While children worldwide have grown up watching Astro Boy cartoons since the mid-1950s, English translations of Tezuka's original manga material have never been published (although an American version of the story was adapted by Gold Key comics when the cartoons were first aired here). Soon, fans and new explorers of this charming and incredibly human modern myth who have never experienced Astro Boy in its original format will enjoy multiple volumes of the original Astro Boy adventures, bound in attractive and compact 200-page volumes. Many of Tezuka's other works, including Black Jack, Jungle Emperor Leo, Metropolis, and The Phoenix have become popularized in America either through translated book editions or animé adaptations, but Astro Boy is widely regarded as Tezuka's signature series. This month, Dark Horse.com spoke with manga translator, author, and interpreter Frederik L. Schodt, who is translating Astro Boy for Dark Horse and was a friend to and translator for Mr. Tezuka, who is widely regarded as "the Walt Disney of Japan."
Western manga fans may recognize Schodt's name from his authorship of the books Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics and Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga, two of the most well-regarded English texts on the subject of manga and Japanese pop-culture. As a point of interest, so close was Schodt's relationship with Mr. Tezuka that the manga legend wrote the forward for Manga! Manga! for the book's 1983 release.
In hopes of helping our readers learn something substantive about the life and work of the legendary Tezuka, this interview inadvertently became something of a brief history of translated manga, told by one of the first Americans to attempt to bring Japanese comics to English readers. Manga fans will find this conversation with Frederik Schodt highly interesting, and anyone who's looking forward to getting to know the real Astro Boy should enjoy this glimpse at the life of Japan's most legendary manga creator, Osamu Tezuka.
Shawna Ervin-Gore: Let's start by talking about how you became involved in manga translation, and when your interest in Japanese culture began.
Frederik Schodt: Manga translation is one of the things I do, but I also make my living as an interpreter, and I write books.
SE-G: When did you first begin studying Japanese?
FS: I first went to Japan when I was in high school. I was 15, almost 16. I went to an international school, but at that time they wouldn't let me study Japanese, so I wound up studying French. I think I was frustrated, because I was living in Japan, and I wanted to speak Japanese (laughs). The school thought differently then than most do now. I remember my guidance counselor telling me that I'd never be able to use Japanese in the future. Since I only had a couple of years left in high school, she warned me that colleges wouldn't accept Japanese as a language in America.
SE-G: It's funny how short-sighted that attitude seems now.
FS: Yeah, it's a little different than how things actually happened, isn't it? But you know how it is when you're a teenager -- you want to do something a little different. I also had a few friends who were very fluent.
After I graduated from high school, I went to college in the States for a few years, and then I went to University in Japan, where I studied Japanese very hard. And that's when I saw people reading manga a lot. I'd seen manga before, but all of my roommates in the dormitory read manga, so that was a big influence on me, because I noticed they were reading these huge, fat comic-book magazines, manga magazines, instead of the textbooks they were supposed to be studying (laughs). I was trying very hard to learn Japanese, and it just seemed like a fun thing to do, so I started reading manga. I became hooked because for me it was a great introduction to not only Japanese culture, but the language.
SE-G: So reading sequential art in Japanese was pretty helpful to you in terms of learning the language?
FS: Oh, enormously.
SE-G: Every once in a while we hear from ESL (English as a second language -- ed.) teachers who tell us how they use comics to help their students pick up on the language. It sounds like the same technique helped you, too.
FS: Yes. I'm always surprised that comic books aren't more widely used in schools and for educational purposes in general. They're a wonderful way to absorb information.
But that's how I got interested in manga. It was always a way to learn more about Japanese culture and language while I was living there.
SE-G: Did you find learning to speak and read Japanese to be difficult?
FS: Japanese is, in some ways, very simple. The grammar is actually very easy, and the pronunciation is very easy. I think for Americans it can be very difficult because it's completely different from English in its order and thought processes. And those differences make it very hard to acquire quickly. And of course, the writing system is very complex, and so is the formality. Everything is hierarchical in Japanese, so that takes a long time to learn, and it takes quite a while to become fluent from scratch.
SE-G: Once you became comfortable with the language, what did you do first? Did you automatically want to become an interpreter or translator?
FS: Well, I went to university in Japan twice, the first time as an undergraduate. Then I came back to the States and I was a hippie for a while, and then I was a tour guide for a company in L.A. I started doing a little interpreting there. Then I decided that I needed to be better with the language, so I got a scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Education, and I went back to university in Japan and studied interpreting and translation.
SE-G: Were there a lot of American students there at the time?
FS: There were some other students. but it wasn't like it is today. Only a few people were interested in written translation. Almost no one working towards interpretation.
When I finished that university program, I began working at a translation firm in Tokyo, doing written translation. Then I came back (to America) and since '78, I've been working as a translator and interpreter and writer in San Francisco. It's amazing when I think about it. That's a long time! I've lived in the same two-block area for 25 years!
SE-G: Are all of the books you've written on the topic of manga?
FS: No, I've written four or five books now, and two of them are on manga. Then I have a book on robotics in Japan, and actually, in that book, there is a section on Astro Boy, because he had a huge influence on the development of fantasy robots in Japan. And he had quite an influence, believe it or not, on researchers of robotics in Japan.
I also wrote another book on U.S./Japan relations, which has nothing to do with manga. It's sort of an introductory book on the history of U.S./Japan relations. So I'm all over the lot, but I've always managed to tie things together somewhat. That's how Astro Boy found his way into a book about robotics in Japan.
SE-G: I understand that you not only worked with Tezuka on a professional level, but that you also became friends with him. How did that come to pass?
FS: It actually ties in very closely with beginning to translate manga, because that's how I met him. A friend of mine and I started an organization called "Dadakai," which just means a Dada association. We also had a Japanese friend in the association. We liked Japanese manga so much, and thought they should be better known overseas, because at that time, nobody knew anything about manga. We thought it would be great to translate some of our favorite manga, so we gave it a shot. This was in 1976 or '77. At that time, my favorite work and my friend's favorite work was, without question, The Phoenix by Tezuka. So we just approached Tezuka's company to see if we could translate it. I was surprised that they would even talk to us, but at that time they were very curious about us, because no one had every approached them about translating manga before, at least into English.
Eventually we got started on the translation, and that's when we met Tezuka. We translated five volumes of the material.
SE-G: At this point, was your intent to publish that material in the U.S.?
FS: The hope was to interest publishers, at least, if not to find a publisher. But at that point, nobody knew what manga were, or what their possibilities might be. Later, we translated some of Leiji Matsumoto's work and a few others, but we started with Tezuka's Phoenix, and that's how I met him. We just went to his company and met him.
SE-G: That's pretty remarkable. Was he open to this?
FS: Oh, he was extraordinarily friendly, and I think they were surprised that anyone who was not Japanese would even be interested in manga. We were probably some of the first people outside of Japan who had ever shown any interest.
We met him several times in the course of translating the work, as we had questions and wanted the translation to be accurate. He was very curious and interested, I think, about us, because again, it was fairly unusual. We went out to dinner with him and things like that, and that was the beginning of a relationship with him that lasted until his death.
I came back to the states in '78, and our relationship continued. Whenever Tezuka came to the United States, if I was available, I would work as his interpreter. And I basically was involved with him and working for his company until he died. It was a very personal relationship. He was a very kind man. And, you know, he would call once in a while to ask how I was doing, and he would harass me, "why aren't you married yet?" That sort of thing (laughs).
And of course, traveling with him in the United States and in Canada, I would spend a lot of time with him, in airplanes and what not. I got to know him quite well, and I feel very blessed to have known him. I really do.
SE-G: Were you around him during any creative periods, when he was working on new manga?
FS: He was always creating new work. He was phenomenally productive, always trying to think of new stories. And he was an intensely curious person. When I was with him he was always picking my brain, asking what I thought of things. We'd have these long discussions, and I've always been a very curious and interested person, too. So I remember having discussions where I would just forget about time. We were going to Canada once, and since I spoke English, I was in charge of making sure the tickets were right and getting us through the airport. So we were at the airport in San Francisco, at the gate, and we were talking so much, and I got so absorbed in what we were saying that the plane left. We missed the plane (laughs).
But he was creating stories constantly, at an almost super human rate. It's hard for us to imagine that anyone could draw so much in one lifetime. He was often drawing multiple stories -- multiple serializations -- at one time. He would have three or four or even five stories developing simultaneously, so he was always looking for inspiration and ideas. And I think whenever he met new people, he was very curious, and would ask as many questions and get as much information from them as he could, which he would often use as ideas. He was also an extremely intellectual person. He was like a sponge, really.
SE-G: In terms of how prolific he was and his reputation among his peers, Tezuka's career reminds me of Will Eisner's. And I think one of Will's greatest gifts to his fans is that over the years, he's taken some incredibly personal and often painful events from his own life and adapted those into comics stories. So, I'm wondering if you know whether any of Tezuka's stories have a similar basis in the real world? For instance, Astro Boy is really quite a poignant story from the start, since he was created by a scientist who was looking to replace a young son who died. That makes me wonder whether Tezuka himself experiencing anything like that, or if you might have insight into where this story came from? Or did his career as a physician leave an impact with him in this regard? FS: There's a lot of conflict in Astro Boy, even though on the surface it seems like a very simple story for children. There is a lot of emotional conflict in Texuka's work.
I can't limit it to Astro Boy, but one thing that characterizes all of his work is a profound appreciation for the sacredness of life. That's a major theme throughout all of his work.
And again, he was a very intellectual person. He was a rare commodity in the medium, especially at that time. Here he was working in a medium that was at the time for children, but he was a thinking man. In any other context he would have been a novelist or a film director, or something along those lines. He really was a gift to the medium, much like Will Eisner.
He did have many experiences in his life that made him think of life and death. He came to maturity right at the end of World War II, and he had to work in military factories as all young people did. He also saw a lot of the fire bombing of Osaka, in which thousands of people were killed and the city was razed. It was an inferno. So he personally witnessed some terrible destruction and the horrors of war, even though he wasn't a soldier. He was very anti-war, and he always expressed that in all of his work. That influences a lot of his stories. And I think the fact that he was a physician gave him a perspective on life that was much different than the average person. He had valid reasons, very real reasons, to think about life and how important it is.
SE-G: That's very clear in Black Jack, I know. He created this renegade surgeon who has a very strict personal code that keeps him from forming allegiances with many people, yet he would do almost anything to save anyone's life. At the same time, there is a lot of silliness in Black Jack and Tezuka's other comics.
FS: Oh, yes. His jokes were often really corny. But kids liked that, and Tezuka enjoyed the silly parts, too.
SE-G: In the introduction you wrote for the first volume of Astro Boy, you mentioned that Tezuka would sometimes revisit parts of his canon and go back to write new chapter breaks, where he would position himself as a narrator of sorts, especially to help explain parts of the story he might have felt were thin or not as well developed as others.
FS: That's one of the most charming aspects of this series, and what Dark Horse will be publishing. He does appear as an interlocutor and kind of explains many of the idiosyncracies in Astro Boy. In volume 2, for instance, he answers some of the questions people have asked over time. One of those is about Astro Boy's head -- no matter what perspective Astro Boy is drawn in, these horn-like things, or locks of hair on his head are always visible (laughs). So he addresses things like that, and he answers more technical questions.
SE-G: In your introduction, you also mention that Tezuka was somewhat frustrated with the animated Astro Boy series that was eventually brought to America. What was his frustration? Did he not like the American Astro Boy comics that resulted from that?
FS: I think the main thing that bothered him was the censorship on American television and the fact that here he had this story of robots smashing each other, and some of the American producers were concerned that Astro Boy looked too human, and they didn't like the idea of him smashing these other robots. And they didn't like the idea of him getting smashed up. Tezuka was just frustrated over the constraints for animation in the U.S., but in all fairness, I have to say that he was frustrated by criticisms in Japan, too. There was a period in Japan where parent groups were upset with violence in comics and whatnot. Tezuka was always on the forefront of exploring the possibilities of manga.
SE-G: And that usually means breaking convention, or stretching established boundaries.
FS: Yes. Although it's funny, because later in his life, people considered him to be more conservative, because there eventually came to be this sort-of "no holds barred" approach to depictions of violence in manga and animation, even for children. But even Astro Boy was considered "violent" at one point in Japan.
SE-G: That's funny, especially considering that Astro Boy's mandate, so to speak, was that he fought not for justice or for a certain country or organization, but for peace.
FS: I really hope that people will see this when they're reading Astro Boy for the first time. Even though Tezuka was essentially creating comics for young boys, he was writing on some very deep topics, and attempting to reconcile the problems that a young robot boy would have in human society. Astro Boy wanted to be more human, and he was often more human than humans because of that. He was a robot, a machine. And that's one of the real charms of the story, that there is a fundamental struggle going on within Astro Boy himself, as he switches between being a machine and wanting to be human. At was one of the first times this story has been told.
It's very important for readers to note that this was created in the 1950s in Japan, when Japan had just come out of the devastation of World War II, and was nothing like the Japan we know today. The world was very analog then, and Japan was one of the least likely candidates to become a technological juggernaut. It was remarkable that the Japanese could recover from World War II and even feed themselves, so Astro Boy represented something very different for young Japanese readers than it does to readers today.
SE-G: Do you think characters like Astro Boy may have inspired the technology that eventually came out of Japan?
FS: It's pretty difficult to make direct connections that way, but you can say -- and I wrote it in one of my books, Inside the Robot Kingdom -- that the case can be made that fantasy characters like Astro Boy helped present technology in a more friendly fashion to young Japanese, many of whom went on to become technologists and scientists.
He was also the beginning of a long line of characters in Japanese fantasy and manga where the robot is a very friendly creature, almost like a pet. You can divide fantasy robots in Japan into two categories -- big, warrior-like robots and those that are more friendly, humanoid helper robots. SE-G: Like companions.
FS: Yes, companions. If any place in the world successfully develops friendly, cute, helpful robots, it'll be Japan!
Look for the premier of Astro Boy #1, compiling 224 pages of Osamu Tezuka's original Astro Boy material, on sale March 27 for the retail price of $9.95. Astro Boy is produced by Dark Horse Comics in conjunction with Studio Proteus.