I've always had a passion for hot-bloodedness.
Interviews With Joe Enthusiasts - Mangaka Rumiko Takahashi
When I read Ashita no Joe, I'm just a reader.
Translated by: Harley Acres
The works of Tetsuya Chiba have brought Rumiko Takahashi, the author of many hit manga such as Urusei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2, and Inuyasha, back to her days as a regular reader. She has been a fan of Ashita no Joe since it was first serialized, and Joe Yabuki was someone she looked up to.
Text/Shima Kadokura Photo/Noriyuki Fukayama
Romantic comedies are like matchmaking, exploring compatibility
"Simply put, it's because it's cool."
That's why manga artist Rumiko Takahashi-san loves Ashita no Joe (あしたのジョー). "First of all, Joe is cool. His style of coat and hunting cap was really cool. And then there's the worldview. (Ikki) Kajiwara-sensei's original work was very meticulously fleshed out and orchestrated by Chiba-sensei. [1] It's still really interesting to read even now. I learned this from reading an interview with sensei, but I heard that Chiba-sensei created the parts where Joe interacts with the children in the flophouse district and Noriko (the daughter of a nearby dried goods merchant). [2] This acts as a soft lubricant for the original work, which is charming due to Kajiwara-san's masculinity. It's all about the pace."
During her student days, she followed the serialization in real time.
"I started reading it when I was in the first year of junior high school. I was still young, so at first it was frightening and hard to get into. The first time I saw Joe, he was being lynched in the juvenile detention center (Figure 2) (laughs). Up until then I had been reading gentler, funnier stories like Chiba-sensei's Misokkasu (みそっかす), so it was a surprise. [3] After that, I read a part in Shonen Magazine where Danpei is deemed ineligible as a commissioner due to some misconduct, and I found it interesting, so I decided to read it again from the beginning."
From then on, she became a huge fan and bought almost all the books related to Ashita no Joe. In addition to the magazine in which the series was serialized and the tankobon...
"I also bought the kind of magazines that were common at the time that collected stories that were currently being serialized. I left them behind when I came to Tokyo, but when it was decided to demolish my parents' house, I went back to get the volumes. Come to think of it, I also bought the convenience store manga edition Joe & Hyuma (ジョー&飛雄馬) that came out about three or four years ago. [4] I just couldn't resist buying them (laughs)."
Takahashi-san has a unique perspective on Joe's growth as someone who read the series in real-time.
"I can't really see it as, 'Joe has grown up,' or anything like that. I feel like I've been growing older with him since I was in middle school... so I somehow had the illusion that we've been living together forever."
Living in the same era as young people struggling in a harsh world, what kind of impact did Joe have on Takahashi-san when she was a student?
"I didn't suffer with him or pile on my worries. Rather, it helped me forget my troubles. I think that's what manga is. Rather than reading it to empathize, I read it thinking that it was a really interesting story. I don't think about anything when I read manga." [5]
Figure 1 - This is a training scene for the cross counter which Takahashi-san says she likes. All that is shown is a dull "impact" sound, a scream, and the unconscious Joe and Danpei's line. "For Tomorrow - Part 3". The type of punch is not revealed until the day of the match with Rikishi.
Takahashi-san's stance on Ashita no Joe is consistent. The simple impressions that come first are "cool" and "interesting."
"Manga is all about being entertaining."
When asked what she thinks young people today would think if they read it, she answers with a focus on "entertainment."
"It's probably impossible to get them to understand the hunger at the bottom of poverty depicted in this manga. I want young people to think that everyday life is fun. Of course it's good to learn something from watching Joe and the others work hard, but I also think it's great to find reading this manga entertaining in itself."
This is a manga that also depicts women in detail.
Takahashi's favorite scenes are the boxing scenes. "It's not just the matches, it's the training. I especially like the cross counter training with Danpei (Figure 1) and the fight with Aoyama at the juvenile detention center (Figure 8)."
Figure 2 - Takahashi-san first saw Joe being abused by the boys in his cell at a juvenile detention center. After a cleaning rag was stuffed into his mouth to make him unable to speak, and after relentlessly twisting his body, they made him dive from the top bunk bed onto his stomach, calling him a member of the "parachute corps".
The fight with Aoyama is a match where Danpei matches Joe up with the small boy, Aoyama, to teach Joe defense.
"It's part of the training. This match also shows what kind of person Joe is. If he just teaches him, there's no way this kid (Joe) will learn how to defend himself, so Danpei thought about what to do... and this match was the result of Danpei's efforts to teach him. Danpei's ingenuity was fascinating!"
Figure 3 - Mammoth Nishi, who met Joe in juvenile detention and joined the Tange Boxing Gym. Unable to bear the pain of losing weight, he eats udon noodles at a food stall in the middle of the night. However, Joe finds him, punches him in the stomach, and causes udon noodles to drip from his nose. This legendary scene is beautifully recreated in the movie with different scenes.
Of all the characters, "Joe is my favorite."
"He's a surprisingly complex character, isn't he? He has a dark side, a cunning side... He's very human. He cries over things. It's because of those aspects that he feels alive. I think he was an object of admiration for young people at the time."
What do you think of the female characters?
Figure 4 - When Yoko first meets Joe. She visits Joe and does things with a ladylike sense of justice, but she is also quite stubborn. Later, she begins to have romantic feelings for Joe, but Takahashi-san says, "I never expected her to confess at that time... I was surprised!"
"In manga of that era, women were often just an accessory, but I think Ashita no Joe is a manga that really portrays women. The women were fleshed out, so that you could see what kind of person she was. If Noriko was a normal girl, Yoko was a rare type of girl. In fact, even the way Yoko and Joe met was not normal. Meeting as perpetrator and victim at a family court is not how men and women meet (laughs). Yoko starts visiting juvenile detention centers, but she does have a bit of a mean side to her (figure 4). I found it comforting that she wasn't just an angelic woman, I liked her."
I felt like I was back in high school when I met Chiba-sensei.
Figure 5 - They swing on the swings in the park, eat sandwiches, drink tea at a coffee shop, and then go to the river at night... Noriko and Joe's one and only date comes to a bitter end. "I read an interview with Chiba-sensei recently and for the first time I learned that he had thought up this part and put it in, and I was like "Oh really!?"
Five years after the end of Ashita no Joe's serialization, Takahashi-san made her debut as a manga artist. Did she ever read it from the perspective of an artist? "No, no, I really read it as a reader... and I still do. But at the time, I read Ashita no Joe and was fascinated by hot-blooded stories. There were several other (hot-blooded) stories in Magazine at the time, and I wanted to draw those kind of stories and become a manga artist."
Figure 6 - One of Takahashi-san's favorite matches is the triple cross counter in Joe's match against Wolf Kanagushi. Regarding the production of the matches she said, "it was also nice that in his last world title match (against Jose), his friends from his time in juvenile detention and people Joe had been involved with up until then were in the audience." Indeed, the faces of Aoyama and the others were there!
However, after her debut, she gained immense popularity as a standard-bearer of romantic comedies, which could be said to be the polar opposite of hot-bloodedness. "Well... hot-bloodedness wasn't really my style (laughs). But in my manga, I do a bit of a parody of Ashita no Joe. Like, the characters do cross-counters (laughs)." [6]
Not only parodies, but from the late '90s she also worked on a long-running boxing manga called One Pound Gospel. It's a comedy-style work in which the main character is a man who's bad at losing weight.
"When I was reading the serialized Ashita no Joe I was terrible at drawing, and even if I wanted to draw boxing scenes I couldn't do it at all. But now I thought maybe I could do it a little better. It's just for my own satisfaction though. I had a lot of fun drawing the boxing scenes. While I was drawing I tried not to reread Joe, for fear of being influenced by it. But in this manga too, there is a parody... no, an homage, in which a chef burns out while preparing food for a party (laughs)." [7]
Figure 7 - "The scenes where Rikishi loses weight have a strong impact. Like when there's wire wrapped around the faucet and he can't drink the water!" Takahashi-san said. As for Joe's loss to Rikishi, "it was a shock because up until that point he'd managed to pull through even when he was pushed into a corner..." is the kind of impression one would have if they hadn't read the results before.
She said she has met Chiba-san on a number of occasions. "I had the opportunity to visit his home once, and it took me right back to being a high school student. [8] I bombarded him with questions like, 'What was really going on at that time?' (laughs). When I got home, I immediately wrote him a fan letter and sent it off. I thanked him for meeting me, and told him how much I loved Joe. I was really happy to be able to express my feelings to him in person."
I felt that Joe was there on the set.
When the live-action film was being made, she also had the opportunity to visit the filming location. [9] "The set was incredibly well made. I walked through a flophouse district, and it was a big set with shops lined up on both sides... Even the accessories like calendars were recreated to look like they did back then. It was like, 'Joe is right there.'" As for the cast, she thought, "I was convinced!"
Figure 8 - During a match at the juvenile detention center, Joe struggles with Aoyama's skillfull defense. It is later revealed that the whole thing was a plan by Danpei. He thoroughly taught the timid Aoyama how to defend himself, and by having him compete against Joe, he wanted to make Joe realize the importance of defense through the pain and blood spurting from his body.
"Yamashita-san looks like Joe from the anime Ashita no Joe 2. When I met him on set, I looked at his costume up close and saw that his coat was made of a very thin material. At first, I was very surprised and asked, "Why is it so thin?!?!" But then I realized that Joe must have been wandering around wearing clothes made of materials that weren't warm at all. That was the kind of discovery I made." At this point, she asked the reporters, "Also, I heard a rumor that the "noodles coming out of the nose" scene from the legend of Mammoth Nishi (Figure 3) was reproduced. Is that true?" Takahashi-san's love for the original work and her expectations for the movie are clear.
"Apparently, the udon is served in a different scene than in the original... I'm curious (laughs). I've heard that Rikishi and Danpei are also very well recreated, so I'll go see it at the cinema when it's released!"
Profile:
Mangaka Rumiko Takahashi
Debuted in 1978. Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, Ranma 1/2, and Inuyasha were all made into anime and were huge hits. One Pound Gospel, which was made into a TV drama, portrayed a boxer who has trouble losing weight. Kyokai no RINNE is currently being serialized in Weekly Shonen Sunday.
Footnotes
- [1] Manga writer Ikki Kajiwara (梶原一騎), the author of Ashita no Joe (あしたのジョー), Tiger Mask (タイガーマスク) and Star of the Giants (巨人の星/Kyojin no Hoshi) was a juvenile delinquent growing up, a trait often shared with some of his characters including Joe Yabuki. Kajiwara was briefly married to Taiwanese singer/actress Pai Bing-bing and the couple had a child, Pai Hsiao-yen. Kajiwara died at the age of 50 in 1987, and in 1997 his then 16 year old daughter, Pai Hsiao-yen, was kidnapped and murdered.
- [2] Takahashi has frequently cited Tetsuya Chiba's (ちばてつや) Ashita no Joe (あしたのジョー) as one of her all time favorite series. You can learn more about Chiba's prolific life and career in our biographical article and video about him from our Orbiting Rumic World series of profiles.
- [3] Misokkasu (みそっかす), which was later retitled Akane-chan (あかねちゃん) after the name used for its anime adaptation. The story follows a sickly girl who was sent to the countryside to be raised by her uncle trying to readjust to life in the city and the adventures she involves herself in due to her father's financial difficulties and suicide attempts.
- [4] Joe & Hyuma (ジョー&飛雄馬) are the inexpensive, soft-cover collections that have chapters of both Ashita no Joe and Star of the Giants in them. These types of editions are commonly sold at convenience stores. Both series were written by Ikki Kajiwara.
- [5] Takahashi has often denied any political message in her work when asked about her depiction of gender or sexuality. "Most importantly, manga has to be fun. Setting aside the genre, my aim is for the reader to not regret reading my works. I have to be happy about drawing it so the reader also enjoys reading it," she has stated. On the other end of the specturm, Ashita no Joe became an important work within the youth protest movement of Japan in the 1970s with the Red Army Faction shouting "We are Ashita no Joe!" when they took Japan Airlines Flight 351 hostage on March 31, 1970.
- [6] In Urusei Yatsura Ryunosuke and her father ofter delievered cross counter punches to one another. One Pound Gospel also makes references to Ashita no Joe at times.
- [7] "Burning out" is a reference to perhaps one of the most famous scenes in any manga. Joe has prophesized that he wanted to fight so hard that he would "burn out into white ash". In his final match he collapses into his corner, starkly white, having completely burned out. Takahashi parodies this famous scene in One Pound Gospel chapter 30.
- [8] Takahashi wrote a brief autobiographical manga about going to meet Tetsuya Chiba at his home.
- [9] The book this interview was published in was released to promote the live-action Ashita no Joe adaptation which came out in 2011.
Translated by: Harley Acres
The works of Tetsuya Chiba have brought Rumiko Takahashi, the author of many hit manga such as Urusei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2, and Inuyasha, back to her days as a regular reader. She has been a fan of Ashita no Joe since it was first serialized, and Joe Yabuki was someone she looked up to.Text/Shima Kadokura Photo/Noriyuki Fukayama
Romantic comedies are like matchmaking, exploring compatibility
"Simply put, it's because it's cool."
That's why manga artist Rumiko Takahashi-san loves Ashita no Joe (あしたのジョー). "First of all, Joe is cool. His style of coat and hunting cap was really cool. And then there's the worldview. (Ikki) Kajiwara-sensei's original work was very meticulously fleshed out and orchestrated by Chiba-sensei. [1] It's still really interesting to read even now. I learned this from reading an interview with sensei, but I heard that Chiba-sensei created the parts where Joe interacts with the children in the flophouse district and Noriko (the daughter of a nearby dried goods merchant). [2] This acts as a soft lubricant for the original work, which is charming due to Kajiwara-san's masculinity. It's all about the pace."
During her student days, she followed the serialization in real time.
"I started reading it when I was in the first year of junior high school. I was still young, so at first it was frightening and hard to get into. The first time I saw Joe, he was being lynched in the juvenile detention center (Figure 2) (laughs). Up until then I had been reading gentler, funnier stories like Chiba-sensei's Misokkasu (みそっかす), so it was a surprise. [3] After that, I read a part in Shonen Magazine where Danpei is deemed ineligible as a commissioner due to some misconduct, and I found it interesting, so I decided to read it again from the beginning."
From then on, she became a huge fan and bought almost all the books related to Ashita no Joe. In addition to the magazine in which the series was serialized and the tankobon...
"I also bought the kind of magazines that were common at the time that collected stories that were currently being serialized. I left them behind when I came to Tokyo, but when it was decided to demolish my parents' house, I went back to get the volumes. Come to think of it, I also bought the convenience store manga edition Joe & Hyuma (ジョー&飛雄馬) that came out about three or four years ago. [4] I just couldn't resist buying them (laughs)."
Takahashi-san has a unique perspective on Joe's growth as someone who read the series in real-time.
"I can't really see it as, 'Joe has grown up,' or anything like that. I feel like I've been growing older with him since I was in middle school... so I somehow had the illusion that we've been living together forever."
Living in the same era as young people struggling in a harsh world, what kind of impact did Joe have on Takahashi-san when she was a student?
"I didn't suffer with him or pile on my worries. Rather, it helped me forget my troubles. I think that's what manga is. Rather than reading it to empathize, I read it thinking that it was a really interesting story. I don't think about anything when I read manga." [5]
Takahashi-san's stance on Ashita no Joe is consistent. The simple impressions that come first are "cool" and "interesting."
"Manga is all about being entertaining."
When asked what she thinks young people today would think if they read it, she answers with a focus on "entertainment." "It's probably impossible to get them to understand the hunger at the bottom of poverty depicted in this manga. I want young people to think that everyday life is fun. Of course it's good to learn something from watching Joe and the others work hard, but I also think it's great to find reading this manga entertaining in itself."
This is a manga that also depicts women in detail.
Takahashi's favorite scenes are the boxing scenes. "It's not just the matches, it's the training. I especially like the cross counter training with Danpei (Figure 1) and the fight with Aoyama at the juvenile detention center (Figure 8)."
The fight with Aoyama is a match where Danpei matches Joe up with the small boy, Aoyama, to teach Joe defense.
"It's part of the training. This match also shows what kind of person Joe is. If he just teaches him, there's no way this kid (Joe) will learn how to defend himself, so Danpei thought about what to do... and this match was the result of Danpei's efforts to teach him. Danpei's ingenuity was fascinating!"
Of all the characters, "Joe is my favorite."
"He's a surprisingly complex character, isn't he? He has a dark side, a cunning side... He's very human. He cries over things. It's because of those aspects that he feels alive. I think he was an object of admiration for young people at the time."
What do you think of the female characters?
"In manga of that era, women were often just an accessory, but I think Ashita no Joe is a manga that really portrays women. The women were fleshed out, so that you could see what kind of person she was. If Noriko was a normal girl, Yoko was a rare type of girl. In fact, even the way Yoko and Joe met was not normal. Meeting as perpetrator and victim at a family court is not how men and women meet (laughs). Yoko starts visiting juvenile detention centers, but she does have a bit of a mean side to her (figure 4). I found it comforting that she wasn't just an angelic woman, I liked her."
I felt like I was back in high school when I met Chiba-sensei.
Five years after the end of Ashita no Joe's serialization, Takahashi-san made her debut as a manga artist. Did she ever read it from the perspective of an artist? "No, no, I really read it as a reader... and I still do. But at the time, I read Ashita no Joe and was fascinated by hot-blooded stories. There were several other (hot-blooded) stories in Magazine at the time, and I wanted to draw those kind of stories and become a manga artist."
However, after her debut, she gained immense popularity as a standard-bearer of romantic comedies, which could be said to be the polar opposite of hot-bloodedness. "Well... hot-bloodedness wasn't really my style (laughs). But in my manga, I do a bit of a parody of Ashita no Joe. Like, the characters do cross-counters (laughs)." [6]
Not only parodies, but from the late '90s she also worked on a long-running boxing manga called One Pound Gospel. It's a comedy-style work in which the main character is a man who's bad at losing weight.
"When I was reading the serialized Ashita no Joe I was terrible at drawing, and even if I wanted to draw boxing scenes I couldn't do it at all. But now I thought maybe I could do it a little better. It's just for my own satisfaction though. I had a lot of fun drawing the boxing scenes. While I was drawing I tried not to reread Joe, for fear of being influenced by it. But in this manga too, there is a parody... no, an homage, in which a chef burns out while preparing food for a party (laughs)." [7]
She said she has met Chiba-san on a number of occasions. "I had the opportunity to visit his home once, and it took me right back to being a high school student. [8] I bombarded him with questions like, 'What was really going on at that time?' (laughs). When I got home, I immediately wrote him a fan letter and sent it off. I thanked him for meeting me, and told him how much I loved Joe. I was really happy to be able to express my feelings to him in person."
I felt that Joe was there on the set.
When the live-action film was being made, she also had the opportunity to visit the filming location. [9] "The set was incredibly well made. I walked through a flophouse district, and it was a big set with shops lined up on both sides... Even the accessories like calendars were recreated to look like they did back then. It was like, 'Joe is right there.'" As for the cast, she thought, "I was convinced!"
"Yamashita-san looks like Joe from the anime Ashita no Joe 2. When I met him on set, I looked at his costume up close and saw that his coat was made of a very thin material. At first, I was very surprised and asked, "Why is it so thin?!?!" But then I realized that Joe must have been wandering around wearing clothes made of materials that weren't warm at all. That was the kind of discovery I made." At this point, she asked the reporters, "Also, I heard a rumor that the "noodles coming out of the nose" scene from the legend of Mammoth Nishi (Figure 3) was reproduced. Is that true?" Takahashi-san's love for the original work and her expectations for the movie are clear.
"Apparently, the udon is served in a different scene than in the original... I'm curious (laughs). I've heard that Rikishi and Danpei are also very well recreated, so I'll go see it at the cinema when it's released!"
Profile:
Mangaka Rumiko Takahashi Debuted in 1978. Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, Ranma 1/2, and Inuyasha were all made into anime and were huge hits. One Pound Gospel, which was made into a TV drama, portrayed a boxer who has trouble losing weight. Kyokai no RINNE is currently being serialized in Weekly Shonen Sunday.
Footnotes
- [1] Manga writer Ikki Kajiwara (梶原一騎), the author of Ashita no Joe (あしたのジョー), Tiger Mask (タイガーマスク) and Star of the Giants (巨人の星/Kyojin no Hoshi) was a juvenile delinquent growing up, a trait often shared with some of his characters including Joe Yabuki. Kajiwara was briefly married to Taiwanese singer/actress Pai Bing-bing and the couple had a child, Pai Hsiao-yen. Kajiwara died at the age of 50 in 1987, and in 1997 his then 16 year old daughter, Pai Hsiao-yen, was kidnapped and murdered.
- [2] Takahashi has frequently cited Tetsuya Chiba's (ちばてつや) Ashita no Joe (あしたのジョー) as one of her all time favorite series. You can learn more about Chiba's prolific life and career in our biographical article and video about him from our Orbiting Rumic World series of profiles.
- [3] Misokkasu (みそっかす), which was later retitled Akane-chan (あかねちゃん) after the name used for its anime adaptation. The story follows a sickly girl who was sent to the countryside to be raised by her uncle trying to readjust to life in the city and the adventures she involves herself in due to her father's financial difficulties and suicide attempts.
- [4] Joe & Hyuma (ジョー&飛雄馬) are the inexpensive, soft-cover collections that have chapters of both Ashita no Joe and Star of the Giants in them. These types of editions are commonly sold at convenience stores. Both series were written by Ikki Kajiwara.
- [5] Takahashi has often denied any political message in her work when asked about her depiction of gender or sexuality. "Most importantly, manga has to be fun. Setting aside the genre, my aim is for the reader to not regret reading my works. I have to be happy about drawing it so the reader also enjoys reading it," she has stated. On the other end of the specturm, Ashita no Joe became an important work within the youth protest movement of Japan in the 1970s with the Red Army Faction shouting "We are Ashita no Joe!" when they took Japan Airlines Flight 351 hostage on March 31, 1970.
- [6] In Urusei Yatsura Ryunosuke and her father ofter delievered cross counter punches to one another. One Pound Gospel also makes references to Ashita no Joe at times.
- [7] "Burning out" is a reference to perhaps one of the most famous scenes in any manga. Joe has prophesized that he wanted to fight so hard that he would "burn out into white ash". In his final match he collapses into his corner, starkly white, having completely burned out. Takahashi parodies this famous scene in One Pound Gospel chapter 30.
- [8] Takahashi wrote a brief autobiographical manga about going to meet Tetsuya Chiba at his home.
- [9] The book this interview was published in was released to promote the live-action Ashita no Joe adaptation which came out in 2011.
あしたのジョーオフィシャルガイドブック
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