COMICOLOGY MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 #1, SPRING 2000
Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 11:24 -0700
YEAR OF THE RABBIT: USAGI YOJIMBO CREATOR STAN SAKAI DISCUSSES THE PAST AND FUTURE OF HIS ACCLAIMED SERIES
by BRIAN SANER LAMKEN (COMICOLOGY MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 #1, SPRING 2000)
Thanks to Stan Sakai's knack for great standalone stories – and with a sequel to the award-winning "Grasscutter" arc on the horizon – the roaming rabbit of Usagi Yojimbo is enthralling an ever-increasing audience.
It's a funny-animal comic book that's not particularly funny and has almost nothing to do with animals. The title character, Miyamoto Usagi, is a walking, talking rabbit, but he's no Bugs Bunny. You won't find Elmer Fudd vewy, vewy quietly following Usagi's tracks; carrots, pratfalls, and Wile E. Coyotes have about as much to do with this circa-1600 samurai as do ray guns and rocketships – um, except for the sci-fi spin-off miniseries [Space Usagi].
We're not saying that Usagi Yojimbo won't inspire a smile or chuckle now & then. Like all good drama, Stan Sakai's labor of love has a fair amount of humor involved. And the series is populated by all manner of animals. But with a few notable exceptions, the ubiquitous tokagé lizards are just about the only creatures with non-speaking roles, as Sakai has depicted cats, pigs, bears, foxes, and rhinoceri all living as citizens in feudal Japan, oblivious to their zoological status.
Funny-animal comics have a long, proud history, and, like the comics medium itself, they've expanded in terms of content beyond what their name suggests. Comics haven't been exclusively gag-oriented since the early 1900s, and many funny-animal aficionados prefer the term "furry" for their comics of choice because the focus in modern funny-animal comics isn't necessarily on humor or on the fact that the protagonists are mice, squirrels, bunnies, pandas, and ducks. In Usagi Yojimbo, as in Hepcats or Uncle Scrooge, the fact that the cast of characters isn't technically human just reinforces those characters' universal appeal; Scott McCloud, in his wonderful book Understanding Comics, refers to this concept as masking – abstracting a story's central characters into very minimalist, representational drawings as a way of heightening readers' abilities to project themselves into those characters.
Usagi first appeared on paper in 1983. "It all started because I wanted to do a comicbook series loosely based on the life of Miyamoto Musashi," the cartoonist told Comicology recently. "Musashi lived around the turn of the 17th Century in Japan, the same time period in which Usagi's adventures take place. He is regarded as the epitome of what a samurai should be: Not only was Musashi a great fighter, but he had a strong spiritual side; he was a painter, sculptor, philosopher, and author of The Book of Five Rings, which is still used today as a guide to strategy.
"Anyway," Stan continued, "I was sketching one day and drew a rabbit with his ears tied in a chonmage – a samurai's topknot – and loved the design & simplicity of it. So Miyamoto Usagi was born. Usagi means 'rabbit' or 'hare' in Japanese. I kept the surname Miyamoto to pay homage to the historical figure he was based on."
The character made his public debut in 1984's Albedo #2, an anthology of anthropomorphics published by Steve Gallacci's Thoughts & Images imprint. Sakai was lettering Groo for creator Sergio Aragonés – as he continues to do today – and had been looking to branch out as a writer & artist on his own; in fact, Groo made a cameo appearance in the second Usagi Yojimbo story, "Lone Rabbit & Child," in Albedo #3, and it seems as though the dim barbarian's penchant for switching publishers (albeit over time) rubbed off on the sword-wielding rabbit.
Usagi hopped over to Fantagraphics Books to appear in the first issue – and ten issues total – of Critters, a title that began during the infamous black-&-white boom of the mid-1980s. That boom was sparked by the success of Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and many of the projects that sprouted in its wake were blatant ripoffs of TMNT, parodies of a parody, such as Adolescent Radioactive Black-Belt Hamsters and Pre-Teen Dirty-Gene Kung-Fu Kangaroos (no, we're not making this up). Usagi is still around because, like the Turtles, it was an original concept with actual storytelling involved. In 1986, Fantagraphics published an Usagi Yojimbo Summer Special reprinting Usagi's earliest Albedo stories, and the following year the company launched an ongoing Usagi Yojimbo series, with everything but a few back-up stories completely written, drawn, & lettered by Sakai.
The samurai's inevitable crossover with the Ninja Turtles came in 1987's Turtle Soup #1, and he appeared briefly on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series, joining the TMNT action-figure line in the process. The first of the Space Usagi miniseries, starring Miyamoto Usagi's far-future lookalike descendant, was published by Eastman & Laird's Mirage Studios in 1992, and in 1993 Sakai relaunched the main Usagi Yojimbo title as a bi-monthly color series at Mirage. Mirage & the Ninja Turtles franchise soon ran out of steam, however, and in 1996 a new, black-&-white Usagi ongoing series began at Dark Horse Comics; Sakai's old friend Sergio Aragonés has since brought Groo and other projects to Dark Horse as well, and both cartoonists publish under the Maverick imprint that Dark Horse now uses for creator-owned projects. Groo colorist Tom Luth, who collaborated with Sakai on his color run at Mirage, continues to provide the color for Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo covers.
Sakai said that all of his publishers had "pretty much left me alone. We work out a schedule together, but beyond that I'm free to write & draw whatever I want." Fantagraphics keeps the collected editions of Usagi's earlier stories in Albedo, Critters, and the Fantagraphics Usagi Yojimbo series in print, while Dark Horse is home to trade paperbacks and limited-edition hardcovers of the Mirage and Dark Horse series, including a volume collecting all of the Space Usagi material.
Sakai has gone to great effort to make his series as realistic as possible – walking, talking rabbits and supernatural occurrences aside. "The primary objective of my stories is to entertain," he said, but he added that he sees Usagi as educational as well. Few of his American readers are likely to be familiar with the early Japanese society depicted in the series, so Sakai frequently includes background material in the text pages at the end of each issue. "I've done stories about pottery, kite festivals, swordmaking, firefighting techniques, and the [Japanese] creation myth," he noted.
Ye Editor developed an affection for Japan's language and history in his college days, and so asked Sakai about the choices that the writer makes in translating not just the words but the tone of Usagi's dialogue. "I like to keep a very few words in Japanese to give the flavor of the culture," Sakai said. "If I'm working on a story involving ninja, for instance, I'll leave a few terms such as jonin (ninja clan head) or the more casual kashira (chief) or chunin (executive officer). There's always a translation guide the first time I use a foreign term." As for the use of honorific suffixes, "I tend to drop them for the Western readership," Sakai acknowledged. He also pointed out that in Eiji Yoshikawa's epic Musashi – first published in serialized form between 1935 & 1939 in the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun – Usagi's literary ancestor Miyamoto Musashi is commonly referred to by his given name. "Besides, Usagi is an anomaly in the samurai class in that he's more informal than samurai are supposed to be. He crosses class barriers with ease, which makes for a more interesting variety of stories. And I still retain the honorific suffix when someone speaks to a superior or when he meets another person for the first time."
The more unearthly aspects of some of Sakai's storylines are no less rooted in research. Any look at 17th Century Japan would be incomplete without a mention of the superstitions of the time and the kami, or spirits, that populate the Shinto belief system. "Japan has a great tradition of folklore," said Sakai. "This is a country whose emperor's lineage has historically been traced back to the goddess Amaterasu; it's a very spiritual land. So it's natural for supernatural elements to play a part in Usagi's adventures. What I find really neat about Japanese mythology is that not only are there maleficent creatures, but there are also really wacky monsters like walking umbrellas, feet with eyes, and women with necks six feet long." Many of these creatures were on display last year, in "The Inn on Moonshadow Hill" from Usagi Yojimbo [Vol. 3] #31.
Sakai's longest storyline to date is "Grasscutter", which ran in Usagi Yojimbo [Vol. 3] #13-22 summer of 1997 to the summer of 1998 and brought Sakai his third Eisner Award when it won for Best Serialized Story. It had mythical dimensions of its own, as it centered on kusanagi no tsurugi, the legendary Sword of the Gods known as Grasscutter. Thanks to the acclaim that met "Grasscutter" and the popularity of Inspector Ishida, a new recurring character whom Usagi has helped solve a number of small-town mysteries, 1999 really did look like the Year of the Rabbit – but Sakai isn't one to buy into hype. "I've been doing the Usagi books for going on 16 years now, and have seen so many fluctuations and trends in the industry," he told us. "I've seen a lot of 'hot' books fall into the deep freeze so fast that I really don't pay attention to 'the buzz' anymore."
Sakai did humbly admit that it had "been a good year" for him, however. In addition to the Eisner, Sakai took home a 1999 Haxtur Award (from Spain, where Usagi began publication a few years back), and he's on this year's Eisner & Harvey Awards ballots a total of three times; in fact, his Eisner nods this year – in the Best Letterer & Best Serialized Story categories – bring his total Eisner nominations to fifteen. And the fans who waited patiently for the long-promised "Grasscutter" will soon get their hands on its sequel, "Journey to Atsuta Shrine", which is slated to begin in July 2000 and run through Usagi Yojimbo [Vol. 3] #39-45.
" 'Grasscutter' was written with a sequel in mind," Stan said. "In the original, Usagi gains possession of the sacred sword; in [the sequel], he and his companions must transport the sword to Atsuta Shrine, where, according to history, it was housed." Among those companions is Sanshobo, the priest in whose temple the true Grasscutter has rested while a counterfeit was housed in Atsuta Shrine in its place. The first round "was certainly my most ambitious storyline," said Sakai, "beginning with the creation of the Japanese archipelago by the gods and following the sword Grasscutter down through history to Usagi's time." The prologue to "Journey to Atsuta Shrine", according to Stan, "tells the story of the legendary hero Yamato-Dake and the founding of the shrine. The story takes place in Japan's proto-historical period, so there is a huge fantasy element involved." Yamato-Dake was previously seen in the prologue to "Grasscutter", in which kusanagi no tsurugi was given its name. Sakai added that "Journey to Atsuta Shrine" soon shifts focus from Yamato-Dake's day back to Usagi's present, which corresponds to about 1605 CE, dealing "more with politics of Usagi's time as various factions attempt to get hold of the sacred sword to upset the balance of power."
Just as "Grasscutter" brought a number of characters back to the fore in Usagi's life, so does its sequel. Readers thrilled to the return of Tomoe Ame in the previous storyline; she first appeared in the second Usagi Yojimbo tale printed, and many fans have clamored for the hinted-at romantic interest between her and our favorite samurai to be consummated. Sakai insists, however, that "Usagi still carries the torch for his first love, Mariko. His relationship with women since has seldom tended to go beyond friendship." Mariko was also introduced in an early story, as the wife of Usagi's childhood rival Kenichi; it was quite some time before Sakai revealed that Jotaro, the son of Mariko and Kenichi's whose life Usagi saved in that same story, was actually Usagi's own son, conceived by Mariko shortly before Usagi left home to serve Lord Mifune.
Sakai observed that fans actually request particular characters more than they do particular stories. "I've left dangling plot threads throughout the series to foreshadow upcoming storylines," he noted, "and I often get questions about those." The upcoming "Duel at Kitanoji Shrine" will answer some of them; in it, Usagi's mentor, Katsuichi, has a showdown with swordmaster Nakamura Koji. "Jotaro is now Katsuichi's student," Sakai remarked, "so there is a father-&-son reunion, although Jotaro is still unaware of their relationship."
More than once throughout our interview, Stan referred to his series as "Usagi's books," so it was only natural to wonder if Miyamoto Usagi was among those creations infamous for telling their creators what to do. "Yes and no," replied Sakai. "I still determine Usagi's future storylines, but many times I find that the character has developed in certain directions on his own." Usagi's appearance has definitely evolved since he was first drawn up in Sakai's sketchbook. "If you compare the current Usagi with his earlier design," Sakai said, "you'll see that his proportions have changed – he's taller and not as cuddly. This was totally unconscious on my part, but I've kept his new look as it fits better with the type of stories that I've been telling." Laugh if you must, but those stories could be the most engaging yarns to feature a white rabbit since a little girl followed one down a hole and emerged into a land of wonder.
by BRIAN SANER LAMKEN (COMICOLOGY MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 #1, SPRING 2000)
Thanks to Stan Sakai's knack for great standalone stories – and with a sequel to the award-winning "Grasscutter" arc on the horizon – the roaming rabbit of Usagi Yojimbo is enthralling an ever-increasing audience.
It's a funny-animal comic book that's not particularly funny and has almost nothing to do with animals. The title character, Miyamoto Usagi, is a walking, talking rabbit, but he's no Bugs Bunny. You won't find Elmer Fudd vewy, vewy quietly following Usagi's tracks; carrots, pratfalls, and Wile E. Coyotes have about as much to do with this circa-1600 samurai as do ray guns and rocketships – um, except for the sci-fi spin-off miniseries [Space Usagi].
We're not saying that Usagi Yojimbo won't inspire a smile or chuckle now & then. Like all good drama, Stan Sakai's labor of love has a fair amount of humor involved. And the series is populated by all manner of animals. But with a few notable exceptions, the ubiquitous tokagé lizards are just about the only creatures with non-speaking roles, as Sakai has depicted cats, pigs, bears, foxes, and rhinoceri all living as citizens in feudal Japan, oblivious to their zoological status.
Funny-animal comics have a long, proud history, and, like the comics medium itself, they've expanded in terms of content beyond what their name suggests. Comics haven't been exclusively gag-oriented since the early 1900s, and many funny-animal aficionados prefer the term "furry" for their comics of choice because the focus in modern funny-animal comics isn't necessarily on humor or on the fact that the protagonists are mice, squirrels, bunnies, pandas, and ducks. In Usagi Yojimbo, as in Hepcats or Uncle Scrooge, the fact that the cast of characters isn't technically human just reinforces those characters' universal appeal; Scott McCloud, in his wonderful book Understanding Comics, refers to this concept as masking – abstracting a story's central characters into very minimalist, representational drawings as a way of heightening readers' abilities to project themselves into those characters.
Usagi first appeared on paper in 1983. "It all started because I wanted to do a comicbook series loosely based on the life of Miyamoto Musashi," the cartoonist told Comicology recently. "Musashi lived around the turn of the 17th Century in Japan, the same time period in which Usagi's adventures take place. He is regarded as the epitome of what a samurai should be: Not only was Musashi a great fighter, but he had a strong spiritual side; he was a painter, sculptor, philosopher, and author of The Book of Five Rings, which is still used today as a guide to strategy.
"Anyway," Stan continued, "I was sketching one day and drew a rabbit with his ears tied in a chonmage – a samurai's topknot – and loved the design & simplicity of it. So Miyamoto Usagi was born. Usagi means 'rabbit' or 'hare' in Japanese. I kept the surname Miyamoto to pay homage to the historical figure he was based on."
The character made his public debut in 1984's Albedo #2, an anthology of anthropomorphics published by Steve Gallacci's Thoughts & Images imprint. Sakai was lettering Groo for creator Sergio Aragonés – as he continues to do today – and had been looking to branch out as a writer & artist on his own; in fact, Groo made a cameo appearance in the second Usagi Yojimbo story, "Lone Rabbit & Child," in Albedo #3, and it seems as though the dim barbarian's penchant for switching publishers (albeit over time) rubbed off on the sword-wielding rabbit.
Usagi hopped over to Fantagraphics Books to appear in the first issue – and ten issues total – of Critters, a title that began during the infamous black-&-white boom of the mid-1980s. That boom was sparked by the success of Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and many of the projects that sprouted in its wake were blatant ripoffs of TMNT, parodies of a parody, such as Adolescent Radioactive Black-Belt Hamsters and Pre-Teen Dirty-Gene Kung-Fu Kangaroos (no, we're not making this up). Usagi is still around because, like the Turtles, it was an original concept with actual storytelling involved. In 1986, Fantagraphics published an Usagi Yojimbo Summer Special reprinting Usagi's earliest Albedo stories, and the following year the company launched an ongoing Usagi Yojimbo series, with everything but a few back-up stories completely written, drawn, & lettered by Sakai.
The samurai's inevitable crossover with the Ninja Turtles came in 1987's Turtle Soup #1, and he appeared briefly on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series, joining the TMNT action-figure line in the process. The first of the Space Usagi miniseries, starring Miyamoto Usagi's far-future lookalike descendant, was published by Eastman & Laird's Mirage Studios in 1992, and in 1993 Sakai relaunched the main Usagi Yojimbo title as a bi-monthly color series at Mirage. Mirage & the Ninja Turtles franchise soon ran out of steam, however, and in 1996 a new, black-&-white Usagi ongoing series began at Dark Horse Comics; Sakai's old friend Sergio Aragonés has since brought Groo and other projects to Dark Horse as well, and both cartoonists publish under the Maverick imprint that Dark Horse now uses for creator-owned projects. Groo colorist Tom Luth, who collaborated with Sakai on his color run at Mirage, continues to provide the color for Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo covers.
Sakai said that all of his publishers had "pretty much left me alone. We work out a schedule together, but beyond that I'm free to write & draw whatever I want." Fantagraphics keeps the collected editions of Usagi's earlier stories in Albedo, Critters, and the Fantagraphics Usagi Yojimbo series in print, while Dark Horse is home to trade paperbacks and limited-edition hardcovers of the Mirage and Dark Horse series, including a volume collecting all of the Space Usagi material.
Sakai has gone to great effort to make his series as realistic as possible – walking, talking rabbits and supernatural occurrences aside. "The primary objective of my stories is to entertain," he said, but he added that he sees Usagi as educational as well. Few of his American readers are likely to be familiar with the early Japanese society depicted in the series, so Sakai frequently includes background material in the text pages at the end of each issue. "I've done stories about pottery, kite festivals, swordmaking, firefighting techniques, and the [Japanese] creation myth," he noted.
Ye Editor developed an affection for Japan's language and history in his college days, and so asked Sakai about the choices that the writer makes in translating not just the words but the tone of Usagi's dialogue. "I like to keep a very few words in Japanese to give the flavor of the culture," Sakai said. "If I'm working on a story involving ninja, for instance, I'll leave a few terms such as jonin (ninja clan head) or the more casual kashira (chief) or chunin (executive officer). There's always a translation guide the first time I use a foreign term." As for the use of honorific suffixes, "I tend to drop them for the Western readership," Sakai acknowledged. He also pointed out that in Eiji Yoshikawa's epic Musashi – first published in serialized form between 1935 & 1939 in the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun – Usagi's literary ancestor Miyamoto Musashi is commonly referred to by his given name. "Besides, Usagi is an anomaly in the samurai class in that he's more informal than samurai are supposed to be. He crosses class barriers with ease, which makes for a more interesting variety of stories. And I still retain the honorific suffix when someone speaks to a superior or when he meets another person for the first time."
The more unearthly aspects of some of Sakai's storylines are no less rooted in research. Any look at 17th Century Japan would be incomplete without a mention of the superstitions of the time and the kami, or spirits, that populate the Shinto belief system. "Japan has a great tradition of folklore," said Sakai. "This is a country whose emperor's lineage has historically been traced back to the goddess Amaterasu; it's a very spiritual land. So it's natural for supernatural elements to play a part in Usagi's adventures. What I find really neat about Japanese mythology is that not only are there maleficent creatures, but there are also really wacky monsters like walking umbrellas, feet with eyes, and women with necks six feet long." Many of these creatures were on display last year, in "The Inn on Moonshadow Hill" from Usagi Yojimbo [Vol. 3] #31.
Sakai's longest storyline to date is "Grasscutter", which ran in Usagi Yojimbo [Vol. 3] #13-22 summer of 1997 to the summer of 1998 and brought Sakai his third Eisner Award when it won for Best Serialized Story. It had mythical dimensions of its own, as it centered on kusanagi no tsurugi, the legendary Sword of the Gods known as Grasscutter. Thanks to the acclaim that met "Grasscutter" and the popularity of Inspector Ishida, a new recurring character whom Usagi has helped solve a number of small-town mysteries, 1999 really did look like the Year of the Rabbit – but Sakai isn't one to buy into hype. "I've been doing the Usagi books for going on 16 years now, and have seen so many fluctuations and trends in the industry," he told us. "I've seen a lot of 'hot' books fall into the deep freeze so fast that I really don't pay attention to 'the buzz' anymore."
Sakai did humbly admit that it had "been a good year" for him, however. In addition to the Eisner, Sakai took home a 1999 Haxtur Award (from Spain, where Usagi began publication a few years back), and he's on this year's Eisner & Harvey Awards ballots a total of three times; in fact, his Eisner nods this year – in the Best Letterer & Best Serialized Story categories – bring his total Eisner nominations to fifteen. And the fans who waited patiently for the long-promised "Grasscutter" will soon get their hands on its sequel, "Journey to Atsuta Shrine", which is slated to begin in July 2000 and run through Usagi Yojimbo [Vol. 3] #39-45.
" 'Grasscutter' was written with a sequel in mind," Stan said. "In the original, Usagi gains possession of the sacred sword; in [the sequel], he and his companions must transport the sword to Atsuta Shrine, where, according to history, it was housed." Among those companions is Sanshobo, the priest in whose temple the true Grasscutter has rested while a counterfeit was housed in Atsuta Shrine in its place. The first round "was certainly my most ambitious storyline," said Sakai, "beginning with the creation of the Japanese archipelago by the gods and following the sword Grasscutter down through history to Usagi's time." The prologue to "Journey to Atsuta Shrine", according to Stan, "tells the story of the legendary hero Yamato-Dake and the founding of the shrine. The story takes place in Japan's proto-historical period, so there is a huge fantasy element involved." Yamato-Dake was previously seen in the prologue to "Grasscutter", in which kusanagi no tsurugi was given its name. Sakai added that "Journey to Atsuta Shrine" soon shifts focus from Yamato-Dake's day back to Usagi's present, which corresponds to about 1605 CE, dealing "more with politics of Usagi's time as various factions attempt to get hold of the sacred sword to upset the balance of power."
Just as "Grasscutter" brought a number of characters back to the fore in Usagi's life, so does its sequel. Readers thrilled to the return of Tomoe Ame in the previous storyline; she first appeared in the second Usagi Yojimbo tale printed, and many fans have clamored for the hinted-at romantic interest between her and our favorite samurai to be consummated. Sakai insists, however, that "Usagi still carries the torch for his first love, Mariko. His relationship with women since has seldom tended to go beyond friendship." Mariko was also introduced in an early story, as the wife of Usagi's childhood rival Kenichi; it was quite some time before Sakai revealed that Jotaro, the son of Mariko and Kenichi's whose life Usagi saved in that same story, was actually Usagi's own son, conceived by Mariko shortly before Usagi left home to serve Lord Mifune.
Sakai observed that fans actually request particular characters more than they do particular stories. "I've left dangling plot threads throughout the series to foreshadow upcoming storylines," he noted, "and I often get questions about those." The upcoming "Duel at Kitanoji Shrine" will answer some of them; in it, Usagi's mentor, Katsuichi, has a showdown with swordmaster Nakamura Koji. "Jotaro is now Katsuichi's student," Sakai remarked, "so there is a father-&-son reunion, although Jotaro is still unaware of their relationship."
More than once throughout our interview, Stan referred to his series as "Usagi's books," so it was only natural to wonder if Miyamoto Usagi was among those creations infamous for telling their creators what to do. "Yes and no," replied Sakai. "I still determine Usagi's future storylines, but many times I find that the character has developed in certain directions on his own." Usagi's appearance has definitely evolved since he was first drawn up in Sakai's sketchbook. "If you compare the current Usagi with his earlier design," Sakai said, "you'll see that his proportions have changed – he's taller and not as cuddly. This was totally unconscious on my part, but I've kept his new look as it fits better with the type of stories that I've been telling." Laugh if you must, but those stories could be the most engaging yarns to feature a white rabbit since a little girl followed one down a hole and emerged into a land of wonder.