Silver Bullet Comics Interview with Stan Sakai, November 17, 2000

Stan Sakai Talks Usagi Yojimbo
By Park Cooper

The perfect blend between entertaining and serious, Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai takes, in this staffer's opinion, only the best elements from the genres of funny-animal comics, historical period samurai stories, and mythology-based fantasy stories, with the emphasis on the samurai. It's an indie title that, currently enjoying a lengthy and successful stay with Dark Horse, is an example of how non-superhero comics can find their audience and flourish.

Park Cooper: First, tell us just a little about the concept of anthropomorphic characters, for those new to the concept.

Stan Sakai: Anthropomorphic just means to give human qualities to other animate or even inanimate objects. So even a toaster can be made anthropomorphic if given a personality and other human qualities. However, when we talk about it in comic book terms, it usually refers to "funny animals", a term I prefer myself even though Usagi Yojimbo is not particularly funny.

PC: Tell us about Samurai movies such as those of Akira Kurosawa and often starring Toshiro Mifune. Which is your favorite? And when I say that, it's fine to include stuff with other people, too...

SS: My favorite film is Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. It's a classic that has been remade for western audiences a number of times most notably as The Magnificent Seven. Another "chambara", or Japanese sword-fighting film I enjoy is Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy which adapts Yoshikawa's book, Musashi. Miyamoto Musashi is the person that inspired my own character, Miyamoto Usagi.

PC: Yes, Barbara and I have seen both of those, or all 4, if you will. She likes Mifune best of the Seven Samurai, of course. I have a copy of the Book of Five Rings here, but I haven't gotten around to giving it prolonged study thus far...

And, of course, Usagi's former Tiger lord was Lord Mifune, as I was pleased to see when Barb and I got the first couple of TPBs, on our honeymoon in London, as a matter of fact.

Have you read the Book of Five Rings?

SS: I have that book and gave it a quick read but haven't studied it in depth. The same goes for a few other books on my shelf - The Art of War, I Ching.

PC: In #29 of the current Dark Horse series, a baby-cart played an important role, speaking of possible influences...

SS: If you're referring to the Lone Wolf And Cub series, I did a more obvious reference to that series when I introduce the Lone Goat and Kid way back in #25 of Usagi Vol 1 (published by Fantagraphics). They only made one appearance.

PC: I've heard about that one, but I don't, unfortunately, happen to own it myself at this time.

SS: Many of my characters are inspired by actual persons from Japanese history, such as Usagi, and some other were from Japanese pop culture. Another character from Japanese movies was Zato-Ino, from Shintaro Katsu's Zato-Ichi the Blind Swordsman, the star of about 27 movies as well as a tv series. My Zato-Ino ("inoshishi" means "wild pig") was a blind swordspig with a keen sense of smell as pigs often have--they're used to root out truffles that grow beneath the ground. Anyway, in their first encounter, Usagi cuts off Ino's nose thereby rendering him truly blind. Ino does come back later with a wooden nose. It works just as well but now everything is pine scented.

PC: I seem to recall that Inspector Ishida was going to get his own storyline... A three-part spin-off, as I recall? Did I miss it? Or is it yet to come?

SS: No. I actually worked up a few short stories featuring the diminutive detective. None of which has seen print yet.
PC: Why haven't Inspector Ishida's solo stories seen print yet?

SS: It's just a matter of time--not enough of it.

PC: Tell us about the tokage lizards... How did they get into the title?

SS: What can I say? I like drawing dinosaurs. This is one way I get to at least draw something similar to dinosaurs. Actually, they also play an important role in the ecology of Usagi's world. Cats, dogs and other pets are potential "people" in Usagi Yojimbo so these lizards take the place of pets and scavengers. So instead of having rats rummaging through the trash, I have these tokage (means "lizard"). They also make nice space fillers and they're just fun to draw.

PC: That makes a lot of sense, actually.

Tell me about the Death Balloons when someone dies, why do we always see it happening that way? For the readers' clarity, or are there deeper (spiritual) reasons?

SS: There are no deep spiritual meanings other than indicating in a fairly fun way that someone is dead. There is actually a fan that keeps track of all those death heads and his level of enjoyment of each issue seems to correspond to the number of death balloons.

PC: My wife asks if you've ever seen that movie concerning four Japanese Ghost stories, which your work reminds her of even more than it does Kurosawa's?

SS: I think you're referring to Kwaidan which was an adaptation of four stories by Lafcadio Hearn.

PC: Yes, I am, although the specific box of the video she and I rented was for some reason titled "Ghost Stories" or "Four Ghost Stories". But yes, I've seen the same movie since in other stores titled "Kwaidan".

SS: It's an award-winning film, very poetic. My favorite story is the Yuki-Onna, the Snow Woman, taken from a very old Japanese folktale in which a young warrior is nursed back to health by a woman whom he later marries. After many years, he discovers he is the Yuki-Onna who killed his companion.

PC: Yes, Barb and I picked up a lot of things like kappa and Yuki-Onna from the work of Rumiko Takahashi before we ever saw them again in movies of Usagi. Do you follow the work of Rumiko Takahashi?

SS: I particularly enjoy her Mermaid series. I followed her other work for a while when I did work for Viz and was on their comp list. I visited her publisher when I was in Japan and they showed me some of her originals for Inu Yasha. Beautiful work. I wish I had gotten to meet her. Maybe I did - I met so many cartoonists there.

PC: What ever happened to Lord Noriyuki, the young panda? And whatever happened to that scary snake-servant of the rival lord, Lord Hebi? We never see them anymore... Did something happen to them during the gap in my collection? I last saw Noriyuki at the end of Grasscutter (I)... I hope nothing befell Noriyuki... Did Usagi's wanderings just take him away from that area?

SS: They are still around, just not in the current storylines. Usagi has been published by Dark Horse for quite a while now but for him only a year has passed since the story in DH UY #1. It will be a while before he meets up with Noriyuki again. He is in the general area of the Geishu Province, though.

PC: For that matter, it was made clear to me in your essay at the end of Grasscutter that you do indeed map out for yourself where Usagi travels and so on... Making note of whose territory he crosses, and so on, eh? How many lords do we have established in your series so far, anyway? Can you tell us a little about the politics of Usagi's world? Who's who powerwise?

SS: I have a rough idea of where Usagi has traveled to. He started off in northern Honshu (the main island) and is currently working his way to the city of Nagoya near Kyoto.

I don't know how many lords have been introduced but the principal political figure in the land in the new Shogun (historically Tokugawa Ieyasu). There is a power in the shadows that is attempting to gain the shogunate for itself. The "shadow lord" is Lord Hikiji who was based upon Date Masamune who had tried to set himself up as Shogun (military dictator). One interesting historical note is that Masamune was the first lord to send emissaries to a foreign country: a contingent of samurai went to the Vatican by way of Mexico. The travels took a year. They made it into the room adjoining the papal chambers where the pope refused to see them. They turned around and went home, their mission a failure.

PC: I've seen online that there was, at least at one time, a Usagi role-playing game, I think it might have been from Mayfair, who do a lot of comics-into-RPGs... can you tell me anything about that?

SS: The roleplaying game is published by Goldrush Games and is in its third printing with a new supplement, UY Monsters, scheduled soon. Now I'm not a gamer, myself, but I've heard good reviews on it. One of my favorite features are the appendixes one of which is a timeline that puts Usagi's adventures in a historical perspective.

PC: Are your comics translated into other languages? Whether they are or not, does Usagi have a big audience across the Pacific? Bigger? Smaller? The same?

SS: They've been translated into a few European languages--Finn, German, Italian, even Croatian. There may be a couple of others. I recently returned from Spain where I received two Haxtur Awards for the Spanish editions. Usagi is also available in a couple of South American countries. I get a lot of letters from Australia.

It has never been translated into Japanese. I don't believe that any American comic has ever made a big impact on the Japanese market. I was there in '98 as a guest of Osamu Tezuka Productions and was surprised that anyone knew who I was. I visited publishers and met a lot of cartoonists during the symposium. Their manga industry is just amazing.

PC: On page 84 of the sixth TPB, there's a reference to Usagi meeting Groo... did this meeting ever actually happen somewhere?

SS: Usagi has never "met" Sergio Aragones' Groo however there are references to the cheese-dip barbarian. Sergio is a good friend of mine and I had shown him pages of a story called "A Kite Story" which follows a kite-maker as he spends a year preparing for and making an "odako"--one of those huge 40 foot kites. Anyway, the story climaxes at a kite festival. When it was published, people came up to me and said they liked the in-joke of having Groo in the festival. I had no idea what they were talking about but sure enough, there he is. Sergio had drawn Groo in a crowd scene before returning the pages to me.

PC: How about Stray Dog (from my TPB of Daisho)? Will we ever see him again? Lady Kinuko?

SS: They will be back. Actually, Stray Dog made an appearance in the last collection, Grey Shadows.

PC: We also own the Shades of Death TPB, which I wrote about in my column a while back to try to entice readers of the 1980s back into reading quality non-superhero comics by promising them the (non-Archiefied) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles... Can you tell us about that story in particular, and your Mirage days in general?

SS: I had and still maintain a good relationship with all my publishers--Thoughts & Images, Fantagraphics, Mirage and Dark Horse. When I left Fantagraphics for Mirage, it was because Usagi no longer fit into their line of books. Critters, Captain Jack and their other all ages titles had been cancelled. I enjoy their mature audience titles such as Love and Rockets, Hate and Joe Sacco's works but, like I said, Usagi felt out of place. Meanwhile, I was doing more work for Mirage and it was a natural transition. The first story under the Mirage banner was a crossover with the Turtles. We had done a few others before(hey, Usagi was even in their tv series and toy line) but this was the longest story featuring Usagi with the turtles.

When Mirage stopped publishing due to a number of reasons, including the marketplace and some storm damage that destroyed their computer system, I went over to Dark Horse.

PC: Yes! We own an Usagi action figure... And therefore Spot... I don't think it's the TMNT version, though (that probably wouldn't have Spot). I don't think I ever saw Usagi in the TV Series, though. Musta missed that one.

While we're on the subject of Mirage, how about Space Usagi? Any reflections on that, 6 years later? It occured to me when I first read it that it owed a little to Star Wars, but going back and looking at it again last night, I was reminded of how Star Wars itself was heavily influenced in a variety of ways by Kurosawa/Mifune's film The Hidden Fortress...

SS: Space Usagi came about because I wanted to draw dinosaurs. In the first adventure, this descendant of the original Usagi crash lands on a dinosaur planet. There had even been plans for a Space Usagi tv series at one time and a 3 1/2 minute animated clip had even been produce and we were offered a time slot and everything. But, like many projects in Hollywood, it never happened.

PC: Too bad!

Shades of Death also has Jizo, the story about the guardian of dead children... That's probably my wife Barbara's favorite story of yours, never mind that it's only 8 pages. I hope you're proud of it--you should be. It made her cry the first time she read it, in an issue... and then AGAIN when she read it in the TPB...

SS: I try to include aspects of Japanese history and culture into my stories. As you said, Jizo is the guardian of dead children. To this day you can see images of Jizo along roadsides in Japan.

I took a different approach to that story in that the "camera" or point of view remains stationary and all the action takes place in the same set.

PC: Here's "Shi", part 2... I like the use of black and white at the bottom of page 17... What made you do it that way?

SS: That was during the color series and I thought the use of strong black and white contrasts as lightning struck would be effective.

PC: Finally, I'm back into my single issues again... Looking at Issue 30 (say on page 22, panel 2), something occurred to me... NOT that I'm giving you ideas, at ALL, but... how does Usagi do things like duck under swipes from a sword and such without getting his ears nicked?

SS: He has actually had his ears clipped a number of times. But he is pretty good at dodging those cuts.

Also, for more information, a reader or potential reader can look up UsagiYojimbo.Com. It's the official UY website and was created and is maintained by fans. It's an incredible site with animation and about everything you need to know (and more) about Usagi.

PC: Finally, I really should ask, even though you don't have to answer: Any hints on upcoming projects? Hints about story ideas after Grasscutter II?

SS: I'll have a few shorter--one to two issue--stories after Grasscutter II which will lead to The Duel at Kitanoji story which features the return of Usagi's teacher and a reunion with his son.

I generally plan out shorter stories which lead to a longer arc. Older fans seem to prefer the longer, more in-depth stories while the shorter ones are a good opportunity for newer readers to get introduced to the series.

Incidentally, a new collection, Demon Mask, is scheduled for March 2001. That would be the 14th UY trade collection and both publishers, Fantagraphics and Dark Horse, try to keep them in all in print and easily available.

PC: Thank you! I look forward to the Duel story... sounds good!