HAVE SWORD, WILL HOP: STAN SAKAI’S CARTOON RABBIT WARRIOR STAYS TRUE TO SAMURAI LORE
by HUNTER WALKER (THE DAILY, AUGUST 3, 2011)
Animated animals generally show up in children’s entertainment or slapstick comedy, but Stan Sakai’s cartoon rabbit named Miyamoto Usagi is a skilled samurai swordsman, drawn for adult readers.
The character’s name is an amalgamation of the famed warrior Miyamoto Musashi and usage, the Japanese word for rabbit. Like his namesake, Musashi, Usagi is a masterless ronin. Sakai has chronicled Usagi’s wanderings across feudal Japan through nearly 200 issues since 1984 and more than 5,000 pages of his comic series, Usagi Yojimbo (“rabbit bodyguard,” in English).
Usagi Yojimbo is the subject of “Year of the Rabbit,” a comprehensive retrospective that began last month at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. It includes original drawings, sketches and a biographical film, and is on view until Oct. 30.
“My storytelling influences come mainly from cinema, anyone from Akira Kurosawa to people like James Cameron,” Sakai told The Daiy. “I grew up reading both American comics, or Western comics, as well as Japanese comics ... they weren’t manga or anime back then, they were just Japanese comics.”
Being raised in Hawaii allowed Sakai to be exposed to this diverse array of source material.
“I’m sansei, I’m third-generation Japanese-American, and Hawaii, where I grew up, has a huge Japanese population,” he said. “Down the street from where I lived was the old Kapahulu Theater, and every week, they’d show samurai movies, so I’d go there every Saturday.”
His style may be cartoonish, but Sakai has a devotion to historical accuracy. He conducts meticulous research on feudal Japan while writing the storylines for Usagi Yojimbo.
“My first goal is to entertain, but then you have got to do your research right, because any error in research will destroy even the best story,” Sakai said.
His accuracy is so impressive that Usagi Yojimbo is being used as a history textbook in some classrooms, including at the University of Portland.
Usagi Yojimbo is an anomaly in the comic book world; most other characters are owned by their publishers and are worked on by multiple artists and writers. Sakai has retained full creative control over his brainchild, which is now published in a dozen different languages.
