Hideki Egami, editor-in-chief of the Japanese magazine Ikki, which specializes in manga aimed at an older more sophisticated adult readership, sat down with PW Comics Week for a micro-interview during the San Diego Comic-con to commemorate the launch of Viz Media’s English-language counterpart, SigIkki, an online magazine offering 9 contemporary manga series and an attempt to introduce a different kind of manga to the U.S. market. Sad to say, the interview was forced to end just as Egami finished discussing a photo “hair nude” spread (photos of naked women exposing their pubic hair, i.e. full nudity). Nevertheless it was great to meet such a thoughtful manga editor so excited about the changing face of the manga medium in Japan. The magazine claims in its tag line that a comics renaissance is about to take place. With guys like him in the forefront, the renaissance seems inevitable.
PW Comics Week: For starters, Ikki Magazine advertises itself as a komikksu (“comics”) magazine, but why “comics” and not “manga”?
Hideki Egami: “Comics” was simply a term we brought over from Big Comics and Spirits Comics (Ikki used to be a supplement to another magazine, Spirits). The founding editor of the magazine obviously chose the names, but we used the word “comics” because we were serializing a different, newer kind of manga.
PWCW: Does “comics” then signify something newer than “manga”? How are the two words used in Japan right now?
HE: Hmmm. Manga is probably the most direct way to talk about comics in Japan, but when people hear komikksu in Japan it is more a reference to the tankobon format [or book format]. [Egami in turn asked what the difference was between “comics” and “graphic novels,” and I went on to discuss the distinction.]
HE: We could have a whole other interview just discussing the definition of “comics” and “manga” couldn’t we?
PWCW: Well then, to address another nebulous distinction, I wanted to ask you about your collaboration with the literary fiction author Kenji Nakagami (commonly referred to as the William Faulkner of Japanese literature), whose work you had adapted to manga. What do you think is the relationship between literature and manga?
HE: Visual adaptations of writing, including film and television, give exposure to literature from other angles, and the goal in doing that is to give a work as much exposure as possible, of course. Simply put, it grants something a bigger audience. But in the case of Nakagami, we’d started an adaptation and then of course before it was published he tragically died.
PWCW: Is any part of that adaptation ever going to be published?
HE: No. But he’s been adapted to manga before. What interested me is that he had such a beautiful syntax, which is actually what made him difficult to visually adapt.
PWCW: So you wanted to challenge yourself?
HE: You could say that. We’re actually working on another literary manga adaptation right now, called Saru (Monkey), written by one of Japan’s most prolific mystery writers, Kotaro Isaka, and adapted for manga by Daisuke Igarashi (the creator of Children of the Sea).
PWCW: Do you think the relationship between literature and manga transforms each respective medium?
HE: Sensibilities change through adaptation. Collaborations can somewhat influence each side of the partnership, but with “deeper collaborations” like Saru, it’s working at a structural level. Saru’s loosely based on the Journey to the West tale (a.k.a. The Monkey King), and both Igarashi and Isaka had individually been thinking of the story. Working together they were each doing their own thing, but collectively it was transforming the structure of their media.
PWCW: So it’s like the collaboration works down to the DNA, the genetic makeup, of literature and manga?
HE: Exactly! That’s exactly it.
PWCW: You also feature international Asian creators in Ikki, like Wissut Ponnimit, who is Thai. What do you think about manga vis-à-vis Asia?
HE: We weren’t expressly looking for a Thai writer but Wissut was so good. And Wissut speaks and reads Japanese, had been influenced by Japanese artists, such as Mitsuru Adachi. He was already in the Japanese comics industry. But his style was also so different from anything a Japanese artist does.
PWCW: What is your goal with bringing SigIkki out in English in terms of this internationalized manga? What with things like original English manga being created by Americans.
HE: I’m interested in seeing how people raised on Japanese comics create new forms of manga. But in terms of Ikki in English, you know what the lynchpin was? We were at the Bologne Book Fair a few years ago and showed Ikki. And something amazing happened. The international audience loved it! Everyone wanted it. Now, you have to understand, Ikki doesn’t sell very well in Japan actually. And here were all these people so excited about it in another country. We thought the way to get this to that international reader was to produce it in English.
PWCW: I’ve read that in the past, Ikki had run nude photo spreads at the header of the magazine, but not anymore. I’m sure you know that erotic adult content is totally divorced from non-adult content here in the United States, and that there isn’t this sampling of erotica in things like comics anthologies here. What do you think of adult content in manga magazines?
HE: In Japan, seinen manga magazines [manga aimed at young men] frequently run a color nude photo spread at the header, but Ikki doesn’t. Ikki principally avoids sexual and violent content, but when it ran as only a periodical supplemental publication to Spirits Comics, we did a “hair nude” spread. We were doing it to sort of keep it like a typical seinen magazine, but also liked to think it was more artsy and stylish. More sophisticated. This was the challenge we took on but we just left it behind. It wasn’t necessarily because it alienated female readers, because it wasn’t that kind of nudity to begin with.
