Re: Extended Yokai Stan Sakai interview by Brendan Wright
Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 23:26 -0700
by Steve Hubbell
WALKING THE WARRIOR PILGRIMAGE WITH STAN SAKAI
by BRENDAN WRIGHT (DARK HORSE COMICS, DECEMBER 9, 2009)
Usagi Yojimbo’s twenty-fifth anniversary demanded something truly special, and what could mark the occasion better than taking the opportunity to break new ground? Stan Sakai’s covers for the Usagi book collections have showcased his incredible talent with watercolors, but Stan rarely has the chance to paint entire stories. Recently, Stan talked to me about the inspiration for Yokai’s story and the process of taking Miyamoto Usagi’s world from black-and-white to fully painted color. A shorter version of this interview ran in the Yokai graphic novel, but this is the whole deal.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: Was Yokai a story you’d been planning for the regular Usagi series, or did you come up with it once you knew you’d be creating this color graphic novel?
STAN SAKAI: I wrote it for the color graphic novel. I wanted the story to be special, because I had never done a painted story on this scale before. Two stories came to mind. One was the return of Jei, one of my more popular characters, and this story about the yokai, the ghosts, goblins, and haunts of Japanese mythology. I needed a standalone story that those unfamiliar with Usagi could enjoy, but that would satisfy the longtime readers as well.
Japan has such a wonderful tradition of mythology and folklore, with not only the really horrific monsters, but also the goofy ones, such as the animated umbrella or the animated teapot. I wanted to do something with these creatures from folklore. There’s the legend of “The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons,” where every summer the demons get together and parade through towns, scaring people. On this particular night, however, they actually want to overrun and conquer Japan. But they need a living soul to guide them, so they kidnap a little girl, and her mother begs Usagi to rescue her. That’s how the story of Yokai came about. I wanted Usagi to go through a wide range of emotions, so there’s a lot of action, drama, and humor.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: Some of the creatures in Yokai have shown up in Usagi before, but there are also plenty that you haven’t used before. How did you select which ones you wanted to include?
STAN SAKAI: I just picked the ones that looked cool. I went by their looks, powers, and background. I tried to keep a balance between the really monstrous ones and the really funny ones. There’s one in particular called sansho, which is a leg from the shin down with a big eyeball and a shock of hair on top. I love the design, and I think I’ve used it as a visual a couple of times, but I never really knew its background. I sent out a plea on the Internet, and it was picked up by a few of the comic book sites. Matt Alt, who had written a book called Yokai Attack!, e-mailed me and told me about it. It’s actually a Chinese legend that was brought over to Japan.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: Does the fan community often contribute to or comment on Usagi like that?
STAN SAKAI: They’ve done that before, such as with the story “Grasscutter.” Grasscutter was the sword that was given to Japan by the Sun Goddess, and it was lost during the Genpei Wars, but there’s some debate: there was a duplicate made, and some people say it was the duplicate that was lost; some people say it was the real sword. But anyway, there is a sword that’s been hidden away in a shrine and has never been taken out, so I sent out another plea on the Internet saying, “I need a visual of Grasscutter.” I had seen woodcuts with Grasscutter in them, but it was always depicted as a samurai blade, like a katana. I knew that the original Grasscutter was more like a Chinese sword. Todd, who created the Usagi Yojimbo website, finally found it after about three months of research, and it took a couple more months to verify that, yes, this is what Grasscutter actually looks like.
So, yeah, the fans have been wonderful, and they’ve not only helped me do research, they’ve also caught errors. I try to be as accurate as possible, within reason, but I do make mistakes. One was in a story called “Demon Mask,” where Usagi plays a game of Go. I used to play Go as a kid, but what I didn’t know was it wasn’t really Go, it was a game called Gomoku, which uses the same board and same game pieces, but which is played completely differently. When I had Usagi playing Go, it was really Gomoku. I heard about that mistake from as far away as Germany. I bought a book on Go, went to a tournament and to the website of the American Go Association, and I was able to correct my mistake for the trade paperback.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: Does good visual reference exist for all of the creatures in Yokai? Did you take many liberties or make changes from the folklore that they come from?
STAN SAKAI: I took a lot of liberties, such as with the sansho I mentioned. Traditionally, it’s just a leg with an eye, but I gave him a mouth because I needed him to be able to talk. Also, some of the creatures are just made up, because I love to draw monsters, and this time I was able to let my imagination go wild. The research for Yokai was more extensive than usual in that I had to go to a lot more sources for reference. I have a pretty extensive home library with books and DVDs of Japanese monsters, and there are a few websites on the yokai of Japan.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: Usagi has been in color before, and the covers are always in color, but it’s primarily been a black-and-white series. Are there differences you went for visually, knowing you’d have color?
STAN SAKAI: I add a lot of texture [when working in] black-and-white. With the color book, I let the watercolors be the textures. I tend to work in planes -- a foreground, middleground, and background -- and with the watercolors I was able to play with that a lot more, such as bringing out the background, or trying to highlight the middleground, which I’ve done quite a bit. I think it comes from my love of animation, especially the old Disney stuff where they would have the artwork on different levels. It’s something that I grew up with, and it’s an approach that I’ve taken with Yokai.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: What was your process for creating the painted pages?
STAN SAKAI: It pretty much started the same as with the black-and-white art. I wrote a script, or rather just a basic outline of a story, and then went to thumbnails. My thumbnails are usually my final script, and I worked out the pacing of this story at that stage. Then I went to pencils and inks. Now I’m just putting on the watercolors. This is the first time I’m doing so much painting, and that’s something I really enjoy. As I’m progressing I think I’m getting better, getting looser with it.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: Since your earlier painted stories, your style has changed quite a lot. The earliest story didn’t have the ink outlines, and was more painterly. Since then you’ve developed the strong black outlines. Was that a conscious decision?
STAN SAKAI: It was -- mainly for speed, and also because I like the hybrid look of the black outlines. The first watercolor story I did, “Return to Adachi Plain,” was completely done in watercolor, using just tone, and it took about a full month to do those eight pages. I only had two and a half months to do fifty-six pages for Yokai, so I had to work quickly. The art does have a strong outline, but I try to let the color do as much of the work as possible.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: You mentioned that you had less than three months. You’re known for being really fast, but to write and draw and paint over fifty pages, that seems really, really fast. How long did each stage of that take?
STAN SAKAI: The writing, penciling, and inking took about three weeks or so, and the rest of the time has been spent painting. I’m getting faster with the painting as I’m going along. It also helps that I’m working at a slightly smaller size, and there are fewer panels per page. The regular Usagi stories average five or six panels per page. With Yokai I’m working with three and four panels.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: What was your emphasis in art school? Did you study painting? Did you draw comics at all?
STAN SAKAI: No, no comics at all. My major at the University of Hawaii was drawing and painting, and the emphasis at that time was on Abstract Expressionism, mainly with acrylics and oils. I love working with oils, but of course they take such a long time. I would not have been able to do a fifty-six page story in oil paints.
I never studied watercolors, and I wish I’d had that opportunity. At the Art Center it was mainly advertising and illustration, and the emphasis there was working with markers. I’ve never liked markers. I’m really happy working with watercolors. It’s so much freer and much more expressive.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: We don’t really see much painted work from you, outside of the covers for the Usagi collections once a year. Is that most of the painting that you do, or do you paint for yourself to keep in practice?
STAN SAKAI: I’ve done a few watercolor landscapes, but I just don’t have the time to paint for myself. Like you said, I do maybe a cover a year, plus a tip-in sheet, and that’s about it. But I really enjoy painting.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: This type of art, using watercolors to color well-defined linework, is not very common in American comics. What were some sources of inspiration for your own process?
STAN SAKAI: It’s a lot more common in European graphic novels, and that’s something I really got into after college, when I first discovered Asterix. Later, Heavy Metal [published] Moebius’s work, and that just floored me. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to Europe quite often, so whenever I’m there I pick up some graphic albums, especially the French ones, such as Blacksad, which is a funny animal series -- it’s great. There’s also Hermann’s stuff, especially his Medieval series -- it’s done pretty much the same way, with an ink outline and watercolor paintings. As I said, this approach is pretty common in Europe, and that was my inspiration for the way I painted Yokai.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: Have European comics inspired Usagi or any of your other work in other ways?
STAN SAKAI: You would expect my favorite artist of the samurai genre to be Japanese, but he’s actually Belgian. Michetz does a wonderful series called Kogaratsu, about a wandering samurai. His research is just astounding, and his artwork and stories are just fabulous. He’s been a big influence on my research and the overall approach to doing a samurai comic. But then, I discovered his work much later on, just within the past ten years or so. He and I had an exhibition at the Japan Tower, a prominent Belgian landmark, a few years ago. I had wanted to meet him, but, unfortunately, he was not at the opening reception.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: Have Japanese comics had much influence on your work?
STAN SAKAI: The early stuff, especially Tezuka. I like how he mixed comedy and drama in his stories. I grew up reading Tezuka’s work -- well, actually, my mom would read it to me because it was all in Japanese. I grew up reading -- or having read to me -- Tetsuwan Atom [Astro Boy] and what we call Princess Knight here, as well as some of his Buddha series, and of course Phoenix. My favorite Tezuka series is Dororo, about this kid, a thief, who hooks up with a wandering samurai, and their encounters with monsters and creatures. Unfortunately, Tezuka never completed the series.
I got to meet Dr. Tezuka a couple of times, and I went to Japan as a guest of Tezuka Studios -- this was more recently, after he passed away, of course. But that was a highlight.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: Sometimes at comic book stores, I see Usagi in the manga section. Do you feel like it fits in well amongst manga?
STAN SAKAI: It fits in, in that it’s about Japan, but it’s not manga, because the style of storytelling is much different. It’s a Western -- as opposed to a Japanese -- style of storytelling, the pacing and such. There’s a huge manga market in France, and the French editions of Usagi are manga-size, to fit in the manga racks, so there is a conscious effort there to align Usagi with the manga movement. But France also has the largest Usagi volumes, which are 9" by 12". I like my French publisher, Editions Paquet, because they’re very innovative.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: I know that in Japan they don’t really publish very many foreign comics at all, so Usagi doesn’t really have a presence there, is that right?
STAN SAKAI: Correct, there has never been a Western comic that has made any type of serious impression on the Japanese manga market, but when I was there as a guest of Tezuka, we did meet with mangaka [manga artists] and publishers, and I was surprised that people knew who I was and knew of Usagi. So there is at least a little bit of knowledge of comics beyond the manga market. I was quite surprised by that.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: If you were a cartoonist there, do you feel like Usagi would be very different, or would you even be doing it at all? Or is it too much a product of its origins in the black-and-white boom in America?
STAN SAKAI: It’s really difficult to say, because there aren’t that many samurai comics in Japan, just as there are not very many Western or cowboy comics in the U.S. I don’t know if there are any popular funny animal or samurai comics. So I don’t know; a hybrid between those two genres would either be very popular or a complete failure.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: Sasuke the Demon Queller is sort of the co-star of Yokai. Can you talk a bit about Sasuke and his history?
STAN SAKAI: Sasuke has a series of inspirations. There was a ninja named Sarutobi Sasuke, whose abilities were so great that in stories people imbued him with magical powers. He could disappear in a puff of smoke, and fly, and could control the weather. He became a folk legend, much as figures like Paul Bunyan are folk legends here in the U.S. Actually, Tezuka wrote a graphic novel about Sarutobi Sasuke. I read about Sasuke, and I even remember seeing a movie about him when I was a kid. So he was one of the inspirations for my Sasuke.
Another was Shoki the Demon Slayer from China, whom I incorporated in the “Traitors of the Earth” story arc. I think he was an aristocrat who basically slew demons. Another inspiration, of course, was one of my earliest major artistic influences, Doctor Strange by Steve Ditko.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: Am I right that I’m seeing Sasuke making Doctor Strange hand gestures when he’s shooting magic from his hands?
Yeah, there are a few, especially in “Traitors of the Earth.” For that I went to Doctor Strange’s encounters with Baron Mordo and Dormammu.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: With “Traitors of the Earth” earlier this year and now Yokai, Sasuke had two major appearances in 2009, after having shown up only two or three times before, with a couple of years between those appearances. Does the fact that he’s showing up more frequently mean that something bigger is happening with him?
STAN SAKAI: There was a story arc I was going to do with Sasuke and Jei the demon, but that won’t be for quite a while yet. I’ve tried to avoid using Sasuke too much because I want him to be kept a figure of mystery, and don’t want Usagi to get caught up in too many supernatural adventures. But for this story Sasuke just fit in perfectly. We learn a bit more about Sasuke whenever he appears. There’s a big revelation about his background in Yokai as well.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: How has the experience of making Yokai been, generally? I know the regular Usagi series keeps you pretty busy, but has this made you want to do more fully painted work or another graphic novel?
STAN SAKAI: Oh, I would love to do more fully painted work, but like you said, it’s just a matter of finding the time. I had to put the regular Usagi series aside for a while, and I really miss it. And I’m falling behind schedule with the regular books.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: Yokai is one of the projects commemorating your twenty-fifth anniversary of writing and drawing Usagi. What keeps you inspired to return to this world, and to keep expanding it with new characters and new settings?
STAN SAKAI: I really enjoy working with Usagi. I enjoy working with the characters, I enjoy writing the stories, and I enjoy the drawing. I get to work at home, watch TV while I’m working -- it’s great. There’s no commute time at all! I take a break whenever I want to. But every so often, I'll get a call from Diana [Schutz, Usagi’s editor] saying, “Hey, you're late.” Then I really have to play catch-up.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: Over the twenty-five years, how has making Usagi changed, either in the process or working with the characters?
STAN SAKAI: I’ve gotten more comfortable with the character, as well as the process of doing comic books. When I first started out, I remember doing an eight-page Usagi story, and it took me a month to do, and I thought, “Wow, this is great. I really whipped that out. I did eight pages and it only took me a month.” But now I’ve got to finish twenty-four pages every five weeks, so I've gotten faster. Also, working with Sergio Aragonés sped me up a lot, mostly through years of ridicule: “You work so slowly, you’ve got to speed it up. What? You have to pencil?”
Usagi has changed, and a lot of it is unconscious on my part. When he started out, his physical proportions were much different. Right now he seems taller, which appeals to me a lot more, because somehow it goes with the more dramatic stories that I’ve been telling. His personality has changed, too, in very subtle ways, but he has matured over the years, just as I think I’ve matured as a storyteller.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: How about the fans? What’s your interaction with the fan community like?
STAN SAKAI: Oh, the fans are wonderful. They set up a wonderful website at usagiyojimbo.com. Usagi fans are very generous, not only those in the U.S., but internationally as well. I went to France once, and one of the French fans took a week off from work to escort me to various sights that I wanted to see, as well as to a convention. The fans are just great.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: Usagi is a series that a lot of people have followed for the entire twenty-five years. Is it humbling that Usagi has been a part of so many people’s lives for so long?
STAN SAKAI: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’ve gotten letters saying that Usagi’s used in schools, or from people who discovered Usagi at the library and now are hooked on it. Grasscutter was used as a textbook in Japanese History classes at the University of Portland in Oregon. That’s pretty neat. And there’ve been theses written about Usagi, so it’s been very humbling.
BRENDAN WRIGHT: Is there anything about the series or about Yokai that you want to add?
STAN SAKAI: Just that I’m looking forward to the next twenty-five years! I have stories written down the line, and each story I write is a springboard for two more. I’ve already laid some groundwork for Tomoe’s wedding, and I’d like to do some short stories with some of the other supporting characters. There’s also a story I've been wanting to do that I’ve run past Diana a couple times, “Usagi and War of the Worlds.” I’m having fun with it.