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| © Mamora Gouda / FUTABASHA |
Grand Prize
Mori No Asagao
Story Manga
Artist: GOUDA Mamora
(Japan)
A work which highlights the “present” of the capital punishment system through OIKAWA Naoki, a newly recruited prison officer, who faces condemned criminals everyday and agonizes. Based on close and careful research, the author tackles with the serious theme of the “capital punishment system” head-on.
GOUDA Mamora
Born in Ise-shi, Mie. Studied graphic design at Osaka Sogo College of Design, and as a freelance illustrator, debuted as a manga artist in 1993. With his distinctively characteristic pictures made with a small brush, he keeps creating stories set in Osaka.
I have depicted thoughts on “capital punishment” and feelings of a condemned person and people around him on paper as best I can. However, now that I have completed the series, I am still divided in my mind endlessly, noticing bad points everywhere, such as perhaps there could have been a different way of picturing things and so on. I feel that this award is a small light which blinks in a forest of manga presentation in my heart which has no right answers. I will pursue drawing manga even harder, taking this light as my encouragement. Thank you very much.
This work earnestly and stoically depicts the life of those who are imprisoned and condemned for committing serious crimes, facing their own death every morning and every day, and the prison guard who takes care of them, but will one day have to execute them with his own hands. The human mind is very unstable; people can be kind and honest citizens or violent and reckless criminals, and with but a little cause. Is capital punishment, therefore, right or wrong? This is a project that Mr. GOUDA Mamora has been working on and agonizing over for a long time, dealing with a difficult theme and seeking to answer his own question; he kept working on it, even though he wandered in a deep, dark, forest. The jury members felt that the attitude of the artist was laudable, being unswayed by popularity or the opinions of the readers, and that, although his manga was rather inconspicuous, the character presentation and story, which are based on sincere interviews and research, combined with the characteristic drawing skill of the artist, has resulted in a very serious work that provokes questions about important issues.
What has lead you to “create a work”?
I have created stories for fun and given them pictorial form ever since I was little. Although it was not my intention to become a manga artist, it one day occurred to me to put one of my original stories into manga form and enter it in a competition.
What tools do you use the most at present?
I’m using fine point brushes with 1cm tips. On account of a stress fracture, I can no longer use pens, but the fine point brushes allow me to keep drawing without straining my wrist.
What do you place greatest value on in your work?
To consistently depict the “human heart” with care.
What personal concept do you keep throughout your creative activities?
The exploration and my own expression of the alternatives to seemingly obvious or generally believed things.
When you create a work, in what way do you think of a presentation using technologies or media as a means to communicate?
I'm sorry, but I'm not really sure I do. However, I sometimes wish I had a machine that could alter my illustrations so that they have a more fashionable and appealing style.
Could you name a person, a work, or an event that you have been influenced by the most?
I cannot say which one I have been most influenced by, but they include the author MATSUMOTO Seicho, Steven SPIELBERG's films The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun , the works of MOZART (especially his operas), the works of CHAGALL, Yoshimoto Shinkigeki, Japanese folk tales, my grandmother in heaven, and so on.
What kind of work would you like to create in the future?
I have just started, from February 5, a new serial manga entitled Samayoizakura , the subject of which is the new Japanese lay judge system. I am also planning for next year to draw a manga with the title Hoshikuzu no shonen tachie , where the main character is a clinical psychologist and with a story that involves juvenile delinquency. However, such a topic will require considerable research.
I really want to draw more cheerful stories, but since receiving a prize for a story that takes as its theme the socially controversial subject of “death sentences,” I feel somewhat obligated to continue to address socially significant issues.
In addition, I intend to draw a spin off story for Mori No Asagao , and should I have time, a number of others stand alone and short series stories.
I really want to draw more cheerful stories, but since receiving a prize for a story that takes as its theme the socially controversial subject of “death sentences,” I feel somewhat obligated to continue to address socially significant issues.
In addition, I intend to draw a spin off story for Mori No Asagao , and should I have time, a number of others stand alone and short series stories.
What is the meaning or importance of “to create” for you?
As the stories themselves gush out of my head, I consider it most “natural” for me to express them in the form of manga.
