2010 Inoue Interview Translated

[Walter]

Takehiko Inoue: The Vagabond hiatus interviews

In August 2010, Vagabond went on hiatus because of creator Takehiko Inoue’s physical health, but then remained on hiatus even after he recovered and continued working on his other ongoing ser…

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I don’t recall ever reading any extensive interviews with Inoue. So i went searching and found a great one where he talks about everything from his struggle with motivation, to its publication (he asked his editor if he had to keep serializing), comparisons with Slam Dunk, and a whole lot more. Like for example, the gradual shedding of his adherence to Yoshikawa’s novel:

Inoue: At first, yes. I hadn’t really decided how much distance to put between Vagabond and the original novel, so part of me was playing it safe in order to keep from upsetting the novel’s fans. It’s true, though, I really did start off by sticking quite closely to the book. I was told that it was okay to go off and do my own thing, but that was hard at first, and I didn’t really have any reason to diverge until I had the characters up and running anyway.

I’m not really interested in telling a story, though — what I want to draw is what Musashi Miyamoto the man was like. I basically see what I’m going for as more like poetry than a story.

And here’s one excerpt that relates to the hiatus back in 2010. Note: After this interview, he would resume Vagabond irregularly through 2015, but it hasn’t been touched since.

Inoue: Well, speaking in terms of what I wantto do: As I said before, I really don’t at all have the urge to work on it right now, but I do know that if I don’t work on it, I’ll be in trouble down the road, and that’s basically what was keeping me going up until I went on hiatus. I don’t think that’s a good way of going about it. My hope is to stay away from Vagabond until all those unnecessary worries and emotions are gone and I’m ready to draw it because I want to draw it. I’m not sure if I’ll be allowed to wait that long, though.

I see this hiatus as sort of a death for myself as an artist, which sounds like a pretty dramatic way to put it, I realize, but there’s so much baggage that I’ve been dragging along for so long, and I know I’ll become a much better artist if I shed all of that. After I return to that state of innocence, the manga I make will be several times better than what I’m capable of now, I’m sure of it. If I prematurely go back to working on it before that, I’ll just end up going through this all over again. I mean, I’d manage to churn out something decent, I suppose, sheerly out of a sense of professional duty — but it probably wouldn’t be anything outstanding. Although, really, the fact that I’m still talking about making it something “outstanding” is itself a sign that I’m still carrying that baggage around. Anyway, I’m not touching Vagabond for now, because I think that’s what I need to be able to eventually produce something that feels right to me.

And finally, further validation on the final sequence of Slam Dunk being a high for his career:

Inoue: That depends how deep I’m able to immerse myself in Vagabond. If I reach a point where nothing else matters to me, maybe I’ll be able to cruise right through to the end in one go. My only experience with hitting that groove as I work toward an ending is Slam Dunk, so it’s hard to say if that’ll happen with Vagabond too. Maybe it’s too late and I’ve missed my chance to get into that zone.

 

[Griffith]

I think I've seen this before, or at least this sentiment from him, which frankly sounds creatively almost as fatal as Miura's untimely medical emergency and death. I say that seriously because I've given up on and let go of Vagabond in a far more profound way than I ever did Berserk in the last year (perhaps I just needed a decade more =). Ironically though, it's Berserk that goes on even after Miura's death, in no small part due to the force of his commitment and dedication still driving those around him, and us as readers, while Inoue just... apparently doesn't have the muse for this work anymore, and I'm not holding my breath waiting for him to get his groove back. Anyway, here's what I had to say on this subject most recently and it's all still as relevant:

Will Vagabond return in 2020? Is the end near?

Yes, and it will end on a beach. Do you feel it too? Or have you lost all hope ..?

www.skullknight.net

despite my pining above I also basically reached the acceptance stage with Inoue/Vagabond otherwise a while back, to the point I don't even want him to continue for the wrong reasons as you alluded to. He's such an empathetic, emotional writer I don't want to see him merely making a dutiful effort with a character and story he's clearly lost touch with. Just look what he had to say about Musashi, Vagabond and himself 11 years(!!) ago:

"I thought 'The LAST Manga Exhibition' could become an opportunity for me, to turn the "Musashi" I depicted and his lifetime of killing dozens of people into a positive, despite everything.

What I'm trying to say is--The people that read "Vagabond" all along. The people that accepted my many twists and turns during these 10 years, and kept following me.
I really, really wanted to make them feel good. "I'm glad I kept reading." --I absolutely wanted to make them feel that way.

Drawing "shadows" to draw "light."
Conflicts and killing people are "shadows."
I thought I had to draw that side, or I wouldn't be able to see the "light." I thought that was what I was proceeding towards.

However, even if it was something along the path to my destination, the pictures that depict killing people, although pictures, also had the power to unconciously hurt people's
hearts. Unseen thorns were left remaining in the reader and the artist. When I discovered a part of myself that felt, I don't want to show these to people that still have God-like, bare open souls, like young children, I felt this was a certainty.

I'm glad I was able to draw this story at this time. No, it had to be this time, and it had to be a "Manga drawn in space, experienced with one's entire body," or it really wouldn't have been possible to get across.

I now truly feel that I finally had an opportunity to depict "light" itself. When I think so, it all wasn't a mistake. It turned into the exact form I was proceeding to.

Even when I depict sorrow, it is no longer sorrow without a destination.

July 2008
Inoue Takehiko"

Doesn't sound like someone excited to be living and breathing this material, to say the least. It bums me out because it makes it seem like he feels his own creation is largely irredeemable, despite the positive note he tries to end on in this quote and The Last Manga, and obviously nothing has happened since to change that impression. I think Musashi, or at the very least his Musashi, is better than that so it's a bit tragic if he so anguishingly disagrees. I thought a potential key to turn everything on was basically to show Musashi eventually using his sword to protect/give life. The potential was certainly there with the farmers for Musashi to come full circle and go from a tormenter as a youth to a protector as a man, and it could simultaneously make his swordsmanship sharper given this renewed and noble purpose; we know how that goes in the book, but Inoue skips and seemingly forgoes that direction before he stopped rather than emphasizing it further as I thought he might. Like Inoue came to the realization that whatever else Musashi may be, he is fundamentally a killer, and there's really no "positive destination" to go with that. Yeah, bummer, man.

I'll add that, and this is me connecting dots that aren't necessarily there as a fan of these two stories, I've been curious what affect, if any, Miura's death would have on Inoue and if it would cause him to reflect on his own mortality, either in his work or his approach to it. One difference is that Inoue likely already finished his own great work long ago, and Vagabond is still something he may have started for the wrong reasons, which became about something else, and maybe ultimately led to him quitting for the right reasons? Perhaps we'll find out someday, more likely we'll never know.

 

[Walter]

I always felt that what likely gave Inoue the edge for the Tezuka grand prize in 2002 was that Vagabond is an adaptation of Musashi, a hugely known and influential work. But now, decades into Vagabond's creation, it sounds like Musashi not being his own creation has contributed to sapping his motivation to see his story through. I can understand that. He's not feeling it, and I would have no interest in reading something the creator isn't passionate about.

 

[Aazealh]

I always felt that what likely gave Inoue the edge for the Tezuka grand prize in 2002 was that Vagabond is an adaptation of Musashi, a hugely known and influential work.

Without a doubt.

But now, decades into Vagabond's creation, it sounds like Musashi not being his own creation has contributed to sapping his motivation to see his story through.

Reading the interview above, I wonder if his struggle isn't just that he couldn't figure out how to depict his transition to an enlightened, legendary figure.

 

[Griffith]

I always felt that what likely gave Inoue the edge for the Tezuka grand prize in 2002 was that Vagabond is an adaptation of Musashi, a hugely known and influential work.

Without a doubt.

Oh, I think it's more sinister than that:

Kidding aside, I'd like to think Berserk was a little too extreme or punk rock for such stuffy honorifics, but then they were honoring it and Miura anyway, so that doesn't really follow.

But now, decades into Vagabond's creation, it sounds like Musashi not being his own creation has contributed to sapping his motivation to see his story through. I can understand that. He's not feeling it, and I would have no interest in reading something the creator isn't passionate about.

Reading the interview above, I wonder if his struggle isn't just that he couldn't figure out how to depict his transition to an enlightened, legendary figure.

Well, the seeds were definitely already planted for Musashi's final evolution, even if only relative to Inoue's Musashi, whom I've always found to be quite distinct from the character in the novel and the historical figure. I'm actually surprised to see him say he wanted his Musashi to be like the actual Musashi, which I think he just means like a real person, rather than a paragon of virtue or hagiography, because he doesn't follow that history closely either (or at least makes wild deviations based on what we couldn't possibly know). I think you both may be correct in the sense he doesn't necessarily think Musashi was so great anymore for having been really good at braining people to death, but that's just my interpretation. =)

 

[Aazealh]

Kidding aside, I'd like to think Berserk was a little too extreme or punk rock for such stuffy honorifics, but then they were honoring it and Miura anyway, so that doesn't really follow.

Honestly, Berserk is pretty unique among the kinds of works that have received these awards. The fact it was nominated several times before finally getting one also indicates to me that it may have been an uneasy fit. I think the overwhelming power of Miura's talent was such that they just couldn't deny it. =)

BTW, the Eiji Yoshikawa novel was originally serialized in Asahi Shimbun, the newspaper that organizes the prizes. It was rigged I tells ya, rigged!!!

I think you both may be correct in the sense he doesn't necessarily think Musashi was so great anymore for having been really good at braining people to death, but that's just my interpretation. =)

Yeah, I mean I have absolutely no pretensions here, but the fact he stopped where he did combined with those interviews and the way the novel itself makes use of time gaps to have Musashi mature gives me that impression.

 

[4M4M]

@Walter, aren't you or weren't you a huge SLAM DUNK fan? Because it's showing! Personally, I think Vagabond reached a point before the huge hiatus where things were all over the place. Like the focus of the story was hazy... so to speak. Volumes before that, I was already not that interested in the manga, in comparison to Berserk or even other simpler manga. REAL, for example, I never liked as much, but it seemed a more sincere story overall, it was easier to read, so to speak, similar to SLAM DUNK... To this day I haven't even got much of an interest in the Vagabond novel... still, Vagabond peak blows out of the water the other two for me, so I guess it's more of a complaint that the manga didn't follow suit with what I wanted from it...

 

[Griffith]

Honestly, Berserk is pretty unique among the kinds of works that have received these awards. The fact it was nominated several times before finally getting one also indicates to me that it may have been an uneasy fit. I think the overwhelming power of Miura's talent was such that they just couldn't deny it. =)

They gave it/him the Best Original Screenplay treatment for the actual best work that's too controversial to give the grand prize! "The Citizen Kane Award."

BTW, the Eiji Yoshikawa novel was originally serialized in Asahi Shimbun, the newspaper that organizes the prizes. It was rigged I tells ya, rigged!!!

Scandalous! BTW, I've read the novel and Musashi is nothing short of a saint. The portrayels couldn't be more different.

Yeah, I mean I have absolutely no pretensions here, but the fact he stopped where he did combined with those interviews and the way the novel itself makes use of time gaps to have Musashi mature gives me that impression.

I think he just fell out of love with the character, even The Last Manga Exhibition's plot is less a coronation of Musashi as a great man and celebration of his life and accomplishments than like a rebuke or deathbed confession. It was tragic.

Personally, I think Vagabond reached a point before the huge hiatus where things were all over the place. Like the focus of the story was hazy... so to speak. Volumes before that, I was already not that interested in the manga, in comparison to Berserk or even other simpler manga. REAL, for example, I never liked as much, but it seemed a more sincere story overall, it was easier to read, so to speak, similar to SLAM DUNK... To this day I haven't even got much of an interest in the Vagabond novel... still, Vagabond peak blows out of the water the other two for me, so I guess it's more of a complaint that the manga didn't follow suit with what I wanted from it...

To me it had several high points, the transition from Musashi as sort of a murderous young man to a truly accomplished warrior around volume 12 I want to say is the real beginning of this, which quickly gives way to the incredible Kojiro arc, and then gets paid off in his return to Kyoto, culminating in the 70 man battle and the epilogue being his confrontation with Ittosai. After that, the story indeed meanders and loses direction before it and Inoue fizzle out. I suppose he did enough to connect it to The Last Manga story since one of the last things I remember is Musashi headed to the capital, but of course, that still glosses over the final confrontation with Kojiro.

 

[Aazealh]

BTW, I've read the novel and Musashi is nothing short of a saint. The portrayels couldn't be more different.

I read it a looooong time ago so my memory of it is fuzzy, but I do recall Musashi being pretty heroic while Kojiro is basically a villain. Still, I quite liked it back then.

 

[Griffith]

I read it a looooong time ago so my memory of it is fuzzy, but I do recall Musashi being pretty heroic while Kojiro is basically a villain. Still, I quite liked it back then. =)

Oh yeah, it's great, but Musashi is basically a divine personification of the way of the sword while Kojiro, and here your memory is selling it short, is basically pure evil, or at least a straight up asshole, like they might as well have him torturing puppies and liking it!

And of course, basically, Musashi is all about the purity of the art while Kojiro is doing it for the wrong reasons, but they do somewhat temper that in the end, basically Kojiro has settled down and matured as a retainer, but it could essentially be just enough so that Musashi, despite being repulsed by his wicked ways, can magnanimously admire his talent and wish there was some other way. If I recall it was basically as sanitized as possible, like maybe Musashi held back just enough so maybe Kojiro could pull through, thus why he didn't deliver the finishing blow, and he left because Kojiro and his lord had some thugs waiting for him... oh, and he was late for legitimate reasons beyond his control. It was basically a whitewashing of all the facts to make Musashi look as good as possible. I had the benefit of simutaneously reading a comprehensive biography of Musashi that went over all the disputed details and various interpretations of his life, including the negative ones, e.g. he didn't actually show up to the duel on time, when he did he just ran up the beach and bashed Kojiro's head in like a sucker-punch, and then immediately ran away (so, there's possibly a reason the island wasn't named to commemorate the victor =).

Man, I was kind of like the Aaz of Vagabond back in the day... Hey, fuck you Inoue, don't forsake or withold your gift; otherwise, you'll always be the gloryhound Kojiro to Miura's Musashi!