Usagi Yojimbo DojoBoard

I was interviewed for Japan's Daily Yomiuri newspaper. Here is the online version that will be up for a couple of weeks:

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/ar ... Y11101.htm

Great interview!

Thanks for posting the link.

Nice interview!

Shame on that teacher, however.

hahaha, that sweet little female teacher had balls!!;)....
rest in peace, little spot!

coolray85 wrote:hahaha, that sweet little female teacher had balls!!;)....
rest in peace, little spot!

Yes, but Cynlee is still very sweet.

I think this is one of the best reviews I've ever read of Usagi. I'll have to pass this one along. It's a very enticing introduction to his world.

I agree, it is really cool to read it even if you know all about usagi....I immediately passed it on to my brother rosario....
;)that remark of the sweet little teacher(who in my mind somehow looks and acts as sweet as 'hooks' from police academy;)....) reminds me of gen's temper sometimes;)....

SAMURAI RABBIT ENJOYS LONG CAREER: SAKAI'S 'USAGI YOJIMBO' SLASHES ENEMIES, TEACHES JAPANESE CULTURE
by TOM BAKER (DAILY YOMIURI, FEBRUARY 5, 2010)

"There was the old movie theater down the street from where I lived that showed the old samurai movies, those chambara movies, every Saturday. I'd go to see the old Toshiro Mifune movies. Get-in-for-a-quarter, stay-all-day type of thing," Stan Sakai, 56, said, recalling his childhood in Hawaii.

Sakai grew up to become a comic-book artist, and in 1984, he launched a samurai epic of his own. Its main character is a wandering ronin with dazzling sword skills, a fierce sense of honor and a network of friends and enemies across Japan. Miyamoto Usagi is one formidable rabbit.

A fluffy bunny wielding a katana sword may sound silly, but Sakai makes it work. His ongoing Usagi Yojimbo series is filled with drama, pathos and well-developed characters. There are also abundant allusions to Japanese culture. The most obvious of these is that Usagi's long ears are tied together to form a chonmage samurai hairstyle, but others are more subtle, such as a gourd flask that resembles mangaka Osamu Tezuka's signature Hyotan-Tsugi character.

In Usagi Yojimbo: Yokai (Dark Horse, 63 pp, 14.95 dollars), a full-color hardback graphic novel released in November to mark the character's 25th anniversary last year, Usagi confronts a grotesque army of Japanese supernatural beings.

"I love the old ghost stories about Japan. That was fun to research," Sakai told The Daily Yomiuri by phone from California, where he lives. "For a country that's so small, there's so much [in the way of] ghosts and goblins and monsters around. The folklore of Japan is so rich. And not only the really horrific stuff, but also the really goofy stuff. It's fun to draw."

"I try to do as much research as I can on the history and culture of Japan and try to convey it in my stories. I have done stories about swordmaking, potterymaking--I even did a story about seaweed farming," he said.

Spotting the references is part of the fun of reading his books. One of Usagi's more recent adversaries was the Earth-Spider, a monster that appears in the noh play Tsuchigumo, and the rabbit has also squared off against blind swords-pig Zato-Ino, an homage to Zatoichi, the blind swordsman famously portrayed in the movies by Shintaro Katsu.

"There's also a character that I've introduced maybe in about two or three stories, called the Lone Goat and Kid," Sakai said, in a nod to Lone Wolf and Cub, the English-language title of Kozure Okami, a famous 1970s manga series by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima.

Another manga Sakai likes is Vagabond, Takehiko Inoue's take on the life of legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645), from whom Miyamoto Usagi takes his name. (The launch of Usagi Yojimbo predates that of Vagabond by more than a decade.)

Sakai's connections to Japan go beyond an appreciation of pop culture. His grandfather migrated from the Hiroshima area to Hawaii, and later his father was stationed in Japan with the U.S. military after World War II. Sakai's parents met and married in Japan, and Sakai himself was born in Kyoto, although he grew up in the United States.

"I'm third-generation Japanese-American," he explained. "Growing up in Hawaii, there's such a big Japanese population there...So I grew up with the festivals and a lot of the traditions. And my mother...used to make things like--actually I'm writing a story now called 'Teru Teru Bozu,' you know, those little dolls you hang up [to wish] for good weather--and I remember her making that when I was a kid."

Such details make Usagi Yojimbo an enjoyably educational experience for foreigners with an interest in Japan. Yet the books have never been translated into Japanese, although Sakai said they are available in about a dozen other languages.

Sakai's artwork has been recognizably consistent over the years, but the main character become less round-faced and more shaggy-cheeked.

"I think the first few years I really tried to make him cute and cuddly like a stuffed animal, whereas the stories tended to [take] a more dramatic turn. So I think the character has changed. Most of it's unconscious on my part. He has evolved over the years. His proportions have changed, so his head is not as big in proportion to his body. Characters with bigger heads tend to be cuter," Sakai said.

A variety of animals populate Usagi's world. The first daimyo he served as a samurai was a tiger, but after that character's death Usagi developed an informal allegiance to another daimyo who is a panda. What goes into choosing a character's species?

"Well, basically I just try to find an animal that looks good, that either would fit the look of the character that I'm developing or an animal that would look good graphically. Like his friend Gennosuke is a rhinoceros. You'll find no rhinoceros walking around in Japan. But I liked having a rhino because he was fun to draw. And also, having a big old rhino next to a little rabbit has a nice contrast to it," Sakai said, adding that he wanted to make the rhino "scruffy and earthy."

In this he succeeded, as Gennosuke, a bounty hunter, has a Clint Eastwood squint, a permanent five-o'clock shadow and a propensity to spout lines like, "Innkeeper! Bring enough sake to make two men blind!" after which he will turn to Usagi and say, "How about you, ronin, you want anything?"

Since a wandering swordsman's life includes violence, many characters have died over the years, including long-running ones, to the surprise and occasional dismay of readers.

"The character that I got the most letters and response from, when that character dies, was...a pet lizard. In Usagi's world, I have these lizards running all around--tokage," Sakai said, referring to the chubby, poodle-sized, dinosaurlike critters that usually scamper around the backgrounds and margins without directly entering the stories.

"Usagi had one for a pet for a while. And in one story his pet, named Spot, died. And I had fan letters from all around the world. I remember there was a schoolteacher I would see every year at the San Diego Comic Con, and when I saw her that particular year--this is right after Spot had died--she came up to me. She was a very sweet little schoolteacher; she called me a bastard. 'You bastard! You killed him off!' And she was really enraged. That was probably the most response I ever got for the death of a character."

Spot may be gone, but the series still has life in it. Sakai says he has years of story arcs planned, including one that just began about the politically arranged marriage of Usagi's close female friend Tomoe. He also plans to introduce a couple of foreign characters, from lands beyond the closed Japan of Usagi's day.

But it sounds like his main theme will remain: "I love the culture and I just try to convey that culture and history of Japan to the Western comic book market."