’s a good question. I had to learn a lot of this stuff for the first time (laughs). I only started working on animated videos quite recently, and I’ve been working in a style of a manga artist. Initially, I used to draw in meticulous detail, thinking that the characters would move exactly the way I designed. But reality’s different. I was shocked when I saw the characters in motion moving differently than I had pictured in my head. But I came to understand that there are experts working in each section, and I have to compromise at some point.

They may be very rare to come by, but I think it would be incredibly fun if I could work with people who shares some of my sensibilities. I want to meet someone who will excite me, make me jealous, make me think, “Wow, this guy’s incredible. I can’t wait to see what they’ll come up with.” There’s got to be someone like that somewhere out there.

――I’m sure there will be more young people who recognize you through your illustration work. Although you no longer write manga, however, you always say you’re a manga artist rather than just an artist or an illustrator. It seems like you’re stuck to the job title.

Kubonouchi: That’s true. For the sake of creativity, I want to stay a manga artist. Creating a world entirely on your own the distinction of a manga artist. I confront a challenge on paper every single day— it’s my testing ground. I think hard about how far I can recreate the images I have in my head, and how to make a drawing more attractive. So to me, a blank piece of paper is like a boxing ring, or a laboratory. I’m also gradually changing my illustration style day by day, subtly enough that viewers won’t notice. I think you could tell if you compared my current drawings to those from five or ten years ago. I do all this because I strive to draw better and entertain the viewer. And I push myself, like, “I need to improve,” “I can do more,” “I can do better than this.”

Characters designed by Kubonouchi for the Nissin Cup Noodle TV commercial “One Piece Hungry Days”
©︎Eiichiro Oda/Shueisha・Fuji Television・TOEI ANIMATION

If I make drawings that capture human nature, viewers a hundred years from now would resonate with them

――In this digital age, you choose to draw with a pencil and paper. But pencil lines become unerasable once printed. How do you see the process of preserving your work for the future?

Kubonouchi: I’m on social media for the sole purpose of amusing my viewers. Even with small drawings, I think showcasing one’s work is a form of entertainment, so I do it on the principle of entertaining an audience. If not for that, there would be no meaning for me to draw. I don’t want to draw for my own sake. I want to make people chuckle or feel giddy with my illustrations. I try not to get on the bandwagon of negativity caused by the pandemic.

――When I interviewed Hisashi Eguchi, he told me that the only illustration he made portraying the pandemic was of a “girlfriend” [“kanojo,” a recurring motif of Eguchi’s] looking up at the falling snow with a mask pulled down to her chin. He said that he wanted to leave only that one drawing conveying the time.

Kubonouchi: I remember that illustration. I actually drew one like that, too. I drew a picture of a person cutting off the portion of his beard coming out of his mask.

――It almost makes you want to cut it all off.

Kubonouchi: It’s tempting, indeed (laughs).

――There’s one thing I’ve always wanted to ask you directly in person.

There are all sorts of manga, films, and novels in this world with all sorts of different endings. Of all the stories I’ve experienced, Tsurumoku had the most perfect ending. It was so perfect that it left me wanting nothing more. After giving flashbacks of moments in each character’s respective lives, you depict the protagonist Shota’s maturity by drawing him with a solid, thick outline; after awing with that depiction, you follow up by drawing the heroine Miyuki like a spring breeze.

The ending wraps up the hazy vibe of the preceding eleven volumes in the best way possible. When I saw that last scene, I felt it so profound that I couldn’t turn the page; decades later, its imprint on me remains. How long had you been incubating that ending?

Kubonouchi: That much I can remember clearly. I had decided on that ending from the very beginning. When I was told it was going to be a series, I knew it had to end the way it did, and had the whole picture in mind. Regarding the last part, where the protagonist and the freshman pass by each other in front of the dorm, I created that scene considering the dorm itself to be the main character of Tsurumoku. I wanted to make it a story that lingers in the reader’s mind.

――It definitely lingered in my mind. But I’m surprised to learn that the ending had been decided from the very beginning….

Kubonouchi: Thank you. It’s like listening to your favorite song, you want to hear to that comforting melody over and over again.

――Your characters feel like human beings living in the real world, rather than scripted figures. From your perspective as a line drawing artist, what do you feel real people have in common with drawn characters?

Kubonouchi: There’s something I’ve always done since my days of drawing manga: I observe people when I’m drawing people, and try to create a fictional human based on that study. My illustrations aren’t inspired by other illustrations; even if they’re exaggerated or drawn with simple lines, I draw the characters as real-life humans. If I make drawings that capture human nature, I think viewers a hundred years from now would resonate with them. Ukiyo-e is a great example of this. It focused on depictions of real-life human, and so it allows us to discern what people were really like back then. I think it will always be important to draw illustrations capturing intrinsic parts of human beings instead of focusing on the culture or the epidemics surrounding us.

©Eisaku Kubonouchi

――Also, I have a question for you about sound. In Tsurumoku, there are a number of these scenes; the resident advisor Santanda gives a live performance,  the phone at the dorm rings; Reiko lapping up clam sauce pasta, workers puffing on cigarettes during recess at the factory; Mr. Ueki’s zipper sliding up and down, catching the light; these scenes evoke such realistic sounds in our minds.

It’s like watching a film with the sounds of shoes tapping, horse hooves clicking or plates clattering. The props in Tsurumoku exude sounds so realistic that I can hear them coming out from your illustrations. Was that intended?

Kubonouchi: I’m happy to hear that. Yes, you’re right, I made a lot of effort to convey those sounds. The sounds we’re able to imagine from pictures and colors come to life from a kind of synesthesia. Line drawings are rendered in black lines, but in real life, there are no such living beings made from black lines. But people can still picture the characters as real humans, and this is possible because we all share this synesthesia. For me, sounds are conveyed by presenting illustrations and laying out panels rhythmically.

Illustrations are kind of like music. I love movies and music, so I guess I’m influenced by them in a big way. I’m also fascinated by the world of poetry. Take Haiku, for example— it’s amazing how it can convey such a vast universe with its minimal five-seven-five syllables. It’s a gorgeous, rhythmic sound. Anyway, I have these images, sounds, and poetry in my head and try to evoke them all in my illustrations. So I’m happy to hear that you perceived sound from my manga.

――Are there any specific sounds that you like? From a movie, or from your own work?

Kubonouchi: Which sounds do I like!? I’ve never been asked that before (laughs). I love music, so I listen to it while working and driving— I need to listen to music all the time, or else I feel like I’m going to lose myself. But if we’re talking sound, rather than music… I guess I like the sound of rain. I love it, actually. I think the sound of rain is a beautiful symphony. So I feel enchanted every time it starts raining. I stop playing music without even noticing when it rains.

Eisaku Kubonouchi
Manga artist and illustrator from Kochi prefecture, born in 1966. In 1986, he debuted as a manga artist with Okappiki Eiji in Weekly Shonen Sunday. His series Tsurumoku Dokushinryo, beginning in 1988, became a big hit. He continued to produce a number of popular manga, including Watanabe, Chocolat, and Cherry. Today, he draws humorous and realistic characters, mainly as line drawings, as can be seen in his book Rakugaki Note. He also provides work for music videos and TV commercials; the characters he designed for the Nissin Cup Noodle commercial “One Piece Hungry Days” have been embraced by youth culture. He continues to make illustrations that pierce the hearts of every generation.
Twitter：@EISAKUSAKU
Instagram：@eisaku_kubonouchi

Phoography Takeshi Abe
Translation Ai Kaneda

The post The World Eisaku Kubonouchi Portrays as a Manga Artist appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

We at TOKION asked Peppe to create a manga series to find out what an Italian guy thinks of Japanese culture. In the series, Peppe will experience Japan’s unique culture and introduce it in the form of a short manga story. For the third installment, he visits a Japanese sake brewery in Okutama, a town located an hour and a half away from the center of Tokyo.

—You’re from Italy, a country known for wine, but have you had experience drinking sake before?

Peppe: I had my first Japanese sake in Japan. I once had too much wine when I was in university in Italy, and ever since, I get sick just from the smell of it. So I can’t drink wine. In Japan, I often get embarrassed as people say, “I can’t believe you’re Italian and don’t drink wine!” [laughs]. One day, I found a small bottle of Japanese sake at a convenience store and tried it, but I didn’t like the taste at all. But I started liking it after I asked and learned about fine sake from a sake connoisseur. By the way, Atsukan （roughly translates to “hot sake”） is one of my favorites.  

—Did you know anyone in Italy familiar with Japanese sake? 

Peppe: Wine is more common in Italy, and none of my friends knew about Japanese sake. But I think if they tried, they would like it. So I want to introduce sake to my friends in Italy someday. 

—Great! How was the tour of the Sawanoi sake brewery in Okutama? 

Peppe: When I went, it was just after the shikomi phase [the initial mixing of ingredients to be fermented], so it was a shame that I couldn’t see the actual process. But I got to see inside the cellar and learn about the procedure of sake crafting.

—How was the tasting you did after the tour? You tried two different sake, “凰 (Kou)” and “蔵守 (Kuramori).” 

Peppe: “凰” (Kou) was easier for me to drink. But I was drunk after two cups.[laughs]. Gotta be careful.

Translation Ai Kaneda

The post “You Can Drink but Don’t Get Drunk” Sake Brewery Tour Manga Series: Italian Manga Artist Peppe’s Encounter With Japanese Culture Vol.3  appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.