Kazuo Umezu VS TSB (Part 1)

(The following is the first of a five-part interview with living legend of manga, Kazuo Umezu, whose works released in English include Cat Eyed Boy and the award winning Drifting Classroom. Our event coverage on Same Hat! caught the attention of his official homepage's staff, who then contacted us directly about helping to produce information about the author for the benefit of his English speaking audience. At the end of November, we were invited to the infamous Makoto-Chan House, his recently-completed home and physical embodiment of his vast works, for a face-to-face talk with Umezologist Demerin Kaneko and the man behind five decades of mayhem.)

Part 1: At the Mountains of Madness

TSB (T):You’re a celebrity in your home country. Compare this to the situation abroad where people familiar with your works don’t know much, if anything, about you as person.

Kazuo Umezu (K): If you’re not careful with the layout of a book people will gloss over the author's name. When possible, I like the publisher precede my bio with a head shot. That way, when they open the book they can see, “Hey! This is the guy!”

T: Tell us about your childhood.

K: My birthplace in the Wakayama prefecture around Mt. Kouya is now a World Heritage Site! I spent my early days deep in the mountains before enrolling in elementary school. When I say deep, I mean deep. There were no shops, no candy stores, no restaurants. I didn’t know that money existed! There wasn’t even so much as a barber shop—my father cut my hair with an electric trimmer.

T: How was it growing up surrounded by nature?

K: Everyday was a beautiful panorama of green. But without any shops, I couldn’t pass the time like most children did. When I was seven months old, my mother got it into her head that I had latent drawing ability. She put a pencil in my hand and showed me how to draw a circle. Lo and behold, I was pretty good at it! Not that I remember any of this, but my mother soon had me doodling flowers and things, pushing me down the path of illustration.

Baby Kazz and his mother.

T: You started with landscapes and scenery.

K: Especially mountainscapes! She had me read technical manuals to learn how to draw properly, then put me to work practicing. I can’t remember a time when my pencil wasn’t running across the page.

Drawing was the only way to keep myself occupied in the mountains. Whenever my family moved, which was often, my mother would send me out onto the porch to draw. Much to my surprise, the children from the village would gather around, and I’d make friends that way. I was always moving and drawing, moving and drawing.

T: Your entertainment options were limited.

K: Instead of watching television in the evening, my father would turn off the lights and tell me scary folk tales. I hung onto every word, laying in bed shaking with fear. I couldn’t get enough! My early manga about snake women came from my father’s ghastly tales.

Showing off his illustrations in high school.

T: Horror took root in you at a very young age.

K: When I decided to become a professional manga artist, I focused on horror because there wasn’t any out there. Armed with a framework, the next step was fleshing it out. What is horror, anyway? I didn’t know the answer myself, so I stuck to what I knew personally found to be the most horrifying—the creepy folklore my father tormented me with!

The Cat Eyed Boy and the One-Legged Monster of Oudai

T: The prototype for urban legends.

K: They were mountain legends to us. Aside from the Snake Woman stories, there’s also The One-Legged Monster of Oudai from Cat Eyed Boy. Many of my stories slithered down from the mountains.

T: The physical darkness of the mountains permeates your work as well. Your excessive use of black ink is unique.

K: That darkness is a part of me. Living in a world without streetlights allows you to understand the true meaning of utter darkness. White indicates a lack of matter, while black shows an abundance. It makes you think that something is lurking just beyond, hidden in the blackness. We all know that there aren't any monsters or snake women lurking in the shadows. But the darkness creates the possibility that they might be!

The Snake Woman from Reptilia. (Hebi Shōjo.)

Demerin: When you flip through weekly anthologies, you can tell which story is Sensei’s because the page is drowning in black.

K: The guys selling ink must love me! (Laughs.)

Part 2

Kazuo Umezu VS TSB (Part 2)

(The following is the second of a five-part interview with living legend of manga, Kazuo Umezu, whose works released in English include Cat Eyed Boy and the award winning Drifting Classroom. Our event coverage on Same Hat! caught the attention of his official homepage's staff, who then contacted us directly about helping to produce information about the author for the benefit of his English speaking audience. At the end of November, we were invited to the infamous Makoto-Chan House, his recently-completed home and physical embodiment of his vast works, for a face-to-face talk with Umezologist Demerin Kaneko and the man behind five decades of mayhem.)

Glossary 

Kashihon (literally “loaner books”) were manga published largely out of Osaka that were available only for rental, not purchase. This business model died out in the mid 70’s, but the concept lives on in the form of manga cafes and rental chains such as Tsutaya which have recently begun handling manga.

Gekiga (literally “dramatic pictures”) is a style of manga that explores adult themes and uses panels to create a cinematic sense of time passing on the static page. Their self-contained nature allowed them to be highly experimental and was a perfect match for the Kashihon format.

Part 2: Baptism

Tokyo Scum Brigade (T): You were with manga during its infancy and watched the medium mature.

Kazuo Umezu (K): There were countless titles on the market at the time I made my debut, such as Tako no Hacchan and Norakuro. Growing up during the war, most stories were about soldiers and grit.

T: The cartoony art was grounded by the realistic stories.

K: I started taking manga seriously in the fourth grade. My friends lent me tons of titles and I remember thinking, “This art stinks! If this stuff passes off as professional, I’m a shoe-in!”

My first work was titled The Magic Pot (Mahou no Tsubo). I can’t remember the plot, but it was filled with cheap gags. My next few projects copied the model I made for myself.

The following year Osamu Tezuka released New Treasure Island (Shin Takara Jima). 

You know those open-air stalls they have at summer festivals with all the toys and masks laid out on the ground? I ran across it at one of those and it blew my mind! I didn’t know that manga of such caliber existed. That was another thing that made me want to go pro.

At the time, manga was dismissed as pulp. Not that the situation has changed much. Manga was plentiful, cheap, and I read my fair share. 

The range of titles I read before discovering Tezuka gave me a sharp eye for manga. When I saw New Treasure Island at the festival, I knew instinctively that it had to be good. My eyes have never let me down!

T: Early manga was written for children and was mostly juvenile. 

K: This is true, but Tezuka’s creativity set him apart from the pack. He introduced elements that were largely foreign to manga at the time, such as robots and rocket ships. Children ate it up. 

He inspired a generation to become manga artists, myself included. If your drawings didn’t look like his, companies wouldn’t pick up your work. So at first I drew characters Tezuka-style, cartoony with circular faces. Once I got popular I was able to do my own thing.

His style begins to shift from Tezuka to Gekiga with works such as The Fractured Man. (Hibiware Ningen.)

T: Your early sci-fi work, Another World (Bessekai), used similar fantastical elements.

K: The style of early manga was very different than the Gekiga which emerged from it. Gekiga takes place in the "real" world and revolves around action. Traditionally, the point of any manga, regardless of the style, is to challenge the unreal. How far can your work surpass reality?

This doesn’t merely apply to plot, but to illustration and design as well, such as giving characters impossible features like circular faces and bug eyes. This cartoony world formed the bedrock of the medium.

Gekiga didn’t have any of that. The creators wanted to accomplish something different in rebelling against the cartoony in their pursuit of reality over fantasy.

T: Your Gekiga feature realistic settings that quickly move into the unreal.

K: (Snaps fingers.) You got it! I want my illustrations to be extremely realistic. But the story can be fantastical. 

Look at Salvador Dali. His art is meticulous and real, but then you have impossible imagery, like someone pinching the edge of an ocean wave to turn it over like the page of a book. Stuff like that resonates with me. I love it. There’s a dissonance in seeing everyday objects behave in otherworldly ways. With a bare-bones illustration, you can’t tell if an object is intentionally warped or if the draughtmenship is just plain bad. A skilled illustration eliminates the question of intent and frees the reader to focus on the why. Like this plate in front me. You expect it to be solid, but if you were to go pick it up and find it rubbery, you’d freak out! That’s where the fear comes from. I strive to create that kind of reaction with my work.

Early Gekiga-style from Ashen Silhouette. (Haiiro no Naka no Eizou.)

T: How did you get involved publishing Kashihon? 

K: At the time there were strict, arbitrary rules about the way things had to be drawn. Publishers turned their noses up at horror. “We can’t run the scary stuff!” I had an offer to draw horror for a serial magazine, but I found the editors too overbearing and quit. On the other hand, Osaka publishing houses putting out Kashihon were more lowbrow and crass— and I mean that in a good way! They gave me the freedom to do the stories I wanted to, the way I wanted. 

T: You did a number of anthologies and longer self-contained works during this period.

K: Speaking as a writer, I consider short stories the training camp for creating full-length ones. Short stories are easy to digest. You take one bite and the flavor hits you. Long works, conversely, require you to eat the whole thing before you know if it’s good or not. Over time, people’s tastes shifted towards serialized works and the Osaka publishers went kaput. This was the death of Kashihon. 

What could I do? I packed up my bags and went to Tokyo to find work. I remember my mother and father waving me off from the train platform. It was anything but dramatic. You’d never have known that I was moving to the big city for the adventure of a lifetime.

I suffered from chronic stiff shoulders and insomnia even before coming to Tokyo. For a period I was only sleeping two hours per night. I would counteract this by taking long walks and swimming. Naturally, when I moved, I chose an apartment close to a pool in Ikebukuro. I only drew in the afternoon, leaving my evenings free to wander the streets.

T: Did it take long for work to pick up?

K: Before I arrived I was writing for Kodansha’s girl-oriented serial, Shojo Friend. My Cat Eyed Girl (Nekome no Shojo) was well received, and soon I had Shonen Magazine knocking at my door. I had two weeklies which I handled 100% on my own, no assistants.

Then one day my editor suddenly asks for my work a week in advance. Essentially I had to write four issues in the time span I normally had for two. But what could I say? So I nearly kill myself meeting this unfair deadline. I visit my editor to deliver the finished pages—editors never come to you unless they want something—and he says with a knowing laugh, “You’re looking a little haggard, har har har!”

T: You realized that you couldn’t keep this up on your own.

K: I started hiring assistants. These days you have the Internet to find people for you, but in my time you left that to the editors. Assistants make the job easier, but increase its magnitude—they’re the first sign that you’ve gone pro. Having to tend to your crew is a job in itself.

T: But you could handle more titles at once.

K: At my busiest I was doing three monthlies and three weeklies simultaneously. Cat Eyed Boy, Orochi… I was drawing like a madman. The work was physically demanding. I could feel my strength slipping away and thinking, "this time tomorrow, I’ll be dead." I don’t mean that as a figure of speech.

T: You were their golden child.

K: At one point, they asked me to whip up a 4-color spread for Cat Eyed Boy overnight. It was physically impossible but I didn’t have the courage or fortitude left to refuse. The editor exists to make you draw more! They won’t take no for an answer.

It was faster for me to fill their ridiculous demands than to fight with them about it. I got the coloring done, but I was white as a ghost. That’s where I decided to scale the whole operation back to one weekly.

T: I’m sure their editorial policies didn’t make it any easier.

K: Kodansha didn’t want us putting any boys into our Shojo manga. And they had weird rules, like girls should be drawn with three eyelashes, or horror one-shots are OK while serials were out of the question. Of course, we authors made sure to break the rules every chance we got.

The seminal Shojo title Goddess of Romance. (Romansu no Kamisama.)

T: Did any of your assistants make it big?

K: Nope! But I was able to turn crummy artists into respectable ones overnight. I’d analyze their individual drawing style and have them focus on what they were good at. I consider myself to be a good teacher. Of course, if you took your eyes off of them they’d fall right off the wagon again!

Demerin: I remember Kobayashi Makoto (What's Michael?) asked to apprentice under you.

K: (laughs) That's right! I had enough staff so I turned him away, but not before giving him advice about illustration.

T: How did you end up leaving Kodansha for Shogakkan?

K: I had made a name for myself through horror comics. One day, our new editor comes into my studio looking real straight-lipped and he spouts off, “I don’t think horror manga is an option for us anymore.” I couldn’t abandon all my stories that had yet to be written! They didn’t give me any option but to quit.

Before Shogakkan I was at Shonen King for a while where I did another Cat Eyed Boy series and The Laughing Mask (Warau Kamen), a super-hero story of sorts.

T: Maintaining your health was clearly off the table. How did you maintain the quality of your work?

K: That's a good question! You know all those walks I went on during my sleepless nights? Those were where I did my planning. Stories and dialogue came to me naturally. So when it came to crunch time, everything was already in my notebooks waiting to be used.

I made it a rule to keep five stories on hand. The first thing I would do when an offer came to me was weigh it against my stock. Deadlines were tight, but this method made sure I never missed a beat.

Part 3

Kazuo Umezu VS TSB (Part 3)

(The following is the third of a five-part interview with living legend of manga, Kazuo Umezu, whose works released in English include Cat Eyed Boy and the award winning Drifting Classroom. Our event coverage on Same Hat! caught the attention of his official homepage's staff, who then contacted us directly about helping to produce information about the author for the benefit of his English speaking audience. At the end of November, we were invited to the infamous Makoto-Chan House, his recently-completed home and physical embodiment of his vast works, for a face-to-face talk with Umezologist Demerin Kaneko and the man behind five decades of mayhem.)

Part 3: Legacy of Brutality

Tokyo Scum Brigade (T): Your stories are infamous for their violent imagery.

Kazuo Umezu (K): Fear is created when certain conditions are met. One of these is physical appearances. The more bizarre and ugly the imagery, the greater the fear. It's simple to make a picture scary, but to make an action scary is a different matter. That's where brutality comes in.

When I did Cat Face (Nekomen) in 1963 I made the deliberate choice to push my boundaries. I’ve never looked back!

T: How was this received by the general public?

K: Oh you know, I’d get postcards from parents protesting that, “You can’t show this type of brutality to children!”

I remember there was an old woman who worked at a Kashihon shop. Every time I visited she would lecture me, “I would never ever ever let children read this filth!” Then three years later, the horror boom hits and shops like hers are flooded with children looking for my manga. Store owners needed to get with the times! (Laughs.)

I was protested but never boycotted. I considered such criticism to be a form of praise.

T: It shows that your work had an impact.

K: Of course I held back in some areas. For example, in The Gill Man (Hangyo-Jin), there’s a part where a character has their mouth slit open with a knife. The editor told me to make the wound smaller, but that would have killed the scene! So I scaled back the gore but used perspective tricks to make the wound look huge.

Serials were more flexible. If they made me take something out, I could put it back in when the graphic novel release. Like in I’m Scared of Mommy (Mama ga Kowai), they asked me to white out some of the scale’s on the mother’s back as she transforms into a snake, making it an easy fix later.

The heroine of Abrosia (Zesshoku) goes on an extreme diet with stomach-turning results.

T: Your stellar track record let you get away with more than other artists.

K: These scenes play an important part of the story. They need to be there to tie the package together. I don’t do gore for the sake of gore. If I ever lost sight of that, I’d take my lumps and be thankful for the criticism.

T: I can't imagine getting your rawest works past American censors.

K: I believe that America views manga as something that parents monitor and purchase for their children. Here in Japan, all children read manga, and continue to as they become adults. This blurs the line between titles for children and titles for adults.

I learned many things from Tezuka as a child, but this was the most important: He didn't pull any punches for children or dumb down his works. He dealt with complicated themes and let the readers work it out on their own. This always impressed me. Even after I moved away from the Tezuka drawing style, his uncompromising attitude stuck with me.

T: Which is more important to protect: The work or the children?

K: The earth is filled with children, and not every one of them will read the work. But the work is unique. If you don’t seize that moment to say what you need to say, be it brutal or filthy or what have you, the work suffers for it.

You only get one chance to do it right. If a child is upset by a work, they grow up, they get over it. But the compromised work will stay imperfect forever, never reclaiming what was taken from it.
As a child, I liked stories with a grown-up taste. An author must do everything in their power to make the texture of their work palpable. When the time comes for the work to be judged, the scales won't be weighed by its audience, but by how it lived up to its potential.

Demerin: Kids can tell if they’re being pandered to. Even more so if the author tries to conceal the fact.

T: In 1950’s America, works similar to yours suffered backlash from parents and politicians alike.

K: I’m no authority on the subject, but I think that’s partially because those comics made themselves an easy target. You can’t be all gore, all the time. If you don’t balance the publication out with other genres it makes the content look more graphic than it actually is.

This problem isn’t unique to America. Old Japanese folk stories and fairy tales could be unflinchingly brutal. They come from a time when tragedy and carnage was an everyday part of life. Now we have people calling to water them down, which essentially whitewashes history. It’s insulting to the memory of those who suffered to bring us these stories.

If you’re going to be a critic, you need to step up the plate with a valid alternative. Otherwise, you’re all talk and no talent.

T: Anything goes, so long as it contributes to the story.

K: A creator needs to ask themselves if a certain element is necessary to tell their story. Like nudity in films, the director will insist that it’s necessary for the plot, though I get the feeling that this is not always the case. (Laughs.)

Otherwise, you’re only drawing what you want to draw, not what you need to draw. I've always made it a point to keep my narratives tight.

An entire elementary school is brutalized in The Drifting Classroom.

T: The Drifting Classroom was originally printed in a magazine aimed at elementary students, but in America it has an “explicit content” sticker on the cover. How do you feel about that?

K: I think that’s fine. Readers will just have to discover it when they’re older. However, it’s unfortunate that they lose that chance to sympathize with characters of the same age. Reading it as an adult, you have a disconnected view of the characters elementary students and can’t get the same visceral thrill.

T: Which of your works do you recommend for people like us in our 20’s?

K: The Drifting Classroom! I consider it my finest work. The message is clear and the drama is top-notch. Go and reconnect with your inner child!

As the title suggest, The Drifting Classroom is just that—a place to study. The children apply math, music, P.E., science, and politics outside the confines of school as they experience a new, harsh reality.

Demerin: It’s only a matter of time before The Drifting Classroom becomes part of the national curriculum.

Part 4

Kazuo Umezu VS TSB (Part 4)

(The following is the fourth of a five-part interview with living legend of manga, Kazuo Umezu, whose works released in English include Cat Eyed Boy and the award winning Drifting Classroom. 
Our event coverage on Same Hat! caught the attention of his official homepage's staff, who then contacted us directly about helping to produce information about the author for the benefit of his English speaking audience. 
At the end of November, we were invited to the infamous Makoto-Chan House, his recently-completed home and physical embodiment of his vast works, for a face-to-face talk with Umezologist Demerin Kaneko and the man behind five decades of mayhem.)

Part 4: Enjoy the Game

Tokyo Scum Brigade (T): A common theme in your stories is children versus adults.

Kazuo Umezu (K): I find the world of a child’s more intriguing than that of adults. This becomes more apparent in my later works. The protagonists in My Name is Shingo (Watashi wa Shingo, 1982) are all children, while the adults are the villains (laughs). The two exist on opposite sides of the tracks. I’ve felt this divide since my own childhood.

I’m writing about myself in a way. I don’t want to become an adult and “grow up.”

Again, a comedy where an old man temporarily regains his youth.

T: Certain things are only possible as a child.

K: My stories require a certain suspension of disbelief to see things from the naïve perspective of a child. Adults are quick to point out the illogical—perhaps too quick. Children have a way of running with their assumptions and making them work. Adults can’t manage that. People think you’re a weirdo if you do!

T: Children draw strength from their innocent misconceptions.

K: The titular character in My Name is Shingo is an assembly robot given life by the innocent wish of a child. How does that work in the real world? It doesn’t. Mine is a world without logic. Adults bring scientific rationality with them. I don’t have room for that! (Laughs.)

In My Name is Shingo (Watashi ha Shingo), a sentient robot learns that it must shed parts of itself to function as an adult.

T: When confronted by the illogical, the adult brain can’t rationalize it and goes mad.

K: Adults are professionals—they have a specialization, whereas children are prepared for anything. Everyone starts as a blank slate, but as they grow they specialize in certain areas and lose that adaptability. Certain qualities of childhood are discarded to make life in adult society easier. Animals, humans in particular, are hardwired to eliminate the superfluous.

T: You make it sound as though in becoming an adult you lose more than you gain.

K: You certainly lose the elasticity that allows you to adapt to new environments. Children are not bound by any one thing, whereas adults can’t break free of their own inertia.

Look at The Drifting Classroom. The characters are transported to a radically different world. The children lack the same brain-hardening background knowledge that makes the adults go insane. “This isn’t right! This can’t be!” Locked inside the mental confines they’ve made for themselves, the teachers give up before they even start.

Logic proves to be a poison pill in The Drifting Classroom.

T: At what point does one cross over from amateur to professional?

K: It’s a gradual process where you cut parts of yourself off, piece by piece. Ideally you’d want to hold onto all of your dreams and make them work for you as an adult!

T: You enjoy shocking people, which is a childish quality. I mean that as a compliment.

K: Oh, my creativity has developed to the professional level. In some ways I’m stuck in my own head. (Laughs.) That can make it tough to sync up with other people.

T: I respect that you’ve accomplished so much by simply holding onto those pieces of yourself.

K: I've always been sort of hanging out, doing my own thing. I drew manga because it was fun. To me, it was all one long game.

Childhood ending on a molecular levelfrom My Name is Shingo. (Watashi wa Shingo.)

Part 5

Kazuo Umezu VS TSB (Part 5)

(The following is the final installment of a five-part interview with living legend of manga, Kazuo Umezu, whose works released in English include Cat Eyed Boy and the award winning Drifting Classroom. 
Our event coverage on Same Hat! caught the attention of his official homepage's staff, who then contacted us directly about helping to produce information about the author for the benefit of his English speaking audience. 
At the end of November, we were invited to the infamous Makoto-Chan House, his recently-completed home and physical embodiment of his vast works, for a face-to-face talk with Umezologist Demerin Kaneko and the man behind five decades of mayhem.)


After the interview, the Umezu crew allowed us to scamper around the house and play in the attic before taking us to visit his office studio. It was here, off camera, that Kazz made his most colorful comments and observations.


Part 5: Kazz On...

Ghosts

I don’t believe in ghosts per say, but I find the concept interesting. Essentially ghosts are people that have come back from the dead. Strip away the supernatural elements and what are you left with? People! This affirms what I’ve always believed—that nothing is scarier than people.

This doesn’t keep me from being spooked! Returning to my pitch-black villa late at night, it feels like a ghost is waiting to jump out at me. The feeling that it could be—not that it is—is what's terrifying.

Evolution


If environment is the external factor that drives evolution, then fear is the internal force that pushes all living things forward. Fear is the most primordial instinct of all living things, and fear itself is rooted in an aversion to being eaten. Beings evolve in their search for stability and safety, and cease to evolve once they achieve it. Look no further than deep-sea fish as evidence.

In this sense, horror is a selfish emotion. It’s every man for themselves. Conversely, once you feel secure in your environment, you are able to love others. This instinct emotes more strongly as the being develops. Humans can experience a deeper breed of fear with more subtle hues than say, a dog.

Iara spans the history of Earth from the advent of dinosaurs to the fall of humanity.

Let’s talk about dinosaurs for a minute. How did they go extinct? Was it a meteor? Another theory postulates that plants evolved spines and toxins that made them inedible. This killed off herbivores and destroyed the food chain as a result.

So, life forms find a way to protect themselves. What about something like a chicken, which exists solely to be eaten? The chicken can’t be happy about that! The chicken has no real means of defense, leaving it only one option: Revenge from beyond the grave. Cholesterol, heart disease—these are the curse of the chicken. Predators need to be careful that their food doesn’t cook them from the inside. That's why I never eat the same dish consecutively for more than a week.

Chicken George from the sci-fi epic Fourteen evolves from the genetic swill of vat-grown poultry.

His Reputation as a Prophet

A written work, be it manga or literature, is useless unless it makes some conjecture about the future. And to get your guess right, you need to capture the zeitgeist.

The Drifting Classroom started with the idea that in the future, the world would be covered by desert. That's proven to be an extremely viable scenario. Once you have a strong foundation for a story, the details begin to fall into place.

Humans are responsible for everything in our world. Look around you. The clothes you’re wearing, the building you live in, the words you’re reading. They’re all made by human hands! Therefore, if you understand what humans want, you can deduce where we’re headed. Want to know what the future holds? Follow human desire!

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn't trying to make a political statement with The Drifting Classroom, nor did I have absolute confidence in my prediction. It just happened to come true!

And that’s it! We would like to thank Kazz for making the time for us and the Umezz.com staff for giving us the opportunity to meet one of the most interesting people on the planet. TSB will do our best to continue bringing you the latest Umezu news from the front lines, but in the meantime please visit Umezz.com to check out the new English profile penned by us. 

Following that,  pick up a copy of Demerin's ingenious Umezzology for a proper education!

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