Interview
Translated by: Harley Acres
Rumiko Takahashi graduated from Niigata Chuo High School and went on to study history at Japan Women's University. [1] However, perhaps due to her father's bloodline being a doctor who used to draw kappa on medicine envelopes for patients, in her second year of university she entered Koike Kazuo's Gekiga Sonjuku school. [2] In her third year she won the Shonen Sunday Newcomers Manga Award and made her debut as a manga artist. [3] This is the fourth year of her career. The hugely popular Urusei Yatsura features Lum, a long-haired alien girl who plays a very sexy role. Her unique dialogue, which ends her sentences with "datcha", and other fast-paced gags are a hit. She is 25 years old.
"I meet with my editor from around noon on the first day, and then I draw the storyboard from around noon until night on the third day. Yes, I stay up all night from the first day until the third day."
Rumiko Takahashi-jo, the author of Urusei Yatsura, which is currently on TV and was recently made into a movie. [4] This young female manga artist has an abnormally sleepless lifestyle, finishing a 16-page serialized story in three days.
When we visited Takahashi-san's apartment, where she lives alone, our five-person reporting team was stuck in the six-tatami kitchen. There was a copy machine sitting right next to the dining table.
"The bedroom is on the left, and the workroom is on the right," I was told, and when I entered the seven-tatami workroom, I was taken aback again. This time there were three desks (Takahashi-san has two assistants) and four paper bags (containing cigarette cartons, fan letters, piles of sweets as gifts, and pure trash). Most of the floor was now hidden from view. [5]
And then, beep, beep. The alarm went off at four in the afternoon. Takahashi-san and her team are engaged in a three-day cycle of life-or-death struggle in this space!? It's a yet another repeat of that cycle starting again.
"It's true that there are times when I feel tired for a moment, but it's never like I can't do it anymore. I don't have a boyfriend, and manga is the most fun thing for me right now. Yeah, I don't want to stop."
"When I draw a female character, she has to have long hair. If she has long hair, the boys around her react to the length of her hair and jump around. But if it's a boyish girl with short hair, even if I get a boy to say he likes her, she immediately thinks he's lying. I can't help but feel happy drawing each strand of that long hair. In the summer, drawing hair that's stuck to their forehead with sweat is the best scene ever!!"
And then, the boyfriend-less 25-year-old girl added:
"In short, I think that manga is based on relationships between men and women."
Ugh, relationships with men! Ah, this is unbearable too.
Footnotes
- [1] Takahashi attended Niigata Prefectural Niigata Chuo High School (新潟県立新潟中央高校/Niigata Kenritsu Niigata Chuo Koukou) in high school and then went to college at Japan Women's University (日本女子大学/Nihon Joshi Daigaku). As mentioned, Takahashi was a history major. Her thesis was "The Edo Shogunate's Countermeasures Against Homeless People" (江戸幕府の無宿人対策). This is also touched upon in her profile in Popeye magazine.
- [2] Gekiga Sonjuku (劇画村塾) was a manga "cram school" where Kazuo Koike, the writer of such iconic manga as Lone Wolf and Cub, Crying Freeman and Lady Snowblood helped train a number of manga luminaries before their debuts. Besides Rumiko Takahashi, other Gekiga Sonjuku alumni include Tetsuo Hara (Fist of the North Star), Yuji Hori (Dragon Quest), Hideyuki Kikuchi (Vampire Hunter D), Keisuke Itagaki (Grappler Baki) and Marley Caribu (Old Boy).
- [3] Takahashi won honorable mention for the 2nd Shogakukan Newcomers Manga Award (第2回小学館新人コミック大賞) in the shonen category. The way the Newcomer Manga Award is structured is there is a single winner and then two to three honorable mentions that are unranked. In 1978 the winner in the shonen category was Yoshimi Yoshimaro (吉見嘉麿) for D-1 which was published in Shonen Sunday 1978 Vol. 26. The other honorable mentions in addition to Rumiko Takahashi were Masao Kunitoshi (国俊昌生) for The Memoirs of Dr. Watson (ワトソン博士回顧録) which was published in Shonen Sunday 1978 Vol. 27 and Hiroaki Oka (岡広秋) for Confrontation on the Snowy Mountains (雪山の対決) which was published in a special edition of Shonen Sunday (週刊少年サンデー増刊号). Oka would also publish later under the name Jun Hayami (早見純). Other winners in various Newcomers categories include Gosho Aoyama, Koji Kumeta, Yuu Watase, Kazuhiko Shimamoto, Naoki Urasawa, Kazuhiro Fujita and Ryoji Minagawa, Yellow Tanabe and Takashi Iwashige.
- [4] The suffix used on Takahashi's name here, "jo" (嬢), which means "an unnmarried woman" or "miss".
- [5] At this point in her career, Takahashi's two assistants were Makiko Nakano (中野真紀子) and Kuniko Saito (斎藤邦子). The two appeared as characters in Takahashi's autobiographical The Diary of Kemo Kobiru.
Translated by: Harley Acres
Rumiko Takahashi graduated from Niigata Chuo High School and went on to study history at Japan Women's University. [1] However, perhaps due to her father's bloodline being a doctor who used to draw kappa on medicine envelopes for patients, in her second year of university she entered Koike Kazuo's Gekiga Sonjuku school. [2] In her third year she won the Shonen Sunday Newcomers Manga Award and made her debut as a manga artist. [3] This is the fourth year of her career. The hugely popular Urusei Yatsura features Lum, a long-haired alien girl who plays a very sexy role. Her unique dialogue, which ends her sentences with "datcha", and other fast-paced gags are a hit. She is 25 years old.
Rumiko Takahashi-jo, the author of Urusei Yatsura, which is currently on TV and was recently made into a movie. [4] This young female manga artist has an abnormally sleepless lifestyle, finishing a 16-page serialized story in three days.
When we visited Takahashi-san's apartment, where she lives alone, our five-person reporting team was stuck in the six-tatami kitchen. There was a copy machine sitting right next to the dining table.
"The bedroom is on the left, and the workroom is on the right," I was told, and when I entered the seven-tatami workroom, I was taken aback again. This time there were three desks (Takahashi-san has two assistants) and four paper bags (containing cigarette cartons, fan letters, piles of sweets as gifts, and pure trash). Most of the floor was now hidden from view. [5]
And then, beep, beep. The alarm went off at four in the afternoon. Takahashi-san and her team are engaged in a three-day cycle of life-or-death struggle in this space!? It's a yet another repeat of that cycle starting again.
"It's true that there are times when I feel tired for a moment, but it's never like I can't do it anymore. I don't have a boyfriend, and manga is the most fun thing for me right now. Yeah, I don't want to stop."
"When I draw a female character, she has to have long hair. If she has long hair, the boys around her react to the length of her hair and jump around. But if it's a boyish girl with short hair, even if I get a boy to say he likes her, she immediately thinks he's lying. I can't help but feel happy drawing each strand of that long hair. In the summer, drawing hair that's stuck to their forehead with sweat is the best scene ever!!"
And then, the boyfriend-less 25-year-old girl added:
"In short, I think that manga is based on relationships between men and women."
Ugh, relationships with men! Ah, this is unbearable too.
Footnotes
- [1] Takahashi attended Niigata Prefectural Niigata Chuo High School (新潟県立新潟中央高校/Niigata Kenritsu Niigata Chuo Koukou) in high school and then went to college at Japan Women's University (日本女子大学/Nihon Joshi Daigaku). As mentioned, Takahashi was a history major. Her thesis was "The Edo Shogunate's Countermeasures Against Homeless People" (江戸幕府の無宿人対策). This is also touched upon in her profile in Popeye magazine.
- [2] Gekiga Sonjuku (劇画村塾) was a manga "cram school" where Kazuo Koike, the writer of such iconic manga as Lone Wolf and Cub, Crying Freeman and Lady Snowblood helped train a number of manga luminaries before their debuts. Besides Rumiko Takahashi, other Gekiga Sonjuku alumni include Tetsuo Hara (Fist of the North Star), Yuji Hori (Dragon Quest), Hideyuki Kikuchi (Vampire Hunter D), Keisuke Itagaki (Grappler Baki) and Marley Caribu (Old Boy).
- [3] Takahashi won honorable mention for the 2nd Shogakukan Newcomers Manga Award (第2回小学館新人コミック大賞) in the shonen category. The way the Newcomer Manga Award is structured is there is a single winner and then two to three honorable mentions that are unranked. In 1978 the winner in the shonen category was Yoshimi Yoshimaro (吉見嘉麿) for D-1 which was published in Shonen Sunday 1978 Vol. 26. The other honorable mentions in addition to Rumiko Takahashi were Masao Kunitoshi (国俊昌生) for The Memoirs of Dr. Watson (ワトソン博士回顧録) which was published in Shonen Sunday 1978 Vol. 27 and Hiroaki Oka (岡広秋) for Confrontation on the Snowy Mountains (雪山の対決) which was published in a special edition of Shonen Sunday (週刊少年サンデー増刊号). Oka would also publish later under the name Jun Hayami (早見純). Other winners in various Newcomers categories include Gosho Aoyama, Koji Kumeta, Yuu Watase, Kazuhiko Shimamoto, Naoki Urasawa, Kazuhiro Fujita and Ryoji Minagawa, Yellow Tanabe and Takashi Iwashige.
- [4] The suffix used on Takahashi's name here, "jo" (嬢), which means "an unnmarried woman" or "miss".
- [5] At this point in her career, Takahashi's two assistants were Makiko Nakano (中野真紀子) and Kuniko Saito (斎藤邦子). The two appeared as characters in Takahashi's autobiographical The Diary of Kemo Kobiru.
花椿 1983年 6月号 (#396)
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