The Eastern Edge

UPDATE: I have made a few small corrections to this part of the interview to fix a silly translation error.
This entire interview will be double-checked, corrected if nessesary, and tweeked for readability, then collected into one file shortly after I post part 6 in a couple weeeks.
Until then...
-- Sept.1st 2009

Looooong overdue and, thanks to a slip of the mouse, much shorter than I'd planned, but here is Part 4.
(Part 3 is here)

Q： (Laughs) Looking back on “20th Century Boys”, basically the 80’s and 90’s are omitted. Of course there is the story’s intention, but I think that there is as much meaning in the years you did write about as there is in the years you did not, including the fact that third year junior high and high school are left out.

Urasawa： Yeah, that's probably true. I think that's an important point.

Q：Based on what you were saying just now, was it that you couldn't make that “graphic” nature of junior high and high school relate?

Urasawa: Ummm, that might be exactly it. In fact, the spoon-bending episode was moved a bit. That was big when I was in junior high, but I forced a shift back to the elementary school years. If that was in the junior high school years, I really couldn't stand it. That's why I purposely set the spoon-bending at a time before it was even in Japan yet, to avoid that feeling.

Q: By rearranging the elements that mark those times in your own way, instead of just lining them up [chronologically as they actually happened], what would be a simple falsity becomes something different; you can create a trap. The ingenious way that this trap is set up I think is one of the bedrocks of your work.

Urasawa： To put more simply, and closer [to the actual reason], I think there is a line where boys begin to become aware of themselves. If I had my starting point at junior high school, then those uncomfortable sexual feelings would come out. I think that [topic] is something that just doesn't agree with me.

Q： For example, even with high school protagonists, there are creators, like Mitsuru Adachi, who eliminate those very real extreme sexual elements. However, dropping that much from a portrayal could end up putting emphasis what the characters lack.
On the other hand in “Happy!”, which has a high school student protagonist, you drew things of a somewhat sexual nature, and you have the elementary school kid’s reaction to the “Heibon Punch” poster in “20th Century Boys”. The borderline that you set as the creator ends up really standing out.

Urasawa： To put it simply it’s, “Things are brilliant while you can smile about them.” Because I’m always conscious of where the right place to draw the line is for each creation. Of course if I wanted to I could draw dirtier pictures, but then I would probably end up limiting my audience. And that’s not stuff I particularly want to show anyway. If I got into more sexual things, at the very least my work would cease to be family-oriented. I want my work to be something that’s conveyed to my audience. That’s why, when I see something I consider a warning signal, I sometimes immediately steer things in another direction. I do that when continuing straight on would end up limiting the work.

Q：Where did you get the idea that things should be, “conveyed to your audience”?

Urasawa： Well, I really like Hollywood’s master craftsman Billy Wilder, and I think it might be my reaction to the fact that he does such interesting work that everyone just completely forgets about. Interesting things should be conveyed directly to the audience, always. I think that Mr. Koki Mitani probably thought the same way. Whatever I do, I want to maintain a basis of not creating work that won’t go over with my audience.

Q：Speaking of Billy Wilder, when I read “BILLY BAT”, it renewed the feeling I have that you are a creator who has really absorbed American culture and really made it a part of you.

Urasawa：Well that’s because I was hugely influenced by it. I love Disney and show business. When I got to go to Broadway to see a musical it was like a dream come true. Since way back, I imagined that when I grew up I would go to America, I would ride in the back seat of a Cadillac at night in New York, and then duck and hide in the middle of a gangster shoot out… (laughs)

Q： That’s a pretty direct Americanization. You could even say 'vulnerable'.

That's all I've got ready at the moment.
Sorry, folks! Again, this was meant to be much longer but a stupid file hiccup last week erased a large chuck of work that I am now recreating.

As I did before, I have annotated the text with web links to info on some of the personalities Urasawa mentions. However, there is one fact about Koki Mitani that isn't on the English wikipedia entry but is important to put his mention here into context. Mitani is a huge admirer of Billy Wilder and he conducted an interview with him in January of 2001, when Wilder was in his final year at age 94, for a program aired on Fuji TV entitled "To Billy Wilder, from Koki Mitani."

Anyway, I am working as quickly as I can in the spare time I’ve got on an extra large part 5 with pics and all to make up for this very late, and very short, part 4.

I expect to have it ready in about 2 weeks from today, if not sooner.