──You are looking back on a fairly long career. Is it true that you made your debut as a manga artist when you were 20?

That's right. It must have been in 1970. I was young, and didn't have any idea of "work" and what it means to have a profession. All I could figure out was my father's job, or the work of a postman or a cigarette vendor. The only image I was seeing clearly with my child's eyes was that of a manga artist. I was able to connect "drawing manga" with "making money" and "living."

──Was your first assignment an over-the-transom act?

That it was, yes. The first titles I made were stories for boys and young men. Maybe it was a trick of the imagination, but I was always feeling insecure, so in order to keep myself alive I was doing anything that sells. I'm actually having a bit of a problem with talking about myself and my career (laughs). People in my trade usually mention the universities and schools they graduated from, and line up all the awards they got. Such "authoritarianism" is not my cup of tea, and although I was really happy to receive this award, I prefer staying away from the establishment. My career is not that glorious at all.

──Got you (laughs). So, let's talk about your work. Awarded was "A Day in the Life of Mr. F," a collection of panel cartoons. Why did you choose this format?

In traditional Japanese poetry, there are such short types as haiku or senryu, so I thought people should like the same compact format also for manga. Those panel cartoons you often see in newspapers I actually find pretty boring. What's so funny about a drawing of the Diet Building with a hand that holds a gun and points it at letters that read "Iraq"? For me, that's more like a socialist slogan than a cartoon. All cartoonists that draw for newspapers work after the same methods, turning certain images into pungent drawings.

──The style of "Mr. F" is much more realistic, isn't it?

Yes, it is. In this respect, it's not much different from a comic strip, but I think the point about "Mr. F" is that it is a combination of such realistic style and the panel format. I added "A Day in the Life" to the title because it was my intention to show the artificial world of my work as sceneries in single frames, not as typical pictures taken from manga. The idea was to create natural-looking yet in reality probably not existing scenes.

──Those images you create always have a cynical taste. Is there something like an overall theme?

Malevolence (laughs). Isn't that something that's in all of us? All I do is snap that up, just like murders are a detective story author's food. Such writers are spending night and day thinking about how to let their characters grudge, kill, and cover their crimes. I'm getting my food from people's ill-willed natures.

──Including your own?

No. I'm a good person! A very good person...probably (laughs). I can't say much about myself after all, but since I recognize malevolence in the things other people do, I guess this means that a "prototype" of it must be installed in myself, too. I take what I see and blow it up to a fictional scenario. It's actually quite a lot of fun - goodness is just boring. Don't they say Paradise is weary?

──However, Mr. F is noone but yourself, isn't he?

Well, yes, I guess he is. Do you remember Hoshi Shinichi's nobel "Mr. N"? I liked him for his smartness, but I couldn't see myself in him, so I tried Mr. F. How I arranged the Japanese title looks a bit Chinese, and I did that on purpose to add some "Asian" flavour to the character.

──Now that you mention Hoshi Shinichi - is there any creator or work that particularly inspired you?

I'm not sure whether it's a direct source of inspiration, but I've read a lot of books. Abe Kobo or early works by Oe Kenzaburo, for example, or Tsutsui Yasutaka. I like these a lot, but I read also entertaining foreign novels. Here I prefer Roald Dahl - those bittersweet English short stories, black humour a la Hitchcock, stories with a twist... Just give me one and I'll devour it.

──If you like "stories with a twist" so much, don't you have difficulties putting everything into the single frames you produce for "Mr. F"?

You bet I have! Especially the beginning was hard, and for a while it looked as if I just couldn't get it down on paper. I was literally sweating it out in the first two, having no clue how to draw them. It took me about half a year to gather enough know-how and routine to figure out how to approach a drawing, provided that I had a topic to work on. I've been doing this for almost ten years now, but still every once in a while there are drawings that give me headaches. Sometimes it takes really long time to get started, but once the penny has dropped, I'm actually pretty fast. I'm working for "The Diamond Weekly," and the weekly deadline is chasing me time and again. But somehow I always manage to pick up the ball and throw it back just in time.

──Do you have an assistant?

For "Mr. F" I haven't. Rather than explaining to an assistant how I want a certain part to look like, it's faster to draw it myself. Plus, if I had an assistant and didn't explain each and every single detail, in the end scenes would inevitably look similar to each other since people tend to use the same forms of expression over and again - flashes when a character is surprised, lines that express speed, etc. The result wouldn't look like a manga, but rather like an assembly of typical techniques used in manga.

──Your drawings do in fact show very few standardized elements, and it appears to me that you're not even using many colour patterns...

That's for the simple reason that I don't have much time. I keep drawing rather than wasting my time on designs. Also, in clothes for example, the use of patterns means always to give hints at the time of a work's creation, as any design would automatically refer to current trends. Only by refraining from using designs other than neutral net patterns I can achieve timelessness in the pictures.

──Does it happen that you use a computer for your work?

The pictures I'm all drawing by hand. The only process where a computer is involved is the delivery of the finished work, since it's definitely the most convenient way to scan the pictures and send them by email. They used to send their editors to pick up the pictures, and I was feeling sorry for having them come all the way to my house. One might say that, in a way, I have turned from a manga artist into a novelist, in that now that the number of tools I'm using has significantly decreased, I'm free to work wherever I want -- like those authors who used to write while sitting in a hot spa in Izu... I still need more than a pen and paper, but I feel like computer and scanner have taken some chains off me. Even with a conventional scanner for home use it's no problem to get the resolution that's required for printing.

──I see. What are you up to next?

I'm not sure if it's going to work out, but I'm planning to do a new manga. There was an offer from Belgian comics publisher Casterman, the biggest publishing house for comics in Europe. I worked with them once, and they seemed to like what I gave them. Anyway, the director of Casterman showed up at my house in person, coming all the way from Belgium for the proposal - doesn't this sound terriffically autoritatian? (laughs) He was a good-looking, Andy Garcia type of guy...

──Now if that's not a promising story!

I'm not so sure. They have quite a few boys' manga from Japan over there, such like "Dragon Ball." The fact that there's a growing adult readership is probably due to that. In France they have what they call bandes dessines, but those are thin comic books of only 24 or so pages. What's obviously gaining popularity there now aren't such picture book-style comics, but those huge comic books for adults we have in Japan. That's what I'm having in mind. It would appear in six languages...

──Do you already have a theme?

I guess that would be malice (laughs). I'm thinking about doing a sinister crime story, but I don't have any idea about the details yet. The book would be published in winter 2004, and my deadline would be in May, so I think it's allright. What I know is that, in case I see I can't make it, I'll have to let them know in advance. To wait until they start counting me out, as I'm doing it with "Mr. F" and The Diamond Weekly, won't work with that kind of contract. On the positive side, there's the payment in advance, and the fact that books don't run out of print as soon as they do here in Japan. It usually doesn't happen that a book disappears from the shelves after only a month. I can tell you a thing or two about that...