https://www.skullknight.net/forum/index.php?threads/inoue-takehiko-the-last-manga-exhibition.11141/post-179313 said:
"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"