The Eastern Edge

This wasn't supposed to take this long, but here - finally - is part 3 of my translation of the Quick Japan Urasawa interview. Life sort of got in the way of this particular hobby for a while and the next thing I knew I had run weeks behind my intended schedule.
Such is life.

For those of you to whom Urasawa is life, I hope my life didn't interfere too much with yours.

Enjoy part three:

Q：One of the things I wanted to ask in this interview was, "What did Naoki Urasawa want to be?" It's well-known that you were in a band in university, but was becoming a musician a possible career choice for you?

Urasawa：One of my sempai in university was a member of [a band called] The Street Sliders, and just watching them made me think that I could never become a professional musician. There was nothing half way about the passion they had in their quest to the find a groove, and they had outstanding charisma.

Q：Unlike those from “Tokiwa-so”, you never had a clear intention to really bring your drawing skills to life and say “I’m going to be a mangaka!”, and you didn’t become a mangaka for the money. I think your stance, as Urasawa the creator, toward manga as a career, and the medium of manga itself, is a very important topic.

Urasawa：I see what you mean. You're hitting on a good point because when I was a kid I never thought it was cool to say, "I wanna be a mangaka." I thought, “don’t be childish” about becoming a musician, too... So, if you look at when it is that I became the person I am now, I haven't changed much since elementary school.

Q：Let me flip things around; do you mean that because you have that connection with who you are now from when you were a kid, that you don't feel any contradiction in your having become a mangaka?

Urasawa：Yes, I think that's right. I've never been someone who gets that worked up about things. That's why I'm not Kenji from 20th Century Boys. I wasn't a kid who got that fanatical. If I were someone like Kenji I couldn't have done 20th Century Boys. Because he can't analyze things objectively.

Q：So, was there a career you didn't want to do?

Urasawa：Hmmm. Well, I remember in elementary school writing something that was kind of a question to myself about whether hanging your head and getting on the same train every morning at the same time and coming and going is really the right thing to do... But there is something I've come to realize lately, which isn't the answer to the entire question but, the reason I didn't aim to be a mangaka or a musician I think is because the all the comics and music that I liked didn't sell (laughs). I thought that if I did something I liked, it wouldn't sell and I'd end up poor (laughs). If you think that way you usually end up holding back. I think that's one major reason.

Q: I see. Maybe that quality is the reason that your work stands out in the wake of the gradual creative stall following Katsuhiro Otomo and the manga new wave of the 70’s and 80’s that followed Otomo.

Urasawa: Well, it's not so much quality as it is a particular reason. Katsuhiro Otomo has made me enthusiastic too a few times in my life. The effect his art had made a big impact me.
This was around the time I was making my debut but, the [sense of] movement in Otomo’s work at that time got me excited in a way I still can't explain. It wouldn't have been out of the question for even me to have gone to his work place in Kichijoji and asked to be accepted as an apprentice. But I didn't do that and it's like I’ve been watching from a distance the whole time.

Q：Why is that?

Urasawa：Hmm... While there was enthusiasm [for his work], at the same time a direction like that of Mr. Otomo’s is ultimately a kind of Cul-de-sac. However, I think people who were really enthusiastic about Otomo’s work probably reveled in falling into that. Fanaticism loves a dead-end street. When it comes to that kind of thing, for me it’s like, “is there really happiness in that kind of ‘isolated pleasure’?” so I guess I have a habit of keeping my distance.

Q: Is distancing from yourself from a vortex of enthusiasm like that a strategy to remain subjective?

Urasawa: No, probably a better word than subjective would be reflexive. A lot of people get the impression that I'm a strategist. That isn't the case at all. For me, it's not about just how to make a better manuscript based on what everyone else thinks is a "success", it's about if what I'm working on now is good work to me. If it is, then for me it is a success.

Q：Whatever you may say, I think it’s true that the world sees Naoki Urasawa as the very “image of success”.

Urasawa：You know, I think people may be misunderstanding that…
Things are brilliant while you can smile about them.

This illustration is of Bubaigawara, Tokyo prefecture, from Urasawa's youth. This view is toward the Tamagawa river on the south side, which was all rice paddies then and where Urasawa says he always played as a child.

Q：What were your junior high school years like?

Urasawa： I was in the Track & Field club. All I did was run around everyday. Something I've come to realize recently is that the people who joined the baseball, soccer or basketball clubs joined because they wanted to play a "game", right? But Track & Field is all about trying to achieve "records" through training. So, recently I wondered, "Why did I spend so much time running back then?" I mean, it's just hard and wasn't any fun at all (laughs).

Q：So, why didn't you join the baseball or soccer club?

Urasawa： That's probably because I hated team games. I didn't like having to worry about other people. I'm an adult and doing fine with that now, though (laughs)

Q：Around junior high and high school, kids tend to get way too invested in things, don't they?

Urasawa： I really hate that kind of thing! On school trips and things, we have to make groups, right? I was invited by a group of the bad kids and that type of group always wants to goof around, right? I wasn’t into that so I turned them down and hung out with the unpopular, homely kids (laughs).

Q: In your later teens, you didn't think that being on your own was lonely?

Urasawa： Nope, not a bit!

That's it for part 3.

Please note that the "Things are brilliant while you can smile about them.
" line is my shitty translation of a Japanese saying that I've seen Urasawa use in other interviews. I know the meaning of it, but I can’t find the words I want to express it in English yet. I’ll come back to that if I can think of a better way to say it. Basically, it’s along the lines of, “When you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you”, type thing. I think in this case that Urasawa just means to say that people always look like the “image of success” while they are successful.

All of the remaining three parts will be even longer than this installment, so there is still quite a lot of Urasawa left to come.

I am already working on part 4 and expect to have it up by the end of this month, or the first week or March.