Kazuhiko Torishima, former editor-in-chief of Weekly Shonen Jump, talks with Shogakukan's legendary manga editor Katsuya Shirai, who worked on Maison Ikkoku and Oishinbo!
The two former rivals talk about the role of an editor.

Translated by: Harley Acres

Den Famicom Gamer has welcomed Kazuhiko Torishima, editor of Weekly Shonen Jump, who was in charge of Dr. Slump (Dr.スランプ) and Dragon Ball (ドラゴンボール) and is currently a director and advisor at Hakusensha, to discuss manga and the role of the editor. This interview is one such attempt.

Katsuya Shirai, President and CEO of Hero's, Inc. and Chief Advisor to Shogakukan (at the time of this interview, Shirai-san is now currently retired), will be speaking with Torishima-san.

After working as an editor for Weekly Shonen Sunday and Big Comic, Shirai became the founding editor-in-chief of Big Comic Spirits. He was the man who launched Maison Ikkoku (めぞん一刻), Oishinbo (美味しんぼ), Yawara! and many other popular works that propelled the magazine into the popular seinen manga magazine that it remains to this day. ^[1]

Torishima and Shirai had a rivalry from the late 1970s to the 1980s, when they competed with one another over who who would get which manga artists. In this interview, they reveal some surprising episodes from the past in their own unique way.



However, the main topic of this discussion is not the behind-the-scenes drama of the manga industry, but rather the relationship between manga artists and editors. What should editors do to create profitable, blockbuster manga? ^[2] And how should editors treat manga creators? This discussion will shed light on the role of the manga editor, a role that has not been analyzed often until now.

Furthermore, those interested in the publishing and media industry, such as the internal affairs of major publishers that handle not only manga but also academic books, and the difference in the way of thinking about content between Shueisha's Jump and Shogakukan's Sunday and Spirits will find the article interesting.

Manga editors used to be told that they should be "kuroko".

Kazuhiko Torishima: The reason I asked Shirai-san for a discussion today is because of the talk going around the internet lately about whether editors are necessary. There are those who agree and disagree about it, but what is definitely missing from the discussion is that many people seem have a vague sense of, but not understand, what it is that editors do. Especially manga editors, they say, "If the mangaka is doing it right, you don't need them."

Editors are still needed for many things, but there's very little information out there. In particular, there is very little said by manga editors themselves, either in print or online. I wonder if that's because the company has been behaving as if "the editors are kuroko" for so long. ^[3]

Katsuya Shirai: Yeah, I think you're probably right.

Torishima: So, in that sense, it would be nice to talk with people who have worked in various manga editing positions, have them spread the word, and educate the public. It's not a doctor's job, but I hope that the time will come when ordinary people will be able to distinguish between good editors and bad editors, and be able to distinguish between them.

Shirai: As you just said, editors used to be kuroko. I was even hesitant to have my name mentioned in postscripts, saying something like "I'm indebted to Mr. XX."

Torishima: Right.

Shirai: So going back to the beginning, there are some manga artists who say they don't have an editor, but they haven't been very successful. There have been a number of "manga artists who face their readers directly" so to speak, but they haven't gone over very well.



A young editor on Attack on Titan (進撃の巨人/Shingeki no Kyojin) was in the news recently, but that work was not brought to him when he was a new employee. He thought the drawings were rough, but he also felt some sort of passion in the imagery, and he took it to the front desk and the sub-editors to somehow persuade them to serialize it. So he discovered it. That's the power of an editor. ^[4]

Torishima: That was a new hire, so they were desperate.

Shirai: Yeah.

Torishima: Actually, I also heard about it later, but Attack on Titan had been brought to Jump before that and was rejected. Sometimes there are discussions between publishers like that. It seems that I also saw Rumiko Takahashi's submission, but I don't recall that. Apparently I turned it down (laughs). ^[5]

Shirai: That kind of thing does happen. Shogakukan is an educational publisher, or rather, a publisher of grade school magazines, so there's a possibility that they would refuse a story like Attack on Titan that involves killing people or eating people.

Torishima: That would be a difficult series for Shogakukan to do.

Shirai: It is indeed difficult. After all, I think that it's a tricky work unless it is published at Kobunsha or Kodansha. But if it weren't for the enthusiasm of the editor, I don't think it would have made it out into the world. So, I think it hit the right wavelength with the right person.

Torishima: Even if it's for another company, I'm glad it became a hit.

Shirai: Right, because it's something that made the whole world aware of the existence of manga.

Torishima: That hit came at a most challenging time for manga.

Shirai: I saw it on TV, so you know it must be true, but I heard that the creator himself came to the editorial office to deliver the final installment of the serialization of Attack on Titan and was greeted with applause from the editor-in-chief and others. Sounds like something out of a drama, doesn't it?

Torishima: It's a great story, huh?

Shirai: It is, it's why we need editors.

The first reader of a novel, say a Haruki Murakami novel, would probably be his wife. ^[6] And the second is perhaps his editor. Or perhaps the editor is third.　He reads it, his wife reads it, and then the third would be the editor. Ultimately, I think an editor should be a "representative of the readers".

Torishima: Right.

Shirai: Especially in manga, there are some who play catch-up with others, and some who just take it lightly. In some cases, such as with Takashi Nagasaki (長崎尚志), he became independent from being an editor, and gradually became an author himself while still supporting Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys (20世紀少年) for its duration. ^[7]

Then there are those who decide on the general framework and leave the rest to the writer. There are various types, but I think that writers will be in trouble if they haven't been an editor. Fujiko F. Fujio-sensei (藤子・F・不二雄), who has passed away, would just listen to the discussion and say, "Hmmm," but he would not express his feelings on the spot. ^[8]

Torishima: He wouldn't respond.

Shirai: I think I worked a bit on 21 Emon (21エモン) or something with Fujiko F-sensei. Fujiko F. listens quietly, though his feelings, good or bad, never come out on the spot. When the drafts are finally finished, my ideas were quietly put to use.

Fujio Akatsuka-san (赤塚不二夫), on the other hand... ^[9]

Torishima: It's a discussion, right?

Shirai: It's a discussion, you have to decide right then and there whether it's a good idea or a bad idea. If you have a bad idea, then you're silenced (laughs). It's quite rough.

Torishima: A guy named Kunio Nagatani-san (長谷邦夫) wrote down the good ideas. ^[10] That's why, in Akatsuka's case, it's a collective performance.

Shirai stole a mangaka Torishima was in charge of, now there's a grudge!

Torishima: In terms of my relationship with Shirai-san, there was a manga artist named Isshiki-san who was assigned to me.

Shirai: Makoto Isshiki-san (一色まこと), right?

Torishima: So she had a variety of problems, and since Kobunsha and Kodansha were no good at the time, she brought her work to Shogakukan and Shueisha at about the same time. She won a runner-up prize in the Akatsuka Award at my company, and at that time, she brought her work to Shirai-san's subordinate as well.

Shirai-san's subordinate said, "You can get rid of that award by returning the money," so she came to me and said, "Shogakukan says so, so can I decline?" And then, it was like, "argh!" (laughs)

The Akatsuka Award had a selection review by Kazuo Umezu-san and Fujiko Fujio-san, so I told her, "Look, this is an award based on the fact that people looked hard at your work. It's not just a matter of money," and after that, "you need to make a choice. If you don't show up, I'll give up, but if you ever want to have a meeting with me in the future, then be there." ^[11]

Back then, there was a coffee shop called "TOP" in the Shogakukan building, and all the editors including Shirai-san lined up there and intimidated her (laughs).

Then I wrote something like "Shirai of Spirits is an idiot who buys people off with money" in the back of Jump. It was an editor's comment. Then another editor said, "Torishima, I understand how you feel, but at least just use the first letter," (laughs). So it became "Mr. S." (laughs)

Shirai: That's basically just my name! (laughs)



Torishima: So that's how I got involved with Shirai-san (laughs).

Shirai: Yes, and then you stole another mangaka for Jump (laughs). The serialization was almost set, and when I was about to do it, they stopped me very emphatically. I had already arranged for three or four assistants, and when he said, "I can't do it after all," I took a cab and yanked all the assistants out.　I told him, "I arranged these assistants because you said you would draw for us, but if you won't draw, you don't need them."

Torishima: The opposite is also true. There was an artist whose first new serial I launched, and it didn't work out as a weekly, so I shifted it to a monthly. It was not that great, but at least the serialization ended successfully.

When I was about to start my next work, Shinobu Miyake, a subordinate of Shirai-san, came to scout him. ^[12] I went to the creator one more time after Miyake-san visited and persuaded the artist by saying, "Even though it's a monthly publication, let's do it right."

When I returned to the office, the author called me and said, "I still won't do it." I immediately went to his apartment, but it was empty.

Shirai: (laughs)

Torishima: Miyake-san had the movers ready to go, and they moved everything (laughs).

Shirai: (laughs) Dramatic stuff like that never happens these days.

Torishima: Yeah, not anymore.

Shirai: Because those creators don't draw anymore. These days they're exclusive to one company, one magazine. The artists of Sunday only work for Sunday and don't often go to other companies, while for others Jump is, of course, their exclusive magazine.

Shinji Mizushima (水島新司), for example, worked at Champion, Magazine, and Sunday, working for about four weekly magazines at the same time. ^[13] Even though all of them were baseball manga, he was amazing. But nowadays, there's no one who can draw at two weekly magazines.

Torishima: I don't think there are any. Nowadays, it's impossible to draw even a single weekly piece for some.

Shirai: Indeed.

When Shirai joined the company, the Sunday editorial department was a motley crew of failed employees.

Torishima: I've known Shirai-san's name since he was the founding editor-in-chief of Big Comic Spirits, but I didn't know much of your career before that time.　I only know some of the rumors that have gotten out, so today I was wondering if you could tell me about your background and the manga artists you worked with, from when you joined Shogakukan to before and after the first issue of Spirits.

Shirai: When I joined Shogakukan, there was only one manga magazine, Weekly Shonen Sunday. It was the same year that Big Comic had just launched. ^[14]

I rather like novels and I like print, so I thought I'd like to do something like edit an encyclopedia or an art book.

At that time, Asahi Journal (朝日ジャーナル) was on my right and Shonen Magazine (少年マガジン) was on my left, and Shonen Sunday was at rock bottom (laughs). So when I joined the Sunday editorial department as a new employee, the atmosphere was very dark. ^[15]



Torishima: Had Jump started publication by then?

Shirai: It had. ^[16]

Torishima: Then third place must have been Jump.

Shirai: Magazine was under the stewardship of Masaru Uchiha (内田勝) who was starting to aim higher than what had been thought possible within the framework of a shonen manga magazine. ^[17]

Torishima: Star of the Giants (巨人の星/Kyojin no Hoshi) and...

Shirai: Star of the Giants and Ashita no Joe (あしたのジョー). It's already an iron wall like the Giant's V9 era. ^[18] It was an impregnable line-up from gag manga to story manga and the animal manga of Kuta Ishikawa (石川球太). ^[19] This is what I was up against when I started at Shonen Sunday.

At that time, Shogakukan was at the height of its popularity as a school yearbook magazine. At that time, there were about two or three magazines with a circulation of one million, such as Shogaku Ichinensei (小学一年生/1st grade elementary school) and Shogaku Ninensei (小学二年生/2nd grade elementary school). ^[20]

Torishima: It went all the way up to Shogaku Rokunensei (小学六年生/6th grade elementary school).

Shirai: Because it had all of that, plus Kindergarten, which I think was a million-copy magazine. I wonder how many of my peers were there, maybe 24 to 25. Most of them were at the "year" magazines. So the ones that couldn't help themselves got stuck together in Sunday (laughs).

So Sunday was not particularly a gathering place of people who liked manga. It had a throwaway sensibility to it.

Torishima: A hodgepodge (laughs).

Shirai: Yes, a hodgepodge (laughs). So, in 1968, when I joined the company, I was told that Sunday would eventually be merged with the school yearbooks and that I would have to work in a small corner of the school yearbook selection.

So when I joined the Sunday editorial department, the works I was allowed to have were the bottom three titles in the popularity ranking 13th, 14th, and 15th.

Torishima: You were suddenly in charge of three weekly titles!? That must have been hard.



Shirai: And they were three from the bottom, so no matter how hard I tried, it was absolutely impossible for me to move up (laughs).　One was a gag manga and maybe two others. So I thought, "It's not enough to just inherit what others have done, I have to start my own series."

That was when I met Kazuo Umezu (楳図かずお). He was drawing Cat-Eyed Boy (猫目小僧/Nekome Koso) in Shonen King at the time, and he was also working on Teen Look (ティーンルック), a magazine that doesn't exist anymore. Then he worked on Kodansha's Shojo Friend (少女フレンド), and did a manga for Big Comic (ビッグコミック).

At that time, Umezu-san didn't have time to sleep or eat, and his life was such that he only functioned on small naps.

Torishima: And he's so thin as is.

Shirai: The deputy editor at the time told me to handle Umezu-san with care because he was a very difficult artist. It was a story called Orochi (おろち), which had a girl as the main character and was completed in five volumes, and while I was working on it, it became quite popular. ^[21]

Torishima: It was popular, wasn't it? Even I'm familiar with it.

Shirai: As we held meetings and planned and worked, I began to think, "Manga is interesting, too."　Until then, I didn't think manga were interesting at all, but then I began to realize and accept how manga was growing. At the time, I thought that someone who read manga as a university student was just someone who hated studying (laughs).

Torishima: Well, I can agree with some of that (laughs).

Shirai: I thought, "if you're into manga surely there's something better you could be reading." (laughs)

Anyway, Umezu-san was someone I had to watch 24/7, so I was with him almost all day, morning, noon, and night.　Eventually, Umezu-san's work gradually became less and less, and he was left with only Shogakukan. Umezu-san would not allow his work to appear in the three digits pages of the magazine.

Oh, you are talking about the order in which they are published in Sunday?

Shirai: Yeah, Umezu-san knows that "Shonen magazines are arranged in order of interest." Even if you say, "We'll put some big names at the end of the book," that's only in seinen magazines, for shonen magazines titles are ranked in order of popularity. That's why he's fine if his work appeared somewhere in the first 99 pages, but when it hit the 100 page mark, he'd get in a really bad mood.

He said, "My only work is in Shonen Sunday right now." How he was seen in Sunday was how he thought readers perceived his entire career at the time.

So it would be very difficult if his name and the series weren't mentioned somewhere on the cover. I asked the person in charge of the cover to please take care of it. So we had to be very careful within the company. But if it wasn't for these intense encounters with Umezu-san, I wouldn't be where I am today.

Torishima: That depends on the author, but that's a bit naïve.

Shirai: He could be difficult, for sure. Also, Umezu-san won't go anywhere in a car. He walks everywhere. I believe he lived in Mejiro at the time. It was common for him to walk from Mejiro to Shinjuku. He won't take cabs because he gets nauseous.

Torishima: He'd walk the whole way?

Shirai: All walking. And while he's walking, he's thinking about things.

Torishima: Sounds like a philosopher.

Shirai: I think his longest record was walking from Tadanori Yokoo's house in Seijo Gakuen to Takadanobaba in the middle of the night. ^[22] That was quite a feat (laughs).

Torishima: Trekking, mostly (laughs).

Shirai: After Orochi, I guess Drifting was next.

Torishima: Drifting Classroom (漂流教室).

Shirai: Drifting Classroom was the biggest hit.

Torishima: It's a masterpiece. It's terrifying.

Shirai: Now, 50 years later, it's very strange that it's still being sold as a hard-bound book in the United States. There are scenes where children kill each other and there are some pretty cruel parts.

But the first time we did it, the classroom disappeared at the end of the first chapter and that was it. "What's going to happen next?" People would come to look at the galley proofs to see. When you have people doing things like that usually that means you have a hit on your hands.

Torishima: A good response.

Shirai: Oh yeah. People in the company wanted to know the rest of the story as soon as possible.

Ryoichi Ikegami, who was supposed to draw Ai to Makoto in Magazine, was nabbed and Otokogumi was serialized instead.

Shirai: After my work with Umezu-san, the one I felt the most positive about was Otokogumi (男組).

For Otokogumi, I brought over Ryoichi Ikegami (池上遼一), who was at Kodansha at the time, and I had the feeling that I was "stealing someone's treasure" (laughs). ^[23]

Torishima: That's where the legend began, when they started calling you "Headhunter Shirai" (laughs).

Shirai: I was trying to get some of the creators that I really cherished like in Yoso-sama. ^[24]

Tetsu Kariya (雁屋哲), who wrote the original story for Otokogumi, quit Dentsu and wrote Lonely Rin (ひとりぼっちのリン/Hitoribotsu no Rin) with Ikegami-san (under the name Shinya Ageta [阿月田伸也]). ^[25]

Torishima: Were Ikegami-san and Kariya-san already working together at Magazine?

Shirai: I believe so.

Kodansha was very protective of Ikegami-san. Later, Ikki Kajiwara told me, "My Ai to Makoto (愛と誠) was really supposed to be done by Ikegami, but you took him away."

Torishima: Ah!

Shirai: The result was fine with Takumi Nagayasu (ながやす巧) illustrating Ai to Makoto, but they had originally planned to have Ikegami-san work on that project.

Torishima: Now I really want to see what Ikegami-san's Ai to Makoto would have been like.

Shirai: Kodansha cherished Ikegami-san that much.

At the time, Ikegami-san was living in Mitakadai in a crumbling apartment. When there were good shoes out front of that filthy apartment, that's when I knew people from Kodansha's Magazine had come to visit with him.

So I went to Inokashira Park and waited for the shoes to disappear. That's when I finally gave him Kariya-san's manuscript to look over in his spare time.

As I said earlier, Ikegami-san and Kariya-san had worked together before, so I thought Ikegami-san would probably recognize Kariya-san's work just by looking at the handwriting. So I had another person rewrite the manuscript, and gave it to him after removing the prejudice of Kariya-san.

Torishima: Going to the trouble of having the original work rewritten! That's a fine trick.

Shirai: You have to think about those sorts of details.　So he said, "well, let's do it," and Ikegami-san made his debut in Sunday.

Torishima: What was it about Ikegami-san that caught your attention?

Shirai: His images. Ikegami-san is the absolute best when it comes to his drawings.

Torishima: Shirai-san took a quick peek at them.

Shirai: Basically, the main characters he creates all have the same face.

Torishima: I see.

Shirai: But when I saw Goji Jinryu, the antagonist, in the preview, I thought, "Maybe this could be great."

Torishima: Was it because he looked different from the protagonist?

Shirai: He had created a character that was completely different from the one I had in mind. So I thought this manga might do well, and I was right.

I secretly listened to a lecture by Masaru Uchida, editor-in-chief of the rival Shonen Magazine.

Torishima: What was the reaction of Magazine and Kodansha when you nabbed Ikegami-san?

Shirai: I've always wondered how it went. Don't you guys at Shueisha have more opportunities to work with Kodansha? ^[26]

At that time, our company and Kodansha were in a bitter rivalry. At the bar that both companies go to, we'd say things like, "There's someone from Kodansha here, so open the window and change the air." (laughs)

In particular, editor-in-chief Masaru Uchida saw Sunday and Magazine as rivals. When Uchida-san gave a lecture at Dentsu, I went to listen to it in secret. I wondered, "How do the enemy generals approach publishing?"



Torishima: You're like a prep school student (laughs). Did you learn anything?

Shirai: Uchida-san is a graduate of a college of education, so he's well-spoken.

He spoke about "fuekiryoko". ^[27] He said, "There are things that change and things that don't change," adding, "When something that shouldn't change has changed, that becomes the theme of a manga." For example, the relationship between father and son should be good, but now the relationship between a father and son is messed up. This is where the father-son relationship in Star of the Giants comes into play.

Torishima: So that's where it came from!

Shirai: Also, the teachers and students must always be the same, but if the classrooms are messed up then the teachers should be messed up. That's how Waru was born. ^[28]

Torishima: Ah, I see, a theme about ethical breakdowns, that's definitely a Kodansha Magazine approach.

Shirai: Yeah, yeah. That is the kind of thing that Kodansha inherited from Takero Makino. ^[29]

That is why Uchida-san said, "There's no need to make a theme out of things that overlap perfectly. The theme should come from where things should fit together but don't." That was the most important point of Uchida-san's intensive lecture. It's still stuck with me.

Torishima: But if that's all they have then reading Magazine would be a slog.

Shirai: Uchida-san is the one who thought of creating a version of Big Comic within Shonen Magazine. That's the reason why it failed.

When Shonen Magazine sold over one million copies, Uchida-san thought that maybe something in the mold of Big Comic would be good, so he designed a one-color cover with Tadanori Yokoo's handling the design. The title of a shonen magazine is traditionally supposed to be red.

Torishima: A pure red, to make it stand out. ^[30]

Shirai: Everyone uses pure red for shonen magazines, don't they?

Torishima: Even if they try to use other colors they eventually come back to it.

Shirai: Even though it was designed by Tadanori Yokoo it was still all black.

On the other hand, George Akiyama's Ashura (アシュラ) caused social problems, and he tried to go outside the boundaries of shonen magazines and tried to up the ante. ^[31] In cases like that, they should have made a different magazine...

Torishima: Magazine tried to have it all, that's what caused them to start to break down.

Shirai: While Magazine was doing that, we at Sunday were dominated by the romantic comedy boom with Mitsuru Adachi and Rumiko Takahashi. But at that time, Jump didn't get on board with that.

Torishima: No, no, no. Jump also tried to do a romantic comedy, but it didn't work out, and as a result, we decided to turn our backs on it (laughs).　If it had worked, we would have done it. There were no artists who could do it at the time.

Shirai: The fact that Adachi-sensei and Takahashi-sensei were at Sunday was a very big deal. And they had no contract with Shogakukan, but they were devoted to it. I can only say, "I'm so grateful."

I met Mitsuru Adachi when he was just an assistant at Isami Ishii's studio.

Shirai: Rumiko Takahashi is very close to Mitsuru Adachi, whom she calls "big brother. The two of them are also good friends with Gosho Aoyama. ^[32]

That must be the personality of Adachi-sensei. He never changes, he's never overbearing, and he's always focused on baseball. Even now, when I read Touch before going to bed, it helps me relax.

Torishima: I also didn't find Jump interesting, so I often took a nap in Shogakukan's reference room.

I got bored and started reading back issues of various manga and Shogakukan magazines. At that time, Nakimushi Koshien (泣き虫甲子園) by Adachi-san was in Shojo Comic, and I thought, "He's really good."

Later, when Nine (ナイン) started in Monthly Sunday, I thought, "Oh, he's coming along." Then after that it was Touch (タッチ).

Shirai: Even if you read it today, Touch holds up as a masterpiece.

Torishima: He's really good at layouts and how he breaks up his frames.

Shirai: It has all the classic gags too, such as the skirt flipping up in the wind. Nothing has evolved, but the established "Adachi-style" is perfectly in place. It has nothing to do with the fads of the time or anything like that.

Torishima: What I was particularly impressed with was Adachi-san's vertical shots. He illustrated the scene of the students going to school from above, with the leaves in the trees and the sunlight coming in from above. The school gate is there, so with one shot, you can tell that school is about to start.

Shirai: Yes, yes.

Torishima: This one frame just made me say, "This is really incredible."

Shirai: When I talk like this, you may think that my story is one of pure success, but I made a huge mistake with a creator named Isami Ishii during my Sunday days.

Torishima: Ah, 750 Rider (750ライダー). ^[33]

Shirai: The editor-in-chief at the time declared, "We're going to make Isami Ishii into the Tetsuya Chiba of Shonen Sunday. So, I thought of various writers to pair him with. I paired him with Ikki Kajiwara and then Mamoru Sasaki. He did a basketball manga and fighting manga with Ikki Kajiwara. Then he did a love story about a man's love for his sister, and all kinds of other genres, but none of them were popular. It was far from Tetsuya Chiba. All of them were disasters. ^[34]

Isami Ishii is stylish because he is an urbanite, but he couldn't draw Kajiwara-san's wrestling techniques properly. He used only one solid tone for the parts that readers wanted to see the most, so he didn't gain popularity.　So we parted ways with him, but when he went to Champion, he was met with 750 Rider and bing, bam, boom!

Torishima: So 750 Rider is after Sunday? I didn't know that until I just heard Shirai-san tell me!

Shirai: That's right. That's why we used our failures in all fields as a source of success, didn't we?

Torishima: 750 Rider is a romantic comedy, or rather, it's in the style of Adachi-san. It's a casual, everyday story about a boy who loves motorcycles and a girl he has feelings for. Just like that.

Shirai: Right. So Mitsuru Adachi was one of Isami Ishii's disciples. At that time, I'm glad I didn't bully Adachi-san into doing something (laughs).

Torishima: Right, he was Ishii's assistant! I understand now...

Shirai: I did't go to Ishii-san's office every week to pick up the manuscripts. If I was hard on Adachi-san at that time and he had formed a bad impression of me, it would stuck with him for a long time.

Torishima: At times like that, that's when being an editor is the most exciting, right? "Oh, it was that guy."

Shirai: If I had sworn at that time or said something like, "Because of you, now I'm late," a different relationship might have developed. That's why, after all is said and done, you have to take care of the people that you don't know. Everyone in Jump may start out as a nobody, but that's not the case with us.

The creators may forget what they said, but they remember what was said to them. I don't know when he said it, but it must have been something that made him say it, seeing that the artist was working so hard on his illustrations.

Torishima was reading shojo manga in Shogakukan's reference room.

Torishima: When the whirlwind occurred with Adachi/Takahashi, had you had already left Sunday?

Shirai: I'd left.

Torishima: But the old Sunday...

Shirai: Yes, it sold 2.6 or 2.7 million copies. Well, it was one-third of what Jump was doing at 6 million copies. The highest circulation in the history of Sunday was when Adachi, Takahashi, and Fujihiko Hosono were there.

Torishima: Of Sasuga no Sarutobi (さすがの猿飛). ^[35]

Shirai: And Gu-Gu Gummo (Gu-Guガンモ), for example. At that time, all these anime started around the same time. It was well coordinated with Fuji Television.

Torishima: Yes. Urusei Yatsura came on right after Dr. Slump (Dr.スランプ) which was annoying, you know (laughs). But that one hour was the best. ^[36]

Shirai: Which one is more annoying, being careless or not being open-minded? (laughs) I didn't know Torishima-san was quietly hiding out in our reference room.

Torishima: Jump manga wasn't that interesting, and my work wasn't that interesting either, so while I was sitting there and reading a lot of different kinds of manga, I thought, "There's a lot of different kinds of manga out there," so I mostly read shojo manga, things that Sho-Comi (少コミ) was publishing.

So, in a different way than Shirai-san, I thought, "Shojo manga creators are smarter than shonen magazine creators." They know history, they're educated.

Shirai: I remember spending time in the reference room, because when I joined the Sunday editorial department as a new employee, I couldn't keep up in the meetings. I didn't know the names of the mangaka.

Torishima: A lack of knowledge.

Shirai: I didn't know what to say about Shigeru Mizuki, so I went to the reference room and frantically read the back issues. ^[37]

It took me a little while to read every issue of Magazine, Sunday, and King until finally I could keep up with the names and ideas in the meetings.

Torishima: That's great. I might be almost the same as you, Shirai-san, because I didn't read manga at all when I joined the company. Because when I came to Shueisha, I didn't even know what Shonen Jump was.

Shirai: Oh, really? How big was your circulation at that time? It hadn't gotten that big yet, had it?

Torishima: 1.3 to 1.4 million copies.

Shirai: 1 million maybe.

Torishima: When I was a new employee, I was given a memo that said, "Aim for 1.7 million copies." (laughs)

Shirai: What were you thinking about when you joined, Torishima-san?

Torishima: Like you, Shirai-san, I was also interested in literature and art books. But when I was in training as a newcomer, I was told, "Torishima-kun, art books are handled by an editorial production company called Zaoho (座右宝), Shueisha doesn't publish them." I was like, "What!?" (laughs)

Shirai: Right, Zaoho, was out there? Yes, that thing we both experienced.

So, after all, one successful pattern might be for someone who doesn't aspire to be a mangaka to get into editorial. Because there is a coldness to them. On the other hand, if you love manga, it might be different.

To pull Hiroshi Motomiya out of the rival company, he attended a consolation meeting of Jump editors alone.

Torishima: Shirai-san, you had no aspirations to become a manga artist yourself, but you were assigned to Sunday, which was struggling at the time, and thus you became involved in manga. Was it Kazuo Umezu's Drifting Classroom that ultimately fully immersed you in the world of manga?

Shirai: Yes, my reaction not only to Umezu-san's Drifting Classroom but also Makoto-chan as well.

Torishima: Was it the same with Makoto-chan? Then, when Umezu-sensei was sick from overwork, Shirai-san would make miso soup with shijimi clam every morning at Umezu-sensei's place...

Shirai: Where'd you hear that? (laughs)

Torishima: That's a famous story (laughs).

Shirai: Yes, I made miso soup with shijimi clam.

Torishima: Every day?

Shirai: Every day, I went to the market in Mejiro and bought shijimi clams. I made miso soup with them because shijimi is supposed to be good for relieving fatigue and for the liver.

Torishima: For how many years?

Shirai: I'm not sure, but I know I made a lot of it.

Torishima: If you go that far, Umezu-sensei won't be able to function without Shirai-san anymore.

Shirai: But Umezu-sensei is still active and working. It's a big deal, isn't it? He's crafting a full-color 101-page epic. ^[38]

Torishima: Wow, even though he's 85 years old!　The reason why Umezu-sensei's health has has been so good is because of Shirai-san's miso soup with shijimi clams (laughs).

Anyway, to backtrack a bit, how long would you stay and visit at Ikegami-san's house?

Shirai: How long would I stay? I think it was too noisy over there.

When I went to Hiroshi Motomiya's place, I decided to go on Sundays. ^[39] On Sundays, I think it was in Ichikawa, Chiba at that time. I would take the Sobu Line to Ichikawa and chat with Motomiya-san. I would go there after dinner and return just in time to catch the last train. I did that every Sunday for a long time.

Torishima: Every Sunday, without fail?

Shirai: Absolutely. People used to say, "You're a salaried worker, so don't do that. Tomorrow's another day."

Jump had a consolation party for Motomiya-san. It was a beach in Kujukuri, but when I showed up to the party, it's all people from Shueisha. Marue Horiuchi and everyone else there looked at me with piercing eyes like, “Why is this guy here?” (laughs) ^[40]

Torishima: I've been to that beach for a party once myself, and the atmosphere is unique, like a family. If Shirai-san were to be alone in the midst a Jump family get together, it would be extremely stressful. I'd never want to be there.

Shirai: I was the only outsider with all the Motomiya Productions folks and Shueisha people. But if I didn't go when invited, I'd look like a coward.

After about a year of going through this process, Motomiya-san said to me, "Well, let's talk about work." I looked at his contract and found that he had an exclusive contract with Jump for any shonen magazine work.　But at that time, I had already moved to Big Comic. That wouldn't be a breach of contract, because Big Comic was a seinen magazine (laughs).



Torishima: But it made a big fuss at Shueisha. At that time, Shirai-san's name started suddenly coming up.

Shirai: Shigeo Nishimura glared at me. ^[41]

From the perspective of someone like me who comes from a web background, it's very interesting to ponder, "How am I going to go see a creator when I have no business there?" (laughs)

Shirai: All I had to do was keep saying, "Please draw it for us." (laughs)

(Laughs) If it was Ryoichi Ikegami, I would just go to him and say, "We're going all out to prepare a great new series for Sunday." Then I would bring his wife a souvenir. After all, the wives are very important.

What kind of chit-chat would you make?

Shirai: I'd inquire about what they were up to then say things like "Shonen Sunday is a lot better than Kodansha." (laughs)

Would they talk about work?

Shirai: A little. Mostly what they would say is "oh you're here again?"

Torishima: I think, it is very hard to go to a place where you don't know anyone and "chat" with them.

Even if you bring a gift, it's quite a feat to go up to the living room and have a chat with the wife. That's half the moat you've already filled in if you manage that.

Shirai: Even with a painter, the art dealer says, "Drop in on his wife." If the wife, who is in charge of the kitchen, doesn't like you, you''ll never be able to do business with her husband.

So, Ikegami-san's wife is a tough lady, and there's a big difference between having her on your side and not having her on your side.

Torishima: Hoping that she'll say something like, "He's come all the way here and is working so hard, so why don't you draw for him?" (laughs)

Shirai: In the case of Hiroshi Motomiya, Sundays are intentionally used for that sort of thing. There is plenty of time on weekdays, but going out of your way to do it on a Sunday...

Torishima: You want to show that you are "making sacrifices as a businessman." That's so disgusting (laughs).

Shirai: Also, rainy days and windy days are good for visits. "You came on a day like this?" they'd say. If they think you just came by during a walk in early spring, it's no good. In bad weather though, like snow...

Torishima: Or a typhoon.

Shirai: That is the most valuable thing. So, once you start chatting with them, that's about half the battle. The rest depends on when the other party makes a decision.

Motomiya-san would sense this and say, "Well, let's talk about work today." That's how Otokogi (男樹) was born.

Tetsuya Chiba's commitment as seen through Notari Matsutaro

Torishima: When did you move to Big Comic, Shirai-san?

Shirai: I was at Sunday for six or seven years, I think. Next, I moved to Big Comic as deputy editor, I believe.

Torishima: Big Comic is the main magazine, isn't it? Big Comic Original hadn't been created yet had it?

Shirai: I was the deputy editor-in-chief of Big Comic but yes, Big Comic Original did exist at this point.

I went to Big Comic as the editor for Tetsuya Chiba's Notari Matsutaro (のたり松太郎). ^[42] "You'll be the deputy editor for Chiba-san," they told me.

Torishima: Now, you stole Chiba-san away, didn't you?

Shirai: No, Chiba-san was stolen by someone else.

Torishima: Huh, I always thought you were the one that got him.

Shirai: There have been so many, all belonging to someone else (laughs).

Going back about three years, I feel sorry for Ryoichi Ikegami for winning a prize for Otokogumi. Because one project that the other side was thinking about doing was crushed. Because if he does one weekly magazine, he can't do anything else.

That was one of the reasons why I began to feel that manga was interesting. I went to Big Comic as Tetsuya Chiba's assistant editor, saying, "Tetsuya Chiba has been in charge of these sub-editors for generations."



Torishima: It's very unusual for a sub-editor to be in charge, isn't it? So you didn't actually work as a sub-editor, did you? It was just a title (laughs).

Shirai: Right (laughs). What was Chiba-san doing at that time? Notori Matsutaro and... something else. He was doing Ore wa Teppei (おれは鉄兵) in Magazine and Notari Matsutaro in Big Comic.

Torishima: But Chiba-san is famous for being rather slow isn't he? That's why he usually didn't work in weekly magazines.

Shirai: Yeah, that's why people used to say the "Tetsuya" (てつや) in Tetsuya Chiba should be written "all-nighter" (徹夜/also pronounced "Tetsuya")

Torishima: I've heard that too.

Shirai: He works with all sincerity, but he's slow.

I went to Chiba-san about three times a day. I'd go in the mornings or during the day, then during the middle of the night, and then go again on the way home.

I had to see how much progress he had made, and although he didn't ever fail to get it done, I would wind up getting to the photo plate factory just before everyone had given up and gone home. ^[43]

Torishima: Ah...

Shirai: I wasn't interested in sumo, but I went to Wajima's stable, Hanago-ya, to cover the event and to watch the morning practice with Chiba-san. Then, in Notari there was a scene set at a cabaret, so we went to a cabaret for the first time. Chiba-san had never been to a cabaret either. When it suddenly became dark, neither of us knew what to do (laughs).

Torishima: You and he both had never been? And your first time was going together? (laughs) That's a great story.

Shirai: Anyway, we worked hard on Notari. What surprised me the most was that I received a phone call right away after I delivered the first printing of Notari to Chiba-san.

Torishima: The first printing before the book is printed. It's the first part of the printing process.

Shirai: Right, at that stage it can barely be corrected.

Torishima: The rotary presses are already spinning at that point.

Shirai: Yes. I finally finished making the final print and got it in just in time. Then I got a phone call, and I wondered what had happened.

Torishima: The thing about Matsutaro's opponent.

Shirai: That's right, Matsutaro's opponent is breathing "haa, haa" in the ring, but that "haa" is a bit lacking, so Chiba-san asked if he could add one more.

Torishima: "Please correct it with one more 'haa!'"

Shirai: Yes, he wondered if we could add one more. When I heard that, I went into a frenzy and probably silently hung up (laughs).

Torishima: It's unreasonable, it's not a mistake.

Shirai: After re-reading it, he wanted another "haa".

When cutting out the text after reading the name (ネーム) of Golgo 13, there were so many lines, so the area is wide and it's easy to paste it onto the manuscript. But "haa" is written in small letters such as grade 12 or grade 14, and two letters have to be cut out, so it's time consuming... ^[44]

Torishima: The size of normal manga text is usually about grade 18 or something like that. How small would that be?

Shirai: Grade 12 is really small. I'd prefer they just write by hand at that point.

Torishima: That's right. For "Haa, haa", of course.

Shirai: I thought it was amazing that when he finally finished, he asked if he could add another one to it. What's this guy thinking?

Torishima: Chiba-san is a very particular person, isn't he?

Shirai: Yes. It's impressive, I guess.

Shirai becomes the founding editor-in-chief of Big Comic Spirits, and Oishinbo is born.

Shirai: When I was working as a sub-editor on Big Comic, I was asked if I would like to publish a book somewhere between Big Comic and Sunday.

Torishima: From the company?

Shirai: That's how it started.

Torishima: Had Young Jump and Young Magazine already been launched at this point?

Shirai: I believe they came later. That's how Big Comic Spirits was born, and it started out as a monthly publication. ^[45]

Torishima: What was the original concept?

Shirai: The concept was "we're not influenced by popularity," ... we're not Jump.

Torishima: Anti-Jump.

Shirai: I felt like I wanted to challenge the supremacy of the reader survey in Jump.

Torishima: You wanted to do it in a smarter way, not in that tacky way (laughs).

Shirai: No, no, no (laughs). I went looking for creators who were more eccentric, or who seem to have been forgotten, such as Kazuhiko Miyatani. ^[46]

We published 10 issues of a monthly magazine, but it didn't sell at all, and we realized that it was no longer possible to publish a monthly magazine in this style. So we decided to publish twice a month, and the circulation started to pick up little by little.

We talked about doing something with Tetsu Kariya, who was involved with Otokogumi, but we couldn't come to a decision. I couldn't get a clear idea of what he wanted to do.

Then, Kariya-san brought up the idea of Oishinbo (美味しんぼ), saying, "How about this one I wrote before? At that time, it was not yet titled Oishinbo. ^[47]

At that time, food culture was beginning a boom little by little. The first chapter of Oishinbo was "tofu and water." That worked. If it had been "truffle and caviar", it wouldn't have worked.

Torishima: Just as Ajihei the Kitchen Knife (包丁人味平/Hochonin Ajihei) in Jump was curry and ramen in its first chapter.

Shirai: Yes, yes. It's an ironclad rule. If you try to do some ridiculous dish, it won't go well.

The illustrator of Oishinbo is Akira Hanasaki, who won an honorable mention in the Big magazines' newcomer awards, but this was his first work on a series.

Kariya-san's manga have a lot of dialogue. Therefore, if a manga artist doesn't have compositional skills, if they don't know what parts to cut out then it won't work. The first chapter of Oishinbo had about 30 or 40 pages for the manuscript.

Torishima: One page of text is roughly two pages of manga, so that means it would have been 60 pages if he drew it as it was written!

Shirai: Yeah, 60 pages.

Torishima: That's what I was told when I was first in charge of Buronson-san. "Torishima-kun, this one page is equivalent to roughly two manga pages," he said. ^[48]

Shirai: Whereas for the late Kazuo Koike, a sheet of manuscript paper is equal to a manga page. ^[49]

Torishima: The mark of a professional. You have an approximate idea of what will happen in your head.

Shirai: If I have it in my head and write it, I know exactly how to fit it into 12 to 20 pages. There are two types of professionals: those who write in their heads and those who write their hearts out. Ikki Kajiwara writes in novel form. Kariya-san also writes in novel form.

So, you see, I hate it when a logical work like Oishinbo is skillfully drawn with pictures like those of Ryoichi Ikegami.

Torishima: Yeah, if it has a lot of text and detailed pictures, it gets quite heavy.

Shirai: Right. If there were pictures like those by Takao Saito in the book, the amount of dialogue and the skill of the pictures would destroy each other. That is why Hanasaki-san's drawings were a better match for Oishinbo.

Torishima: It was a good balance, so you gave it a try.

Shirai: It's a so-called manga. Well, Kariya-san might have wanted the artist to be a little more mid-level than a complete newcomer, truthfully.

Torishima: I guess he couldn't have told you that though, given your position.

Shirai: He turned a blind eye to that part and said, "I'm going to bet on this guy." That's how Oishinbo was born.

On the difference between Spirits, which became a weekly publication, and Big Comic, which alternates between two monthly publications.

Torishima: With the birth of Oishinbo one of the pillars of Spirits was established, eh?

Shirai: Yes, Oishinbo and then Maison Ikkoku. ^[50]

Torishima: How did you pull in Rumiko Takahashi for Maison Ikkoku?

Shirai: I've known Takahashi-san since the Sunday days.

Torishima: But she's the mainstay of Sunday. I'm amazed that Sunday agreed to it.

Shirai: I'm grateful for that. Even today, Maison Ikkoku is a milestone in the field of seinen manga. With the establishment of these pillars, we were finally able to make a move and shift from a twice-monthly to a weekly publication.

At that time, I was in high spirits, so staying up all night for two or three nights was no big deal. I could just lie on the couch and be done with it, so my office was like my home.

I would even say something like, "Let's do this twice a week! (laughs) We would have published twice a week, once on Mondays and once on Fridays. ^[51]

Torishima: You were on a roll again (laughs).

Shirai: That's how energetic I was at the time.

Torishima: You felt immortal at the time.

Shirai: Yes, yes. Otowa ^[52] had Yoshiyuki Kurihara in Morning. ^[53] Kurihara-san was called "Emperor Kurihara" and I didn't have a title like that, but as a rival magazine, it was Morning versus Spirits. The circulation grew a lot, I wonder how much it sold at the best time.

Torishima: It would have exceeded 1.5 million copies.

Shirai: Was that their peak?

Torishima: But Spirits became a weekly publication, yet Big Comic was not weekly, and instead, Big Comic Original was published.

Shirai: Yes, publishing the magazine twice a month on alternating weeks.

Torishima: So if you add Original and Big, you get a weekly magazine. Just change the concept a little.

Shirai: Original is for the big-time entertainment works. It's got Abu-san (あぶさん), and Haguregumo (浮浪雲), and Baron Yoshimoto's Dongame Yaro (どん亀野郎). Sanpei Shirato was in Big, so in that magazine are the series that make you think a little.

Torishima: Original is Toshiba Sunday Theater, whereas Big is like an NHK drama.

Shirai: Right.

Big Comic is a magazine that was made with the intention of making a manga version of All Yomimono (オール讀物). ^[54]

Torishima: I see.

Shirai: At the time of the first issue of Big, novels were gradually declining. In terms of intermediate novels, the circulation of All Yomimono and Shosetsu Gendai had dropped by about 300,000 copies.

It's more of an alternative to those adult print books. It's adult, isn't it? "Adult" used to mean something else, back then it meant an adult magazine...

Torishima: Something worth reading.

Shirai: Yeah, worth reading. That's why the concept at the time of the first issue was to complete one story and make it a long story.

Torishima: Ah, I have a vague memory of that. It's been a long time.

Shirai: All our stories were long. They're not like shonen magazines with short page counts and a pull-out to see what happens next, but they're just as readable as novels.

That's why Golgo 13 still uses about 40 pages, right? One story is completed in 80 pages of the first and second parts.

Torishima: Ah, I see.

People who wanted to do something new, not just in manga, gathered at Spirits.

Shirai: Going back to the topic, Big alternates with Original, and it's the same as a well-made weekly magazine. Spirits went on to publish monthly, semi-monthly, and weekly publications.

Torishima: But compared to Original and Big Comic, Spirits is the only one that has some serials that have a whiff of subculture, such as the work of Hui Choi Pro and Even A Monkey Can Draw Manga (サルでも描けるまんが教室). ^[55]

Shirai: That's one reason why I like novels. I wanted to try various things, not just manga.

Hoi Choi Pro's Kimagure Concept is the only work that has survived from the very beginning. You know, when the first chapter of Kimagure Concept appeared, Yasuo Baba handed out flyers in front of Dentsu and Hakuhodo. It's like, "I'm starting a serialization in Spirits."

Torishima: I see.

Shirai: Then the publicity department of Shogakukan said to me, "Is this guy all right? Isn't he the Zenkyoto or something like that? (laughs) ^[56]"No, he's not. He's just promoting his own works in a special way.

I also asked Baku Yumemakura to write a novel for Spirits. ^[57]

Torishima: Whoa.

Shirai: I said to Baku-san, "If you think your work is selling well, why don't you write it in the same arena with Rumiko Takahashi's work and see if you can top her?"

Torishima: Instigating again (laughs).

Shirai: He was taken in by the idea and thought, "Well, I'll give it a shot." But it's still never been collected and republished. It's about 1,000 sheets of manuscript paper. ^[58]

Torishima: It's still not been republished?

Shirai: It's still not out. It's only about halfway through. It's a really long story. Recently, they started the serialization from the beginning in Shodensha's Novel Non. I was astonished when I read it again and wondered how he managed to publish such an erotic story (laughs).

Torishima: Indeed. Yumemakura-san also wrote Psycho Diver (サイコダイバー) too.

Shirai: Also, Yasushi Akimoto's Onyanko Talk. ^[59] I wanted to show that Spirits is open to things other than just manga, and that it will always try out new things. Like Shigesato Ito.

Torishima: Did you steal Shigesato Itoi too, Shirai-san? ^[60]

Shirai: I did with Itoi-san, though we've been friends for a long time.

Torishima: That's why I've always thought that Spirits was a very un-Shogakukan-like magazine.

This is perhaps a bad way to say this, but since the sales of the manga in Spirits is stable and profits are rising, it's like using that as a platform to do whatever you like, huh?

Shirai: That's absolutely right (laughs). Also, all the staff were very festive, and it was reassuring that all the editors loved Spirits more than the company.

Torishima: No one in the company can complain, so let's do what we want to do here.

Shirai: It might have been a little personal (laughs).

At the time, there was a guy in the publicity department of Shogakukan, though he's passed away now. He said, "Let's make the editor-in-chief a selling point for the magazine," and put me into ads that were hung in trains.

Torishima: That surprised me when I saw it. I was shocked that you were the type of person who'd want to appear in ads.

Shirai: No, no. Don't misunderstand, I didn't want to appear, but so it goes (laughs).

Torishima: You didn't want to do it?

Shirai: Not at all (laughs). The guy from the advertising department was a graduate of Meiji University's theater department or something, and he fell in love with Spirits.

Torishima: He wanted to try something new with you.

Shirai: So they said, "let's put the editor-in-chief inside the magazine every week."

Torishima: Every week!

Shirai: Every week (laughs). So I must have done it six or seven times. The hardest part was when I became a bronze statue. I had to paint the upper half of my body and my hair with varnish to make it look like bronze.

Torishima: Yeah, they made it look like a statue, but it was really just you all painted up.

Shirai: Oh yeah. It was really hard, but it came out well.

Torishima: It got a great reaction.

Shirai: There was another one where I was dressed as a homeless guy and the text overhead said "it's only 200 yen, right?" Because we were selling Spirits for 200 yen at the time.

Torishima: That's great (laughs). Really good copy too.

Shirai: I guess we did our best afterall.

A lot of young editors found that kind of thing interesting, and they all wanted to come to Spirits as a result.

Torishima: When prospective new employees came to Shogakukan, they almost always said, "I want to go to Spirits."

Taking care of the artists, personally delivering gifts at Christmas and osechi at New Year's

Torishima: Shirai-san, you casually let it slide, but when you stole Rumiko Takahashi for Spirits, did you actually go to her directly or did you go through back channels?

Shirai: "Back channels" is a bit of a dirty word (laughs).

Torishima: I've heard several legends about you, Shirai-san, women call you a "gentleman" while men, on the other hand, call you "scary" and "an ogre". How people evaluate you seems completely different depending on their gender.

I also heard that you had a department store salesmen you would contact to help select gifts for female artists and artists' wives?

Shirai: That's not true (laughs). Someone made that up.

Torishima: There's also the story that a creator was meeting with you and some other editors at a coffee shop, when it started to rain, and you carried an umbrella for him.

Shirai: I might had done that.

Torishima: The person in question said that he vividly remembered that "an editor would go so far as to do that."

Shirai: I used to go shopping for Christmas presents for their kids, running around all day long on December 23rd, and then delivering sweatshirts and books on the 24th every year.

Tetsuya Chiba has five children. Then I'd forget their names, and suddenly I'd remember and think, "oh, what kind of gift would Hiroshi-kun like?"

Torishima: I know you'd have to get something for all five of them, but how would you know what each one would like?

Shirai: Basically just making sure you get each of them a differnet style of clothing and keeping the price range about the same.

Torishima: When I hear you talk like that, at my age now I think, "That's amazing," and "That's really great," but honestly, I'm surprised. At Shueisha, at least the people working around me, there weren't any editors who cared about that kind of thing.

It's sounds awful to say this, but it's amazing that you tried so hard to get along with the creators.

Shirai: But once you start, it's hard to keep going. But once you give someone a birthday present, you have to keep doing it. I still do osechi dishes.

On December 31st, I'll deliver New Year's dishes to Rumiko Takahashi, Chiba-san, and several other people.

Torishima: Even now?

Shirai: Even now.

Torishima: Always, even if you just did it for someone once?

Shirai: Yeah.

Torishima: That's amazing...



Shirai: For birthdays, Takao Saito, for instance his was November 3rd which is an easy day to remember, but for those who's aren't as easy I'd make a note of it somewhere. So I could be sure to send flowers.

Torishima: I see. I have often heard the legend of Shirai-san. That's how you're so skillful in getting into people's hearts and minds.

Shirai: You make me sound like I'm a bad guy (laughs).

Torishima: You are a bad guy aren't you? (laughs)

Becoming an executive at Shogakukan and going on to a department other than manga

Torishima: So, once Spirits finally got going, how did you pass the baton? You started looking elsewhere at Shogakukan as a whole.

Shirai: Yes, I did. What did I do after that? I guess I was the head of the manga department.

Torishima: You became a board member quite early, you were just a little over 40 years old.

Shirai: That's about right.

Torishima: How did that go? When you left the position of editor-in-chief of a manga magazine and started looking at the company as a whole.

Shirai: For example, one of the most time-consuming and difficult tasks is dictionaries. Some dictionaries take as long as 30 years to be printed.

When I went to the editorial department of the Dictionary of the Japanese Language (日本国語大辞典/Nihon Kokugo Daijiten), I found that not a single person would engage in private conversation with me, and the telephone never rang. At that time, we didn't have computers, so we used cards. We made entries on cards and wrote usage examples on them.

Torishima: So it's like Shion Miura's novels? ^[61]

Shirai: Yes, it was like something out of The Great Passage (舟を編む/Fune o Amu). It feels like a different company. That's why there are several other companies within the company. The encyclopedia division is like that as well.

Torishima: It's a very different editorial department.

Shirai: When I went to the publishing office, the president asked me if I could move away from manga.

If I had said, "I don't want to," they would have let me stay, but I thought it might be good to see other areas because they were somewhat interesting.

Torishima: Back to square one, wanting to try something new huh?

Shirai: Yeah. But that was a negative way to start. From the publishing office, my mission was to "gradually scale back various full-length books and large projects."

Torishima: Oh, so you were sent on a reduction mission?

Shirai: Yes. There was quite a bit of resistance within the department.

Torishima: It's painful.

Shirai: They were all senior to me. They'd say, "What big talk from a kid who came over from the manga department." They were all active members of the labor union, so they'd be pretty vicious.

They would say, "We want you to hold a meeting to welcome new employees once in a while, not just a meeting for retirees." (laughs) It was pretty rough.

Torishima: Shogakukan has a dedicated union representative. Shueisha has a one-year term and it's a government union. The people at Shogakukan are smart people who are full-time employees, so they are very logical and very hardworking.

Shirai: There was a time when they went on strike for about three days. A 72-hour strike is unthinkable now. Everyone sat down in the boardroom. The union was that strong.

Torishima: I also worked for the union for a year, and then Shogakukan and Kodansha had a interpublisher conference, you know? I went to the other publishers and thought, "I didn't know they were so proper." (laughs)

Shirai: These days the "company union" is dead.

Publishing could be quite difficult. There was an editor who was called "Heisei Tomitaro Makino", and a project would come up and he'd say, "I want to make a complete 13-volume botany collection". ^[62]

Then, that would give the editor something to work on all the way until his retirement. If that goes through, then just farm it out...

Torishima: You'll be safe in the company.

Shirai: I'd say, "One Tomitaro Makino is enough," and ask them to reduce it to one volume (laughs). So, those "downsizing" missions were quite difficult.



Torishima: How did you manage to persuade them?

Shirai: I've always been into art and novels, so I could talk with the history scholars if I wanted to. Gradually, the other side began to recognize that.

Torishima: Talk shop with them.

Shirai: I told them, "In this day and age, our outside sales are dwindling, and bookstores don't have the capacity to sell such a large volume of books, we can no longer afford 13 volumes, so we would like you to keep it to one volume no matter what."

The Complete Works of Classical Japanese Literature, New Edition (新編日本古典文学全集/Shinpen Nippon Kotenbungaku Zenshu) has a total of 88 volumes, but in my heart, I really wanted to make it 44 volumes. Then, as you can see, The Tale of Genji Part 1 was published in the first half of the book and The Tale of Genji Part 3 in the second half, so it was well done (laughs).

Torishima: As if you couldn't have done it in half the volumes (laughs).

Shirai: Even if you want to cut it in half, you can't (laughs). Well, that's fine, I guess, something has to be left behind.

However, since there were stories scattered here and there, some scholars were furious because they thinned out the 18 volumes down to 16 volumes, and it was quite difficult.

I think there were about 28 volumes of The Complete Works of World Art (世界美術大全集/Sekai Bijutsu Daizenshu). ^[63] The president started that one.

Torishima: Was that some sort of anniversary project? Is it something you have to do because it's a company mission?

Shirai: Right. It must have cost about 100 million yen in editing cost per book. No one talks about that (laughs).

I went with him once to cover China, but in order to shoot the murals of the Longmen Grottoes in China, we went with about eight people: one Kyoto University graduate school professor, one assistant, a cameraman, a coordinator, and an editor.

Torishima: It's hard work. It takes a whole party of people.

Shirai: Yeah, we had to rent a car to get around in.

Torishima: And that was a time when China wasn't as easy to get around in as it is these days.

Shirai: We had to go from Xi'an into Luoyang, and from Luoyang, we had to go further into the city. The Chinese authorities gave us strict orders to finish the photo shoot before the tourists arrived, so we had to get up at 5:00 a.m. and be there at 7:00 or 8:00 a.m. to shoot. If I had been thinking about the cost, I would never have been able to do that.

But now some of the sites have disappeared, and considering the situation in China, I guess I am glad we did it. Whether it sells or not remains to be seen.

Anyway, publishers should make money from what they can sell, and then publish books that will be handed down to future generations. Since there seems to be no projects like this these days, I wonder if the situation is becoming more serious.

If I could be editor-in-chief one more time, I would like to edit the Weekly Post.

Torishima: So what happened after you went to the publishing office?

Shirai: I went to the Post Seven Station. ^[64] This was also quite thrilling and I liked it. The right wingers said, "We're going to run it like a propaganda truck."

Torishima: You were fine there.

Shirai: They said, "Come on in!" (laughs) "Our section is quiet. We get along well with our neighbors." They didn't mind being sued or anything.

They just said, "Make sure you do a perfect interview. We don't care if you go to jail. Just make sure that you end up winning the case with perfect coverage."

Torishima: In short, they'll take the brunt of the arrow, but they can't swoop in if if the piece isn't good, so they say, "We'll go in once, but you you have to come out as well."

Shirai: Yes, yes (laughs).

And there are times when I would like to be an editor-in-chief one more time.

Torishima: Where would you want to do that?

Shirai: I don't know much about current manga, so if I could do it, it would be Weekly Post (週刊ポスト). ^[65]

Torishima: So you want to be editor-in-chief of a weekly magazine one more time?

Shirai: I know the weekly cycle would suit me.

Torishima: I can understand that. It becomes ingrained in you.

Shirai: Add 4 colors, add 2 colors, add letterpress. Weekly magazines have to do that quickly.

Torishima: There's a sense of completeness and grit.

Shirai: That's a big part of it.

And even if the word "emergency" (救急) on the ambulance is inverted like "急救", it's easy to forget.

Torishima: Right. It's usually just for three days the weekly magazines are on the shelves.

Shirai: Not like when there's a misprint in a dictionary.

Shogakukan, which has the Shogaku Year Books as its base, has the fertile ground to nurture characters as a common asset.

I had a meeting with Torishima-san before this interview, and we talked about the difference between the editorial departments of Shogakukan and Shueisha, or rather Sunday and Jump.

Jump is an artist-oriented magazine where manga are created one-on-one with the editor, but this also means that the potential of the work tends to be tied to the editor. While this "strong personal nature" is sometimes a strength that can be exploited, it can also be a disadvantage.

On the other hand, Sunday tends to scout out and work with artists in relatively short cycles, although of course there are times when they are nurtured from the ground up. As a result, the editorial department is also organized so that they too cycle out every two to three years. So, in contrast to Jump, including this, it was mentioned that a pattern was created that has resulted in works that have lasted for decades, and that it's working for them.

What do you think about that, Shirai-san?

Torishima: It's a unique feature of Shogakukan that "after a certain number of years, you're transferred to a new position." You don't stay in the same place for a long time like in Jump, do you?

Is that the company's way of thinking?

Shirai: Shogakukan has quite a few magazines when you include even shojo magazines. So, you could try to move from shonen magazines to Spirits and try different things. There aren't many people who have stuck to just Sunday.

Well, there are cases where you experience different magazines and then go back to Sunday again, so I wonder which approach is better...

But I think that there is a strength in Jump that has kept it going for a long time in a straight line. Katano-san was charge of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (鬼滅の刃) wasn't he?

Torishima: Katayama-san, wasn't it?

Shirai: There is a story that when this Katayama-san was having a hard time because the mangaka wasn't doing so well, so he said, "Why don't you go back to your earlier works?" and Demon Slayer was born from an idea that was similar to work Gotouge-san had submitted earlier in their career.

If Demon Slayer hadn't been born, Gotouge-san would have gone back to the countryside because their dream had not come true, but Katayama-san's comment changed that, and the work became such a hit that it became a landmark in Gotouge-san's hometown. ^[66]

After working with an artist for a long time, there's a sense of attachment and togetherness with the creator, isn't there? It's like they are your alter ego. It may be difficult to create that kind of feeling in the editorial department at Sunday if you are transferred after five or six years.

On the other hand, although Sunday may not be the only one, Shogakukan has popular intellectual properties that have continued for 30 or 50 years. For example, Doraemon (ドラえもん) or, more recently, Detective Conan (名探偵コナン/Meitantei Conan). Also, though it didn't come out of the manga world initially, but Pokemon (ポケモン) as well.

Shirai: That's the beauty of the parent company having the Shogaku Year magazines. Shogakukan started out with the yearbook magazines, so once a character is created, it can be used for a variety of purposes. Pokemon is now a worldwide hit, but at first we didn't think it would go that far.

But from the very beginning, licensing was extremely strict, and I think it is this feeling of respect for the work that has led us to where we are today.

I wonder if Doraemon was also serialized in all the Shogaku year magazines. However, it didn't become popular at all, and when it was about time to, well... that's when TV Asahi and Shinei Douga made the anime, and that ignited the fuse and made him into a national character.

"Cultivating a national character" is something that can be done because of manga magazines, the year magazines, and educational magazines overlap.

Torishima: So Shogakukan has a culture of treating characters as common property in various places, rather than keeping them within the editorial department.

Shirai: Indeed, this may be Shogakukan's greatest strength. Kodansha doesn't have the ability to nurture a grade school magazine.

Nowadays, for example, I think there is a dedicated contact point for Doraemon usage, but before that was the case, the editorial department or editor was the contact point.

So I think that in the past, when people wanted to use Doraemon as a character, the editor's decision would have served as a sort of filter.

Shirai: There might be. There are editors who will allow various things, or an editor who privatizes the decision-making, to say the least. In order to keep the conversation from getting tangled, it's necessary to speak face-to-face.

However, there are times when it is better to allow a large number of people to see what you are doing. So it is difficult to decide where to give permission for an anime to be made, for instance.

If you're still thinking, "I'm sure there are better companies out there," or "This animation company isn't good enough," then the project may disappear just because you didn't take any action. In that case, it would have been better for the mangaka if they had given permission when they first received the offer.

Torishima: All about timing, huh.

Shirai: I totally understand the feeling of, "I'd like to work with this other studio a little more." I understand that, but there's no guarantee that you'll get another offer.

If another project comes along the studio will go for that one. I think it is very difficult to make that call.

They want to have an all-rights character that can be managed by the company alone.

Especially now, manga doesn't end with just the manga. It becomes an anime, becomes a game, becomes a movie, and becomes various goods.

To what extent should the editors cover the expanding range of responsibilities? There's also the idea of a division of labor, and there's also talk that the editor should be focused on all of these things as much as possible.

Shirai: Editors have their limits. For example, in the case of Doraemon, all Shogakukan companies use Doraemon on the cover. I mean, Doraemon appears on the covers of fashion magazines.

I think it's difficult to keep up with things like that unless you go beyond a certain realistic limit.

I think that the moment a work takes off, or until it gains a certain level of popularity, there are quite a few individual factors, such as the author's individuality and the editor's passion that are factors.

From there, I think there comes a moment when you have to move away from that kind of individuality in order to become a national character like Doraemon or Conan.

Is Shogakukan doing something intentionally to make that switch?

Shirai: Shogakukan entrusts secondary and tertiary use to an affiliated company called Shoshu Pro (Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions). Manga editors also work together, but the point of contact is managed together at that company.

I think it will expand beyond just video games and movies. I think something we don't even know about yet will be created, and manga will probably expand into that as well. So age is going to be a limiting factor in some areas.

People who are running game software companies are all starting companies in their early 20s, and from now on, there will be presidents as young as 18 years old. In order to talk with such people, you need to have editors close to their age. I think that's important.

If you have only people with experience, outsiders will immediately dismiss you as "no good, such an old-fashioned company". We have to keep an eye on such advancements and create new human resources who can respond to them.

Therefore, isn't it necessary to have an editor different from the editor of the manga? And yet, that's the editor who helps create the original content.

So, in other words, Shogakukan really wants to have an all-rights character. In the case of Sanrio, that would be Kitty. Kitty is Sanrio's proprietary character.

Torishima: Right. Like Sanrio or Marvel.

Shirai: Yes, as long as you give the okay to your part, everything flows smoothly.

Doraemon as a property is divided among six groups. Fujiko Productions, TV Asahi, and Shin-Ei Animation are all involved.

Torishima: The sense of speed is lost. Just like the timing of the anime we were talking about earlier, the opportunity is gone while you're debating what to do.

Shirai: Right. That's why publishers should shoot for having a character where they alone control all the rights.

At Marvel, the manuscript fee is high, but the publisher takes all the rights. Conversely, in the business practices of Japanese publishers, there is a difference in the way of thinking that, in exchange for lower manuscript fees, the rights remain with the author.

As I mentioned earlier, what will happen to the huge intellectual properties for which the author still holds the rights? That will become a big problem in the future, right?

Shirai: It's hard to know now.

I wonder if there will be a debate about what should happen to the Japanese content industry.

Shirai: I'll leave that to you now, Torishima-san (laughs).

Torishima: But to make it so the company controls "all rights" as Shirai-san said, you have to pay properly. In the end, I think it comes down to a matter of money.

The reason why you don't have "all rights" is because the company is hedging their risks. If Shueisha had really believed that Demon Slayer would do well, they would have put up more money. So, it is a matter of money and the determination to put up that kind of risk.

Shirai: Shogakukan, too, maybe for Sea Monkeys (海猿/Umizaru) they said, "We'll go along with this one." ^[67]

Films are like gambling, so you have to have the guts to take the risk (laughs). There is a possibility that a film could go completely flat.

If a company does not have the guts to take the gamble, it will not be able to make a profit from films. When you have six companies sharing the work, the amount of money coming in is surprisingly small.



Torishima: Well, if you ask me if a salaried worker can immediately respond to a 100 or 200 million yen project, it would be difficult.

As the population of Japan is declining, we will have no choice but to be conscious of content for overseas markets. But when it comes to selling overseas, how do you compete with Disney and Marvel?

With that, mobility, speed of deployment, and the size of the scale after the deployment of resources will be questions to consider. This applies to Disney and Marvel as well, but from now on, China will also acquire such things and rise to prominence.

With that in mind, I think that the next generation will be asked to solve the current business practices in Japan.

Shirai: It's going to be a huge market, especially China.

I understand that it is very difficult to talk to the creators about things like persuading them to sign over the full rights to their creations. Well, there is the matter of payment, of course. Or is it the motivation of the people who do it?

Shirai: Well, there is the joy of knowing that your work is read by people in various countries. It could be read in Argentina, on the other side of the world, or in Mexico or in developing countries, where there is very little money. There is the joy of knowing that what you are drawing is being read all over the world.

So unless you think of it as a "total parental takeover," I don't think anyone would say "no." It would be different if you said to the creator, "We raised you this far, so give us all the rights to everything." I don't think a company would have the guts to buy all the rights.

Torishima: But on the other hand, I wonder if Marvel and Disney are creating content as diverse as Japanese manga. That's a two-sided question.

The intense rivalry between publishers is no longer as strong as it used to be.

Torishima: Shirai-san, you said earlier that you "steal other people's treasures." Is it true that you thought that taking creators from someone else was "twice as effective" because it would be a plus for your company but also a minus for their's?

Shirai: That's true. If we divide the other side's forces and nail them with a new big hit, it is double or triple our gain. Even if we only reduce their strength, it benefits us.

Torishima: So how did you steal the creators from other companies? Are you looking at the newcomers down to their one-shots?

Shirai: I'm sure we'd look at everything.

Torishima: Thoroughly?

Shirai: Yes, I think I'd look at everything.

Torishima: So then, you'd check things like "this magazine is going to be published soon" and "this guy will be a major force"?

Shirai: Yes, yes. Kei Ishizaka, for example, has a rather neutral look, and I thought it would be good to work with her in a seinen magazine. ^[68]

Torishima: She was a famous creator in Young Jump wasn't she?

I hate to admit this, but during the time Shirai-san was there, I think it was that kind of attention to detail that led to the blossoming of Sunday and led to their prosperity.

However, after Shirai-san left, such traditions weren't carried on, and I'm sorry to say it, but it seems to me that Sunday has lost its vitality.

Shirai: I have nothing to do with it. I think the current editor-in-chief of Sunday is quite competitive.

I was recently told by the editor-in-chief of Sunday, "this will be Demon Slayer in five years' time. It's a work called Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (葬送のフリーレン/Soso no Frieren) that won the Manga Grand Prize." ^[69] He said, "This will overtake Demon Slayer."

Torishima: The rivalry's not as intense as it was when Shirai-san was here.

Shirai: At the beginning of the New Year, some people boldly said, "If we lose to Shogakukan, we won't be able to walk down Suzuran-dori" and "We won't be able to walk around Jimbo-cho with our heads held high."

Then, when the print was sent to me, that part was deleted. Those two lines (laughs).

Torishima: Because it's a sister company, the new year's message is transcribed in the company newsletter and sent around (laughs).

Shirai: They didn't leave it in, that's the thing. I wish they had put that in there (laughs).

We can incorporate more of our own culture, not only the manga culture but, also the surrounding culture that "talks" about manga.

Torishima: Shirai-san, have you ever read manga on your smartphone?

Shirai: Never.

Torishima: You can't read it that way?

Shirai: I can't read it. Not at all. I just got a smart phone actually (laughs).

When I send an e-mail, they say, "I think your secretary is typing what you're saying." (laughs) No matter how long I've been using a mobile phone, I can at least type a long message, although I'm slow.

I'm also using LINE with a few people.

Torishima: Finally, the day has come when Shirai-san also has a smartphone (laughs).

How do you see the current situation in the manga industry as a whole, with paper declining and digital barely clearing the previous year's level?

Shirai: That time has come. Both can coexist to some extent, and those who want to keep it on paper can buy paper copies, and those who want to read it on the spot can buy digital.

Both records and CDs are not selling well, and everyone has started listening to music through digital distribution, so the CD has become something of a commemorative edition. That's why the book will become like a commemorative book.

Because people mostly read on their smartphone even on the train.

Torishima: Yes. You don't see Jump or Sunday left on the luggage rack anymore, do you?

Shirai: They aren't there. I'm the only one reading the newspaper on the train (laughs). No one reads paperbacks or newspapers on the train anymore.

Torishima: Yeah, I don't see anyone doing that either.

Shirai: The concept of "killing time" has disappeared with smartphones. That's why gum sales seem to have fallen because of smartphones.

Torishima: Oh, gum?

Shirai: I don't need the hassle of "buying gum at a kiosk to kill time". Because I get on the train while looking at my smartphone.

Torishima: The whole idea of the station shop itself is gone.

Shirai: That's why I don't buy newspapers, I don't buy sports papers.

Torishima: Looking at the flow of publishing, as Shirai-san said earlier, as the baby boomer generation got older, various magazines were launched, and various manga magazines were created. And with the retirement of the baby boomer generation, I feel like those things are going bad.

Shirai: That's right. However, magazines such as Da Vinci and Pen are putting a different spotlight on manga. ^[70]

In this way, the creators can do another job of reinforcing manga. It's a little bit like that they are all being taken somewhere else...

Torishima: Ah, I see. You'd think that Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Kodansha could do a better job of creating magazines and books related to manga.

Shirai: Of course.

Torishima: So in terms of publishing, I think we should pick more peripheral fruits.

Shirai: Yes, I definitely think so.

Torishima: Is it frustrating?

Shirai: Frustrating, yeah. Somehow, I get annoyed when I see other magazines (laughs). Last night, when I was watching TV, a celebrity was talking about his favorite manga.

Torishima: Those topics have been going around a lot lately.



Shirai: I heard that someone liked the Shogakukan manga Chi (チ). ^[71] Then there was Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, which I mentioned earlier, that was interesting. I was lucky that there were several Shogakukan manga among the 10 or 20 mentioned, I would have been furious if there hadn't been any (laughs).

But you have to have editors who are "frustrated" or "seething". If they get used to losing...

In other words, there are times when there are four Shueisha titles, two Kodansha titles, one Hakusensha title, and one Akita Shoten title in the top ten, and no Shogakukan titles. That means that the publishers are being passed over. You have to think that you have to get one. If you get used to that, you will always be a loser.

After all, I think that winning and losing and tenacity are important. Good work doesn't happen if you're indifferent. I think it's impossible for people who say, "Leave for tomorrow what you can't accomplish today."

Torishima: The time when you were at Sunday was a time when Kodansha and Shueisha were competing with each other. You talked about Motomiya-san earlier, but how did you see the rival editorial departments and editors of each company?

Shirai: I never wanted to lose to Shueisha. Sunday and Magazine were always compared to one another. And the Sunday editorial department was called a "loserville" (laughs).

Torishima: Did Kodansha call you guys that?

Shirai: No, no, it was from within our own company. I was told, "That place is made for the dropouts of the company."

But the editors were originally a group of people who had a hard time staying at other companies, or who were somewhat difficult to work with, but they gradually became famous...

Torishima: It began to attract the best and the brightest.

Shirai: They'd take the entrance exams for Shiseido and JAL, and then take entrance exams for Shogakukan and Shueisha.

And yet Shogakukan is ranked 60th in "publishers you want to work for." Kodansha and Shueisha are higher up.

Torishima: Do you get ticked off when you see that?

Shirai: I was annoyed at the 60 ranking and wondered when the disparity between the companies had been established. It's because students have been taught that Shueisha is the publisher of Jump and Kodansha is the publisher of Magazine.

The Big and Sunday groups aren't reaching the students with their appeal. We need to attract more unique people and hire them even if they have some difficulties. We need to recruit not only the best and the brightest, but also those who have a good balance of overall abilities.

And they should work out of some nameless place. Not a building like this (laughs).

Torishima: Editing is not something for the elite to do in such a beautiful place.

But on the other hand, Kadokawa, Square Enix, Ichijinsha, and other such companies are publishing manga in their own right. In that sense, manga isn't something that's done on a company scale, and as you said, there will always be emerging forces. How do you see that?

Shirai: Back in the day, otaku were small in number, like 3,000 or 4,000. They were considered outside of the mass culture, because "they're just otaku."

Now that these otaku have grown up, and the number of otaku themselves is in the tens of thousands, that's why a company like Ichijinsha is able to do business. Kodansha must have made a good purchase. ^[72]

Torishima: I couldn't agree more.

Shirai: The fact that Shogakukan and Shueisha didn't even try to acquire it is gross negligence (laughs).

As the base of the business expands, the seeds of business are spreading further. It's very difficult to do business unless there are people who have the sensors to pick up those seeds. It's difficult to do business only in the classical sense.

Torishima: So, Shirai-san, do you want people who want to work with artists to create manga in a more traditional way, rather than coming to Shogakukan due to the company's name or the magazine's reputation?

Shirai: Right.

Editors shouldn't lie too much to the creators.

Torishima: Shirai-san, what kind of person makes for an excellent editor?

Shirai: That's another difficult question.

You shouldn't lie too much to creators. Don't lie about what they've asked you. This is true for manuscripts as well, and if you answer a question in a way that makes you sound like a know-it-all, you will be humiliated later.

Even Osamu Tezuka was nervous because he never knew what questions would come at him. He would get pissed off when he was woken up in the middle of the night while he was napping and be asked a question (laughs).

And then you have to have a tough heart. You can't overreact or become depressed everytime the creators say something, you have to have the depth to receive what they tell you and use what they say to double the creators' powers.

Torishima: I can understand that. I can't do my job properly if I get angry when I'm told something.

Shirai: You can't work that way.

Torishima: But it's difficult to "not lie" to the creator. You have to tell them about deadlines, the end of the series, the response to the manga, and so on.

It's hard at times to tell the truth, but if you lie, you would have to keep lying. Eventually things would start to not add up.

Because if the creator gets information from someone else, the relationship of trust between you will be over. Every moment is a battle.

Shirai: Yeah, right. They'll ask casual questions. "How is X doing?" and so on. They'll even ask about other manga.

Torishima: That's true. Come to think of it, it's pretty hard not to lie.

Shirai: If you tell a lie, you have to stick with it. It's important to get through the lies, and if you don't endure and accept that you have to lie at times, it's hard to be an editor.

Also, you have to be interested in various things. Even if you don't like the trendy, current movies, you have to watch them. Even if you look at a movie review and use that to give your impressions as if you've seen it, they'll eventually find out.

Torishima: They'll find out.

Shirai: It's very important to go see them as well.

I only think about the next few days.

Shirai: I'm 79 years old this year, right? I didn't think I would make it to this age. When I joined Shogakukan and was living a rough life in my 30s, I thought I would die at the age of 60 or 65 at the most.

Torishima: Older folks are dying off in a flurry it seems.

Shirai: That's right. Many Kodansha manga editors die as soon as they retire.

Torishima: Even at Shueisha, people die around the age of 75 or 76.

Shirai: I wasn't really taking care of myself. I was working for a weekly magazine, and my life was such that I thought, "It's going to be difficult to live past the age of 60." I think the same is true for you.

Torishima: What's the trick to work without accumulating stress, Shirai-san?

Shirai: I only think about the next few days.

Torishima: That's what they say about being in prison.

Shirai: That's right. It's no use thinking about the future or what if an earthquake happens or whatever.

We're all going to die someday anyway, so it is better to spend today and tomorrow eating good food, being in good spirits, and laughing (laughs). Eventually a whole year is made up of the accumulation of those kinds of days.

Torishima: Is that the trick to avoid stress?

Shirai: That and not hating people.

Torishima: Don't hold grudges!?

Shirai: I don't keep much hatred in my heart.

Torishima: That's different from me (laughs). I always remember my anger and use it as a springboard.

Shirai: I tend to forget.

Torishima: That's great... that's one step up (laughs).

Shirai: It's good to forget about it. Because remembering those frustrations will complicate things.

Torishima: That's true. You'll be imprisoned by your anger otherwise.

I just want to finish Paparinko Monogatari by Hisashi Eguchi.

Shirai: Ah, I remember now. There was one thing I still wanted to do. Paparinko Monogatari (パパリンコ物語) by Hisashi Eguchi. ^[73] There are nine chapters of it serialized in Spirits.

Torishima: Was that not planned?

Shirai: There were nine chapters that were published.

Torishima: How many pages per chapter?

Shirai: They were about 18 pages each.

Torishima: That's 9 times... that's not enough for one tankobon.

Shirai: That's why I thought, "Just finish Paparinko with one more chapter," and that'll be enough forever.

Torishima: It's better to give up. It's impossible even you are immortal, Shirai-san.

I know Eguchi-san well. Susume!! Pirates (すすめ!!パイレーツ) was so much fun that when I saw it, I thought, "Jump's pretty impressive afterall." ^[74]

Shirai: It was a genius series.

Torishima: The only thing that wasn't good was when he started reading shojo manga and tried to change his drawing style, he got bitten by a white alligator. ^[75]

Shirai: He's not afraid to abandon a series. He drops off a manuscript for Shueisha, and then he has a party at a yakiniku restaurant right in front of the Shueisha offices (laughs).

Torishima: At that time, Eguchi-san was my junior, so I know that he starts the day by going around to every coffee shop in Nishiogikubo one by one.

Shirai: Right.

Torishima: He'd be somewhere. I often didn't know where he was. If I went looking for him it'd be half a day wasted (laughs).

Shirai: It was also difficult when I worked on Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Earth Number V-7 (地球ナンバーV-7/Chikyu Nanbaa V-7). When Mitsuteru-san would have a meal, he would go to a different room from the room where he worked. He left the room and said, "I'm going out to eat," and after a while I heard the cab door close with a bang. I thought, "Oh, I've been fooled!"

So he had about six favorite restaurants in Shinjuku. He went to each of them one by one, just like Eguchi-san does with the coffee shops now. Then I brought him back and asked him to draw them for me (laughs).

Torishima: I can relate. When I was first starting out I was asked to edit a manga based on a story by Ikki Kajiwara's younger brother, Hisao Maki. I really didn't like it. I had to start out by finding out where Maki-san was, I was thinking, "I didn't join this company to do stuff like this."

Shirai: By the way, the Eguchi-san story is interesting. I remember he was looking at a collection of photographs, thinking about what he would draw for the scenery reflected in a pair of sunglasses, and a week would go by. The deadline came and went in the blink of an eye.

When it gets to that point, it's essentially a kind of disease. But Eguchi-san has talent, don't you think?

Torishima: He created a new era.

Shirai: I might tell some of the freelance editors that I'll give them an incentive if they get the rest of the Paparinko completed. I'm not a bounty hunter, though.

Torishima: Like an old Western movie, "Wanted!"

Shirai: Right. If you bring me a manuscript by Hisashi Eguchi, I'll spare no expense (laughs).

Torishima: I might give it a try when I get a little free time (laughs). But I still see that you have that same frustration and the desire to "get the manuscript," Shirai-san.

Shirai: It's still with me. It was fun though, and it was a very good piece of work.

Torishima: I love that persistence and greed of yours, Shirai-san. But, you know, I understand how you feel, but I don't think Paparinko is doable (laughs).

Shirai: All three of us will have to get together (laughs). We'll have dinner.

Torishima: It's good to go out with them just to have dinner. I can at least say, "Draw it for him," but it's not possible anymore at Shueisha...

Well, yeah, that one was for Spirits, wasn't it? Shueisha couldn't handle it. I remember thinking, "Why does Shogakukan keep getting involved? Just stop."

A manga editor's job is to provide a "comprehensive editing service" that supports creators over the long term.

Shirai: As manga sales decline, it becomes impossible to use royalties to rent a workplace, pay assistants' salaries, and support your family. In the current cycle, it's impossible.

Torishima: Some artists these days have no choice but to work alone.

Shirai: In the old days, assistants were paid very little, and in return, they would learn skills. They'd rather receive practical lessons.

The artists gave them a place to live and food to eat, but it wasn't an era of fixed monthly salaries.

Nowadays, being an assistant is an established job, and you have to pay them a significant amount of money. Assistants have families and they have children to care for...

Torishima: When you get married and have children, it becomes a heavy burden.

Shirai: It's not going to be easy to live on a monthly income of 150,000 yen or so.

Torishima: You also have to prepare for retirement.

Shirai: You have to earn quite a bit of money to make all that possible.

Torishima: In the past, manga artists disappeared eventually, they didn't last long.

But now they have quite long careers, some of them are 60 or 70 years old, Kazuo Umezu, who was mentioned earlier, is still drawing even in his 80s. What do you think about this sort of thing?

Shirai: However, from now on, there won't be many people who have the tenacity to continue working. People who have the physical and intellectual strength to endure long periods of work are those born in the 1940s, or those like Ryoichi Ikegami and Go Nagai, who were mentioned earlier, are probably 72-73 years old. The same is true of Hiroshi Motomiya.

Then again, even the creator of Demon Slayer may or may not be able to get another hit...

Torishima: You just don't know.

Shirai: Therefore I think you'll see more and more creators that just have one hit and they're done with the industry.

Torishima: Then, the work and the copyright will remain with the artist, right? How can we protect and preserve this part of the work...?

Shirai: I think it will be difficult from now on. Copyrights are property, and if we don't watch where they go, we won't be able to do anything without their permission.

Now, copyright protection extends for 70 years, right? So, do you want to consolidate that into one foundation or not? If the copyrights are divided among all the creator's children or they divide up individual works to give to the estate, that would be very difficult.

Torishima: It's certainly tough. Do you still consult with people on those sorts of things?

Shirai: I do. Wills, lawyer referrals, and doctor referrals.

Torishima: Ah, I see.

Shirai: I'm quite busy with doctor referrals (laughs). I'm not a hospital, but I have to decide "this doctor for this disease" and have dinner with them and be friends with them, because you can't make these referrals on short notice.

Torishima: Does that lead to presents too? (laughs)

Shirai: Oh yeah, I've gotten hundreds of people appointments with doctors. That's how we thank them.

Torishima: That means Shirai-san's "comprehensive editing service" has been going on for a long time.

Shirai: Oh yes (laughs). I'll do it until I get dementia.

Torishima: Since you're such a caring individual, will you be leaving your copyright to Shogakukan?

Shirai: Now I don't know about that (laughs).

Torishima: That is what I have always admired about Shogakukan. Shueisha is not good at keeping and managing works for a long time.

The rights to the works remain with Shogakukan, and they manage them well. That includes Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions and various other things. I think it's the concern of people like Shirai-san that keeps the artists together with the company. ^[76]

Shirai: I don't know about that, but I think that's all I can do nowadays, so I'm just doing whatever I can.

Torishima: Unfortunately, there's no one at Shueisha who can match you, Shirai-san (laughs).

I'm motivated by keeping the creators sincerely happy.

Torishima: Listening to you talk today, I think that editing is driven by a judgment of how people will think about you.

As I said before, Shirai-san, your own problems are only about the immediate present. However, the creators's problems are thought about far into the future. This difference in time frame became very clear to me today.

Did your subordinates carry on your traditions of "delivering New Year's dishes" or was this entirely unique to you, Shirai-san?

Shirai: You can't do it anymore. You can't say to your family, "Well, you'll take care of New Year's Eve, won't you?" That would ruin your family's New Year's Eve.

The time to go to the restaurant to pick up the osechi is in the morning on New Year's Eve. Nowadays, you can just have them delivered.

Torishima: But you took it even further.

Shirai: Yes, I went out of my way to deliver it on my own, and then we'd talk about the past year, and I'd say something like "Good luck".

Is the driving force or motivation to do this because you find it interesting to talk with the creators? Or is it that you don't want to lose to other magazines?

Shirai: It makes the creators sincerely happy, right? They're already very wealthy. It's like running a restaurant.　And if I pay for it myself, I can order from any number of places, but I think there is money plus something extra in what I bring to them.

Once, when Rumiko Takahashi's father passed away, I thought, "Maybe I shouldn't do it this year." Then she said, "No way, New Year's Eve is still New Year's Eve." (laughs)

Torishima: (laughs) They look forward to your arrival, if you don't come it's like the year can't end.

Shirai: I've been there on New Year's Eve, though, even if it was not a year worth celebrating for them. In those situations I can't say too much, but I can ask, "What are you reading now in other companies' books?" or "What was your favorite manga this year?" Just ask a lot of questions.

Also, I probably shouldn't say this, but there are times when I want Takahashi-san to come up with something new, but it's hard for me to tell her on the spot.

Torishima: But you say the other things instead.

Shirai: "Isn't it about time for a new series?" But she was adamant. She said firmly, "I want to decide when to end things myself." She doesn't bend her will, not according to other people's opinions.

Torishima: I once took at shot to get Rumiko Takahashi. I forgot to bring it up earlier, but this was later. When I was working at V Jump, I wondered if we could make an RPG with Akira Toriyama handling the male character designs and Rumiko Takahashi doing the female characters, and I tried to persuade her for two nights, but it didn't work at all (laughs). ^[77]

On the contrary, she asked my advice about a manga running in Sunday.

Shirai: That's a great story (laughs).

On the other hand, Shirai-san, do you have any stories about failure where you tried to persuade someone and it was completely useless?

Shirai: I wonder...

Torishima: You don't want to remember the failures.

Shirai: Yes, it's important to forget (laughs)... There was one female mangaka who I couldn't get. The one who draws Asaki Yumemishi (あさきゆめみし). Waki Yamato. ^[78]

Torishima: She's from Kodansha. She does Haikara-san ga Toru (はいからさんが通る).

Shirai: If I recall I went all the way to Hokkaido to try to get Waki Yamato.

Machiko Satonaka once drew for Big Comic. ^[79] Satonaka-san and Tetsuya Chiba-sensei were treated as Kodansha's treasures.

Torishima: Right.

Shirai: I want to steal the biggest treasure of my opponent. I want to win the most important thing they have. (laugh)

Torishima: That's in such bad taste! (laughs) Truly terrible.

Shirai: Satonaka-san is still a good friend of mine. Waki Yamato didn't work out though, thank you very much.

Torishima: Regrets?

Shirai: It's certainly frustrating (laughs).

By the way, have you ever stolen back an artist that was stolen from you?

Shirai: I'm trying to recall who I ever had stolen from me.

Torishima: It might not have happened during Shirai-san's time, but I can recall hearing about it later.

Shirai: If I get them back, then it's double payback. In today's terms we might say it's doubling down.

Torishima: Quadruple (laughs).

How much passion do you have now to create content that your readers will love?

By the way Shirai-san, do you have a deep connection with Pokemon?

Shirai: Pokemon, huh. I once made an insensitive mistake that made President Ishihara very angry, even though he had been so kind to us before. ^[80] Shoshu Pro and Shogakukan were all insulated from this.

I had done something irreparable to the man who had carefully overseen the characters, and in order to recover from it, I humbly apologized and managed to get him to forgive me. After that, we suddenly became closer, and now I have dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Ishihara about twice a month. I mentioned earlier that I'm on LINE, but to tell you the truth, I'm only on LINE with Mr. and Mrs. Ishihara right now. It's called the "Tripartite Alliance."

I see!

Shirai: Usually, I don't talk about work with Ishihara-san, just the meal, though we sometimes talk about work for 4 or 5 minutes. Then we get back to talking about where we're going to eat next (laughs).

Torishima: You don't do anything else?

Shirai: We don't.

Torishima: That's what's amazing. Though listening to Shirai-san's discussions today, I can understand some sense of that.

Shirai: One end of the story (laughs).

Torishima: In other words, there's a sense of security in your communications. The sense of security of working with Shogakukan is ensured by you, Shirai-san.

Shirai: It's not that big of a deal.

Torishima: No, no, I think it is. But, as you said earlier, this is impossible for others to understand.

Shirai: Yes, because we all have to live "a certain way". The times are changing drastically. These days, the relationship with a creator may become less personal and more business-like. It's also possible that a masterpiece will create these new ways of interacting with the artists. So it's quite difficult to carry on and pass down these old traditions.

However, I think the only thing that is indestructible is a passion for creating content that makes the readers happy. I think that passion for content creation is indestructible, but the fact that this indestructible fire is gradually fading is a little worrisome. That's my concern. Am I frustrated about losing? I feel like I've been losing for a long time.

Like with the passing of Tadasu Nagano, the editor-in-chief of Weekly Shonen Jump. ^[81]

Torishima: 105,000 copies. ^[82]

Shirai: From that “humiliating number of copies”, that was where he started from.

At that time, Sunday and Magazine were both saying, "Don't let the artists draw for Jump." However, Hiroshi Motomiya and Go Nagai were born out of this situation.

...Well, even if he had brought something like Harenchi Gakuen to Shogakukan, we wouldn’t have been able to publish it (laughs). ^[83]

Torishima: Just like Attack on Titan (laughs).

I want them to use their feelings of frustration as a springboard to aim for the next level.

Torishima: Was it good for you, Shirai-san, to join Shogakukan aspiring to become a literary and art book editor and then to become involved in manga?

Shirai: It was great. Because at that time Shogakukan didn't have a vast library or many literary works. In that sense, they were primarily focused on encyclopedias, art books, and Shonen Sunday.

I had been there for about ten years when seinen manga was born, the launch of Big Comic, and so on, everyone began to recognize that manga would become the pillar of the company, and that it'd be profitable.

In the beginning, we didn't even publish collected tankobon editions of manga, because Akita Shoten would publish those after a series had ended in Shonen Sunday. ^[84]

Torishima: In terms of Shueisha, their collections were published by a subsidiary called Sobisha. ^[85]

Shirai: In those days no one thought that tankobon collections could sell. When the magazine serialization ended, it was over, so you'd give your series to someone else. I can't believe it now. It wasn't until the latter half of the 40's in the Showa era that manga books started to sell.

Torishima: That's right.

Shirai: Demon Slayer made a lot of money, huh? I am currently working on Hero's. I'm doing it because I want Hero's to have at least one hit.

Torishima: You're the editor-in-chief, aren't you?

Shirai: I'm the president. We have a separate editor-in-chief.

Torishima: I see, you're the president.

Shirai: But hey, Hero's is finally getting flooded with anime adaptations, finally.

And Monthly Hero's has stopped using paper. We've gone fully digital. ^[86]

Torishima: Do you ever talk to the on-site manga editor?

Shirai: I do. We have dinner, but we don't talk much about work.

Torishima: How about talking to the editors of Hero's? What're their responses and what sort of things do you discuss?

Shirai: I encourage them, "If you get a big hit, we'll pay you back via your salary and through bonuses." We have a small group of elite workers working hard every day, about 30 employees now.

Torishima: So, are there still possibilities for manga and for manga editorial departments?

Shirai: I think so.

I'm 43 years old now, and when my generation listens to people of Torishima-san's and Shirai-san's generation, we are overwhelmed by your energy and passion, and yet I feel very frustrated.

Even taking into account the fact that we aren't in an era of economic growth, what's the difference between our generation and yours? This is a theme I often revisit with Torishima-san.

From your point of view, Shirai-san, I'd like to hear what you feel could be done better or what is missing.

Torishima: Regarding today crop of young editors?

Shirai: Hmm, I wonder. It gets old hearing my thoughts on things (laughs).

Torishima: You think?

Shirai: If you get used to being wealthy, if you grow stagnant, you get a regular salary and bonus whether your circulation goes up or down, and there's no recognition for what you do.

It's a company where all people are equal. When Chinese people come here, they're stunned. Men and women are paid the same wage, and people who started in the same year are paid the same.

Torishima: That's right.

Shirai: As for the bonus, if you ask the person who did Demon Slayer to be given 10 million yen all at once, there's no way that will happen. In China, to take it to the extreme, factory workers are color-coded by their hats. The hats of those who can and the hats of those who can't. We're an equal opportunity company, which is a surprise to people in a communist country where all people are equal (laughs).

In such an equal opportunity company, today's young people need to have a time when they feel, "I'm glad I chose this job."

The same person who created Demon Slayer and the same person who created Dr. Slump did the same thing, so there's nothing that you can't do. You shouldn't blame the times or other people, but look at your own lack of ability and try to go to the next level, because we live in a competitive society. If editors live their lives leaning on each other and licking each other's wounds, nothing useful will come from that.

Even Torishima-san doesn't like people who don't like him. I think there are a lot of people who don't like me either. It's not good to be called a "good person" (laughs).

"A thousand allies, a thousand enemies," so they say. What you've done may be highly appreciated by Jump, but there may be people out there who don't like it.

Torishima: You know it all so well (laughs).

Shirai: That's what I mean by, "These sons of bitches!" I don't want to cut someone down from behind or drag him down, but rather, I want to make them pay for their mistakes.

If another person can do it, there is nothing I can't do too. I think we're entering a very difficult period now though, unlike our time.

Torishima: But Shirai-san said earlier that he is "frustrated," and I think that's because you have a desire to "change the world," however you can.

Shirai: I don't know about that.

Torishima: No, no, I think that's true. You still want to be the editor-in-chief, and you said you wanted to publish a book by Hisashi Eguchi.

You have a deep desire to change the world, and a deep love of creators.

Shirai: That might be true. (End)

In the 1970s and 1980s, when Shirai-san and Torishima-san were active, manga overtook the position of novels and became a major content industry representing Japan, influencing not only the publishing industry but also the world of TV, movies, and games. This is the time in which I grew up. For that reason, among the stories they both told, there are quite a few exciting contents that are exactly like the tales of "epic Showa employees" from the present day.

However, what you learn from Shirai-san's words in particular is that editors are very attentive to the manga artists who create blockbusters.

Shirai-san's behavior of going to the homes of manga artists to recruit popular authors from other magazines and never forgetting to give gifts on birthdays and Christmas is, as Torishima-san says, "selling the authors a favor."

On the other hand, however, such behavior is also a manifestation of the editor's consideration for how to lift the manga artist's spirits and make them feel comfortable working with their magazine. Furthermore, even after retiring from his current job as an editor, he still cares about the health of his colleagues and consults them about their work and personal lives.

Of course, nowadays the relationship between manga artists and editors, as well as the relationship between people at work, has changed, and the relationship may seem more dry than it used to be.

However, even so, as he said with the examples of Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer, he is sensitive to the hidden passion of manga artists and continues to support them so that they can fully demonstrate their skills. I feel the role of the editor hasn't changed even now.

---

Taitai, editor-in-chief of Den Famicom Gamer, asked "What is a manga editor?" to Torishima-san. As one would expect from Torishima-san, who has produced numerous popular works, his answers are very much worth listening to in terms of manga theory, editor theory, and even work theory.

---

Footnotes

• [1] Katsuya Shirai is one of the most celebrated editors at Shogakukan thanks to his hand in reviving Shonen Sunday in the late 1970s and then launching Big Comic Spirits which was made to be a home to artists that were a part of the New Wave movement. The New Wave (ニューウェーブ) movement in manga is a product of the late 1970s into the early 1980s characterized by experimental works that did not fit into the traditional shonen/shojo/seinen/adult manga categories that were established at the time. Small circulation manga magazines such as June (ジュネ), Peke, Boys and Girls Complete Competitive Collection of SF Manga (少年少女SFマンガ競作大全集) and Supplemental Volume of Fantastic Sci-Fi Manga Complete Works (別冊奇想天外SFマンガ大全集) were the homes of these experimental newcomer manga artists. Katsuhiro Otomo (大友克洋) and Hideo Azuma (吾妻ひでお) are both held up as universally agreed upon members of the New Wave, though there is little overall consensus. Other artists often cited as part of the New Wave include Jun Ishikawa (いしかわじゅん), Daijiro Morohoshi (諸星大二郎), Hiroshi Masumura (ますむらひろし), Noma Sabea (さべあのま) and Michio Hisauchi (ひさうちみちお). Though Rumiko Takahashi is not often named as a part of the New Wave, a case could be made to include her. She is of the era and published some small works in Boys and Girls Complete Competitive Collection of SF Manga such as ElFairy/Sprite. The New Wave is said to have ended with the launch of Big Comic Spirits and Young Magazine which served as more mainstream homes for these avant garde artists. Rumiko Takahashi, Hideo Azuma and Jun Ishikawa all were published in the first issues of Big Comic Spirits. Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki's gourmet manga, Oishinbo　(美味しんぼ), came along in Big Comic Spirits 1983 Vol. 20 while Naoki Urasawa's judo manga, Yawara!, debuted in 1986 Vol. 30.
• [2] For readers interested in Rumiko Takahashi's editors in particular please see "My Page One" where a number of her editors from throughout many decades are interviewed. Additionally to read about the breakdown in the relationship betweewn a mangaka and their editor please see our article "Lost Art, Makoto Raiku and Shogakukan".
• [3] Kuroko (黒子) are black clad stagehands in kabuki theater that are meant to be considered invisible when they are on stage moving props during a play.
• [4] The editor in question would be Shintaro Kawakubo (川窪慎太郎) who served as the editor on Attack on Titan (進撃の巨人/Shingeki no Kyojin) from beginning to end. It is very uncommon for an editor to be involved with a long series for its entire run. For example Ranma 1/2 had four editors while Inuyasha had eight over the course of its serialization. In an article Kawakubo says that he likes to maintain a sense of distance from the mangaka he works with and states that in 11 years he only ate with Hajime Isayama (the creator of Attack on Titan) perhaps three times. He states that he does this because he does not want to be seen as a "close friend" in case he has to give the artist the bad news that the series has been cancelled. Additionally he states he wants to be seen as a business partner because the publisher could reassign him to another artist on a whim and he would have to leave behind the artist which will inevitably happen.
• [5] Takahashi has mentioned submitting her work to Shonen Magazine prior to her debut in Shonen Sunday but her work was rejected. As far as we are aware she has not mentioned submitting work to Shonen Jump. She has stated the reason she submitted to Magazine was because of their publishing her favorite mangaka, Ryoichi Ikegami.
• [6] Haruki Murakami (村上春樹) is a world famous novelist who's works include Kafka on the Shore (海辺のカフカ/Umibe no Kafuka), 1Q84 (いちきゅうはちよん/ Ichi-Kyu-Hachi-Yon) and Norwegian Wood (ノルウェイの森/Noruwei no Mori).
• [7] Takashi Nagasaki (長崎尚志) was Naoki Urasawa's editor and also the editor-in-chief of Big Comic Spirits, the same magazine founded by Katsuya Shirai. Nagasaki was also Rumiko Takahashi's second editor on Ranma 1/2 and edited various titles for Big Comic, Shonen Sunday and Big Comic Original. Nagasaki has maintained a close relationship with Urasawa and Urasawa often calls him a "producer", borrowing a term from the world of cinema and theater that has not been used in relation to manga previously. Nagasaki has worked with Urasawa on Pluto, Billy Bat, Monster and Pineapple Army (パイナップルARMY) to name a few. He is currently a freelance manga author, manga producer, and novelist.
• [8] Fujio F. Fujiko (藤子・F・不二雄) is often mentioned as one of Rumiko Takahashi's childhood favorites. He is the creator of Doraemon (ドラえもん), Obake no Q-Taro (オバケのQ太郎) and Perman (パーマン). Takahashi drew a tribute to his work on Obake no Q-Taro.
• [9] Fujio Akatsuka (赤塚不二夫), another Takahashi favorite, is the creator of Osomatsu-kun (おそ松くん) and Tensai Bakabon (天才バカボン).
• [10] Kunio Nagatani (長谷邦夫)is considered Fujio Akatsuka's idea man and at times ghostwriter. He was often a visitor to Tokiwa-so, the apartment where a number of iconic manga artists lived, though he was not a resident there himself. Nagatani appears as a character in Fujio Fujiko A's autobiographical Manga Road (まんが道/Manga Michi).
• [11] The Akatsuka Award (赤塚賞) is a Shueisha manga prize typically awarded to gag manga. The prize is given twice a year and Makoto Isshiki (一色まこと) won the 1985 edition. Interestingly she worked alongside writer/editor/producer Takashi Nagasaki (see note 7) on the manga Child From the Dark (闇の少年/Aida no Shonen).
• [12] Shinobu Miyake (三宅克) worked for Shogakukan as an editor of Shojo Comic and Weekly Shonen Sunday. He later served as director of Shogakukan and president of Shogakukan Creative Inc. and is currently president of Parsola Inc. which produces digital manga and other products. Miyake was also Rumiko Takahashi's very first editor and is the namesake of Urusei Yatsura's Shinobu Miyake.
• [13] Shinji Mizushima (水島新司) is an artist Takahashi has mentioned enjoying during her youth. Mizushima is known for his baseball manga Dokaben (ドカベン) and Abu-san (あぶさん). Takahashi's speaks of Mizushima in this interview and also here.
• [14] Big Comic (ビッグコミック) was launched in February 1968. Shonen Sunday launched in 1959. It celebrated its 50th anniversary alongside Shonen Magazine in 2009 which we covered extensively at the time.
• [15] An included note in the original piece noted here that, "At that time, Magazine was no. 1, Sunday no. 2, and the now-defunct Shonen King (少年キング) no. 4." A further note in the original states, "'Asahi Journal on the right hand and Shonen Magazine on the left.' refers to a saying from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, when the student movement was in full swing, this phrase became a kind of buzzword as a satirical reference to magazines, which were popular as intellectual items among young people at the time." Ashita no Joe which began its publication in Shonen Magazine in 1968 was seen as as an important work to the student movement and leftist movements of the era, as Joe was a common man struggling in society.
• [16] The first issue of Shonen Jump was published in July 1968.
• [17] Masaru Uchiha (内田勝) was an editor at Kodansha since the first issue of Weekly Shonen Magazine, and in 1965 he became the third editor-in-chief of the magazine. In addition to starting serializations of popular works such as Star of the Giants (巨人の星/Kyojin no Hoshi), GeGeGe no Kitaro (ゲゲゲの鬼太郎), and Ashita no Joe (あしたのジョー), he boosted Magazine into a popular social phenomenon through tie-ins with television. After retiring as editor-in-chief of Magazine in 1971, he continued to serve as founding editor-in-chief of the men's magazine Hot Dog Press (ホットドッグ・プレス). He passed away in 2008.
• [18] The "Giant's V9" refers to a period of time that the Yomiuri Giant's baseball team won the Japan series for nine consecutive years starting in 1963.
• [19] Kuta Ishikawa (石川球太) is known for his animal-centric manga which include Man-Eating Railroad (人喰鉄道/Hitokui Tetsudo) about the Tsavo man-eaters, two lions that killed 28 men building a railroad in Kenya in 1898. His other work includes adaptations of Lassie (名犬ラッシー) and Akira Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala (デルス・ウザーラ).
• [20] Known alternatively as the "Shogaku Years" magazines (小学年生誌/Shogaku Nenseishin) or the "Shogakukan Year-Grade Educational Magazines" (小学館学年別学習雑誌/Shogakukan Gakunenbetsu Gakushuu Zasshi) these magazines are variously numbered and marketed towards first graders, second graders, etc. up to sixth and eighth graders. The magazines began in 1922 with various grades introduced in the intervening years with some name changes as Japan shifted to a war footing in the 1940s and then shifted names again during the American occupation. Shogakukan celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2022 and some of these magazines have essentially been published throughout the entire century. Rumiko Takahashi published MOON, The Great Pet King in Shogaku Sannensei in the 1990s. Shirai discusses these magazines further in his interview with Rumiko Takahashi.
• [21] Horror maestro Kazuo Umezu's Orochi ran from June 1969 to August 1970 and was collected in six volumes (rather than the five mentioned by Shirai). In 2005 it was re-released in a four-volume deluxe edition.
• [22] Tadanori Yokoo (横尾忠則) is a renowned painter, printmaker and graphic designer.
• [23] Ryoichi Ikegami (池上遼一) is by far Takahashi's biggest influence and favorite artist as she has professed many times. His work includes Crying Freeman (クライング フリーマン), Sanctuary (サンクチュアリ) and Wounded Man (傷追い人).
• [24] I believe he is referring to the acquisition of a variety of talent similar to the television program Shohei Miyane no Yoso-sama no Jijo (征平・宮根のヨソ様の事情) which was known for tackling a varied set of topics.
• [25] Shirai discusses Ikegami and Lonely Rin in his interview with Rumiko Takahashi. Shirai also spoke to Animerica magazine about Rumiko Takahashi in the 1990s as well.
• [26] A note included here explains, "Shueisha was originally established as a spin-off from Shogakukan, and the two companies are in a group relationship. Therefore, while some magazines are rivals, there are many opportunities for employees to interact with each other."
• [27] "Fuekiryoko" (不易流行) is difficult to translate succinctly. It is a concept stated by the poet Basho that an interchange between the transient and the immutable is central to the soul of haiku. Essentially that the fleeting and unchanging becomes a fundamental and fascinating concept.
• [28] Waru (ワル/Badass) is the 1970-1972 manga written by Hisao Maki (真樹日佐夫) and illustrated by Joiya Kagemaru (影丸穣也). The manga has been adapted into a live action film by Takashi Miike (三池崇史).
• [29] Takero Makino (牧野武朗) began his career as an editor of Shojo Club at Kodansha, before becoming the first editor-in-chief of Nakayoshi, Weekly Shonen Magazine, and Shojo Friend. He continued to serve as editor-in-chief of Shukan Gendai until his death in 2012.
• [30] The term for "red" that they both use here is "kinaka" (金赤) which is written with the kanji for "gold-red". However this is a name used in commercial printing to describe the mixture of magenta and yellow (100% of each) to create a "pure red". So translating it as "pure red" would be more accurate than literally translating it as "gold-red".
• [31] The first chapter of Ashura (アシュラ) featured scenes of cannibalism. The manga takes place in the late Heian period and begins with the main character's birth before his insane mother, mad from starvation, tries to eat him. He is carried away down a river and raised in the wild. The manga was launched in Shonen Magazine in 1970 and was deemed unsuitable for children and caused an uproar in the media at the time.
• [32] Rumiko Takahashi and Mitsuru Adachi have been longtime friends to one another. You can read one of their earliest interviews together here on the site.
• [33] 750 Rider (750ライダー) is Isami Ishii's (石井いさみ) school manga serialized in Weekly Shonen Champion from 1975 to 1985. The serialization continued for 10 years and became extremely popular. In the latter half of the 1970s, Champion jumped to the top sales of weekly shonen manga magazines with the serialization of iconic titles such as Dokaben (ドカベン), Black Jack (ブラック・ャック), and Gaki Deka (がきデカ).
• [34] To clarify, Isami Ishii was with Sunday before his success with 750 Rider in Shonen Champion which played to his strengths. The manga Ishii worked on with Ikki Kajiwara (梶原一騎) includes baseball manga Yaju no Ototo Seishunhen (野獣の弟　青春編) and Kenka no Seisho (ケンカの聖書) and Ryu ga Kiru! (竜が斬る！) with Mamoru Sasaki (佐々木守) writing. Ikki Kajiwara is the famous mangaka responsible for writing Ashita no Joe and Tiger Mask. Mamoru Sasaki was a television screenwriter who worked on Ultraman (ウルトラマン), Judo Ichokusen (柔道一直線), and Akai Unmei (赤い運命), as well as theatrical movies directed by Nagisa Oshima. As a manga author, he wrote Shinji Mizushima's Otokodo Ahou Koshien (男どアホウ甲子園) and Mitsuru Adachi's Hirahira-kun Seishun Nikki (ヒラヒラくん青春日記). He passed away in 2006.
• [35] Fujihiko Hosono (細野不二彦) is known for Sasuga no Sarutobi (さすがの猿飛), Gu-Gu Ganmo (Gu-Guガンモ), Dokkiri Doctor (どっきりドクター) and Gallery Fake (ギャラリーフェイク). Using what Shirai says about Adachi, Takahashi and Hosono all being in the magazine simultaneously when it was selling its highest numbers we can try to estimate the year he is referring to. Rumiko Takahashi and Mitsuru Adachi were two of the longest running artists in Sunday, though Hosono left the magazine after 1987. The highest sales of that era would likely have been when Touch, Urusei Yatsura and Gu-Gu Ganmo were all being published sometime between 1982-1985. Most likely the year would be 1983 as Shogakukan released a book, Shonen Sunday 1983 (少年サンデー1983), in 2009 paying tribute to that particular year in the magazine's history.
• [36] The TV animation of Dr. Slump was broadcast on Fuji Television from 7:00-7:30 on Wednesdays starting in April 1981. Immediately after that, the anime of Urusei Yatsura began in October 1981 on Fuji Television from 7:30 to 8:00 p.m., thus forming a series of two anime adaptations of works representing Jump and Sunday respectively. When both programs ended in the spring of 1986, Dragon Ball and Maison Ikkoku started as follow-up programs, and this composition would continue in the future.
• [37] Shigeru Mizuki (水木しげる) is the creator of GeGeGe no Kitaro (ゲゲゲの鬼太郎). You can read an interview with Takahashi discussing her love of his work here.
• [38] This is partially true. Umezu had not published manga for 27 years with his last work released in 1995. In 2022 he had a gallery exhibition of 101 acrylic paintings that continued the story of his manga My Name is Shingo (わたしは真悟/Watashi wa Shingo).
• [39] Hiroshi Motomiya (本宮ひろ志) is best known for his manga Salary Man Kitaro (サラリーマン金太郎) as well as for forming the artist's collective "Moto Kikaku" which is responsible for adapting a number of Capcom video games into manga, particularly their work involving the character Strider Hiryu.
• [40] Marue Horiuchi (堀内丸恵) was the first editor for Todai Ichizoku (東大一直線) and Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Koen Mae Hashutsujo (こちら葛飾区亀有公園前派出所) at Weekly Shonen Jump. After serving as deputy editor of the same magazine, he became editor-in-chief of Super Jump. He later became President of Shueisha in 2011 and has been Chairman of the Board since 2020.
• [41] Shigeo Nishimura (西村繁男) was an editor at Weekly Shonen Jump since its first issue, and was appointed as the magazine's third editor-in-chief. He continued to serve as the founding editor-in-chief of Fresh Jump and Super Jump magazines. Since leaving Shueisha, he has written books on the Jump editorial department and manga artists.
• [42] Tetsuya Chiba (ちばてつや) is best known for the most famous boxing manga of all time, Ashita no Joe which Takahashi has often cited as one of her favorites. She has even written an autobiographical manga about meeting Chiba. Notari Matsutaro (のたり松太郎) is Chiba's long-running sumo manga which ran from 1973 to 1998.
• [43] One of the jobs of the editor is to collect the original artwork from the mangaka and take it to be photographed for reproduction. This is what Shirai is explaining, that Chiba would often barely hit the absolute latest deadline to have the work get to the photo-typesetters in time to be included in the issue. Chiba is aware of his own slowness and has written about it in his autobiographical manga Diary of a Quiet Life (ひねもすのたり日記/Hinemosu Notari Nikki).
• [44] In the analog era of manga editing, the individual lines of dialog (name/ネーム) that would be used in the word bubbles were printed out on phototypesetting paper called "shahoku" (写植/photo-typesetting)," and the photo-typesetting paper was cut out and pasted on to the manga manuscript. Incidentally, the size of the letters in the typesetting process is expressed in units of "XX grade," and the smaller the number, the smaller the size of the letters. Eventually "name" would come to encompass the rough drawings that served as the layout/storyboard for the finished pages which are typically called the "manuscript" (原稿/genko), however in their original sense it referred only to the typeset lines pasted into the word bubbles. Takahashi's editor on Maison Ikkoku, Soichiro Suzuki (鈴木総一郎), relates a story about getting to paste the sound effects onto Takahashi's manuscript after taking it to the photo-typesetter.
• [45] He's actually a bit incorrect here. Young Jump was first published in May 1979, Young Magazine in June 1980, and Spirits in October 1980.
• [46] Kazuhiko Miyatani (宮谷一彦) debuted as a mangaka in 1967, Miyatani's works from the late 1960s through the 1970s, including Like a Rolling Stone (ライク ア ローリング ストーン), Seishokugi (性蝕記), and Nikudan Jidai (肉弾時代) were highly political in tone and personal in nature, and his detailed brushwork won enthusiastic support among fans of gekiga.
• [47] Oishinbo (美味しんぼ), written by Tetsu Kariya (雁屋哲) and drawn by Akira Hanasaki (花咲アキラ) would run from 1983-2008, publishing a total of 111 volumes and going on to become one of the best-selling manga of all time. The manga deals with two rival newspapers trying to come up with the ultimate menu. Oishinbo was put on hiatus in 2008 (it has not technically ended) after a series of stories about the possible contamination of food due to the Fukushima nuclear powerplant meltdown created controvery in the mainstream media and even drew comments from government ministers.
• [48] Buronson (武論尊), also known as Sho Fumimura (史村翔), is a frequent collaborator of Ryoichi Ikegami having written Strain (ストレイン), Heat (HEAT-灼熱-/-Hito- Shakanetsu) and Lord (覇 -LORD-/Ha -Rodo-) alongside the artist. He is perhaps best known as the writer of Fist of the North Star (北斗の拳/Hokuto no Ken) alongside Tetsuo Hara (原哲夫).
• [49] Kazuo Koike (小池 一夫) is the writer of such iconic manga as Lone Wolf and Cub (子連れ狼/Kozure Okami), Crying Freeman (クライング フリーマン) and Lady Snowblood (修羅雪姫/Shurayuki Hime). He is the founder of the manga training school Gekiga Sonjuku where Rumiko Takahashi was a student in the first class the school produced. Gekiga Sonjuku helped train a number of manga luminaries before their debuts. Besides Rumiko Takahashi, other Gekiga Sonjuku alumnai include Tetsuo Hara (Fist of the North Star), Yuji Hori (Dragon Quest), Hideyuki Kikuchi (Vampire Hunter D), Keisuke Itagaki (Grappler Baki) and Marley Caribu (Old Boy).
• [50] For clarity sake, Maison Ikkoku started in 1980 in the very first issue of Big Comic Spirits and Oishinbo followed in 1983, so in spite of what Shirai is implying Maison Ikkoku was the earlier series.
• [51] In his interview with Rumiko Takahashi, Katsuya Shirai discussed the feedback he received at the thought of publishing the magazine twice a week, "We could have released it on Mondays and Fridays, let's do something that no one has ever done. No, I heard back from everyone, "It's absolutely impossible!" "When will you grow up!" I was just happy that the weekly publication was successful... I guess.. (laughs)."
• [52] "Otowa" refers to Kodansha and its group company, Kobunsha, since Kodansha is located in Otowa, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo. Incidentally, Shogakukan and Shueisha are also called "Hitotsubashi" from the address of their headquarters (Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo).
• [53] As an editor of Weekly Shonen Magazine, Yoshiyuki Kurihara (栗原良幸) was in charge of Osamu Tezuka's The Three-Eyed One (三つ目がとおる/Mitsume ga Toru) and other works. After serving as editor-in-chief of Monthly Shonen Magazine, he launched the weekly Morning in 1982 and the monthly Afternoon in 1986. He continued to serve as editor-in-chief of Morning for 16 years until 1998.
• [54] All Yomimono (オール讀物) is a literary magazine that serializes novels. Its sister magazine is the literary magazine Bungakukai (文學界).
• [55] Hoi Choi Pro (ホイチョイプロ) is a manga group primarily under the stewardship of Yasuo Baba (馬場康夫) who got his start in the advertising arm of the Hitatachi corporation before he began to create manga. His manga work includes Kimagure Concept (気まぐれコンセプト) which was published in Spirits and documents the advertising industry. After his success as a mangaka he began making films such as Take Me Skiing (私をスキーに連れてって/Watashi o sukii ni tsuretette) and If She Changed Into A Swimsuit (彼女が水着にきがえたら/Kanojo ga mizugi ni kigaetara) which launched his successful career as a filmmaker. Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga (サルでも描けるまんが教室/Saru demo kageru manga kyoshitsu) is a satirical series about manga creation by Koji Aihara (相原コージ) and Kentaro Takekuma (竹熊健太郎). The manga was licensed by Viz in the 1990s.
• [56] Zenkyoto (全共闘) was the All-Campus Joint Struggle League a student group active at universities throughout Japan between 1968 and 1969.
• [57] Baku Yumemakura (夢枕獏) is a novelist with a reputation for his long series of novels based on bizarre violence and martial arts, such as Chimera (キマイラ), Legend of the Hungry Wolf (餓狼伝/Garouden) and Onmyoji (陰陽師). Many of his works have been made into live-action films, anime and manga.
• [58] The novel by Baku Yumemakura was titled The King of Beasts and Beings (妖獣王/Yojuou). It was an unfinished work published in Spirits from December 15, 1984 to January 22, 1987, but serialization initially began in the June issue (May 20) of Shodensha's Shosetsu Non.
• [59] This was a special article in Spirits featuring a conversation between producer Yasushi Akimoto (秋元康) and members of the Onyanko Club (おニャン子クラブ), an idol group that enjoyed immense popularity in the late 1980s.
• [60] In addition to his work as a copywriter, Shigesato Itoi (糸井重里) is currently known as the host of the website Almost Daily Itoi Newspaper (ほぼ日刊イトイ新聞/Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun). He is also well known to videogame fans as the creator of the Mother/Earthbound series. Itoi wrote the non-manga article portion of Big Comic Spirits, including the publication of Introduction to the Maison Ikkoku Theory to commemorate the 100th chapter of Maison Ikkoku. We have an interview between Shigesato Itoi and Rumiko Takahashi as well.
• [61] Shion Miura (三浦しをん) wrote the 2011 novel The Great Passage (舟を編む/Fune o Amu). Before she became a writer she worked in the publishing industry.
• [62] Tomitaro Makino (牧野富太郎) was a botanist during the first half of the 1900s respondible for cataloging over 50,000 Japanese plant species using Carl Linnaeus' taxonomic system.
• [63] A note in the original article clarifies that there were 29 volumes rather than 28, with a 29 volumes set comprising the Western Art set and 18 comprising the Eastern Art set.
• [64] This is the department of weekly magazines such as Weekly Post (週刊ポスト) and Josei Seven (女性セブン).
• [65] Weekly Post (週刊ポスト) is a general news magazine published weekly.
• [66] Shirai does not mention Demon Slayer's creator, Koyoharu Gotouge (吾峠呼世晴), by name here. I had to insert the creator's name because I do not know their sex and did not want to use incorrect pronouns since, at the time of this translation, there is some debate about whether or not Gotouge is a woman or a man. I did not wish to give the impression that question was answered here. Shirai refers to Gotouge's editor saying "Why don't you go back to your earlier works?" This is in reference to Tatsuhiko Katayama (片山達彦), the first editor on Demon Slayer, telling Gotouge to work on something similar to their first submission to Shonen Jump which was a short story called Over-Hunting (過狩り狩り/Kakarikari).
• [67] Sea Monkeys (海猿/Umizaru) is a manga series than ran from 1998 to 2001 in Young Sunday and follows the adventures of the Japanese Coast Guard. The series has had a live-action drama and films based on it.
• [68] Kei Ishizaka (石坂啓) is a former assistant to Osamu Tezuka. She published Easier Than Kissing (キスより簡単/Kisu yori kantan) in Big Comic Spirits.
• [69] Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (葬送のフリーレン/Soso no Furiiren) is written by Kanehito Yanada (山田鐘人) and illustrated by Tsukasa Abe (アベツカサ) and published in Shonen Sunday. It won the "Manga Grand Prize" (マンガ大/Manga Taisho) in 2008 and the "Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize" (手塚治虫文化賞/Tezuka Osamu Bunkasho) in 2021 in the New Creators category. The success and potential of Frieren is discussed by Shonen Sunday editor-in-chief Takenori Ichihara here.
• [70] Da Vinci has done a number of articles on Rumiko Takahashi which we have translated. You can read them here, here and here.
• [71] Chi: On the Movements of the Earth (チ。―地球の運動について―/Chi: Chikyu no Undo ni Tsuite) is written and illustrated by Uoto (魚豊) and was published in Big Comic Spirits from 2020 to 2022.
• [72] Ichijinsha became a wholly owned subsidiary of Kodansha in 2016.
• [73] Paparinko Monogatari (パパリンコ物語) by Hisashi Eguchi (江口寿史) ran in Big Comic Spirits from 1985 to 1986. At the time Eguchi had a reputation for frequently dropping his serializations. "Part 1" was concluded as Spirits shifted to a weekly publication, however there was never a "Part 2". Rakujitsu Shinbun (落日新聞) was used to fill the space left by Eguchi's departure and then Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga was its permanent replacement.
• [74] Susume!! Pirates (すすめ!!パイレーツ), along with Stop!! Hibari-kun! (ストップ!! ひばりくん!) are widely thought of as Eguchi's masterpieces.
• [75] "To be attacked by a white alligator" (白いワニに噛まれちゃって/Shiroi wani ni kamarechatte) is a phrase Eguchi would often use when he was going to miss a deadline.
• [76] A good examples of this would be the aforementioned Hisashi Eguchi who's two biggest hits, Susume!! Pirates and Stop!! Hibari-kun! were both originally serialized in Shonen Jump for Shueisha, but their latest print editions as of 2023 were published by Shogakukan. The legendary Jump manga, Fist of the North Star (北斗の拳/Hokuto no Ken) has similarly been republished by Tokuma rather than Shueisha. Situations like this almost never happen with Shogakukan except in instances where the publisher has a falling out with one of their mangaka.
• [77] V Jump launched in 1993 as a magazine focused on manga and video games, so it would have likely been this time period that Torishima approached Takahashi, though she has never mentioned this in any of her interviews. You can read an interview between Takahashi and Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama here on the site.
• [78] Waki Yamato (大和和紀) is a shojo mangaka known for Hagara-san no Toru (はいからさんが通る) and Asaki Yume Mishi. Her husband is a retired editor at Kodansha where he worked on the long-running Section Chief Kosaku Shima (課長島耕作/Kacho Shima Kosaku) manga series.
• [79] Machiko Satonaka (里中満智子) is a shojo mangaka best known for Tomorrow Will Shine (あした輝く/Ashita Kagayaku) and Constellation of the Hunter (狩人の星座/Karyudo no Seiza). The latter won the Kodansha Manga Award in 1982.
• [80] Tsunekazu Ishihara (石原恒和) is the President of Pokemon Co., Ltd.
• [81] Tadasu Nagano (長野規) was the very first editor-in-chief of Shonen Jump. He is responsible for codifying the guiding principles of Jump which are "friendship, effort and victory". Nagano also created the policy that titles in Jump would be continued or removed based on the reader surveys, though occasionally he eschewed popularity if he felt a series was important to continue, such as Barefoot Gen (はだしのゲン/Hadashi no Gen). After he retired from Shonen Jump in 1992 he began to publish his poetry which was well-received. He died November 24, 2001.
• [82] These were the sales figures for the first issue of Shonen Jump.
• [83] Go Nagai (永井豪) was one of the most popular mangaka of the 1970s onward creating such classics as Devilman (デビルマン), Cutey Honey (キューティーハニー), Mazinger Z (マジンガーZ) and the aforementioned Harenchi Gakuen (ハレンチ学園/Shameless School). Harenchi Gakuen is widely considered the first ecchi series and was extremely controversial as it ran afoul of many Parent-Teacher Associations.
• [84] "Sunday Comics" was an imprint published by Akita Shoten which comprised many works that were serialized in Weekly Shonen Sunday from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, such as Cyborg 009 (サイボーグ009), Iga no Kagemaru (伊賀の影丸), and Dororo (どろろ). In addition, Sunday Comics also included series such as 8 Man (8マン) which had been serialized in Weekly Shonen Magazine (Kodansha) and Tetsujin 28 (鉄人28号) serialized in Shonen (Kobunsha).
• [85] Sobisha (創美社) was an affiliate of Shueisha. Some of the works serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump and a collection of short stories were published under the imprint "Jump Super Comics" by the company. Sobisha changed its name to "Shueisha Creative" in 2012.
• [86] Hero's is a seinen manga magazine that transitioned to fully digital in 2020. Their published manga includes Ultraman (ウルトラマン), ATOM: The Beginning (アトム ザ・ビギニング), Killing Bites (キリングバイツ) and KamiKatsu: Working for God in a Godless World (神無き世界のカミサマ活動/Kami Naki Sekai no Kamisama Katsudo).

---