Oishinbo interview
Sep. 28th, 2011 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meteordustA couple of weeks ago, I went to hear Tetsu Kariya, author of the classic food manga Oishinbo, speak at the Japan Foundation.
I never realised before that he lives in Sydney. He has done so for over 20 years. He moved overseas because he didn't want his four children to have to endure the Japanese education system, and he decided on Sydney because it had a good fish market and a good Chinatown.
He talked about growing up with his dad after World War 2, when food was hard to come by, and how his dad did the best he could, and instilled in him a love of food and cooking.
He talked about his clashes with the big food corporations, since he was uncompromising in the criticisms he put in his manga. (Which annoyed them, and resulted in the animated series only lasting one season.) He would assert that soy sauce made with the crushed remains of soybeans was inferior to that made with whole soybeans, and that Japanese milk could be stored forever in the cupboard "because this milk is already dead!" Nowadays, soy sauce manufacturers advertise that their soy sauce is made with "whole soybeans", and milk manufacturers advertise that their milk is "natural milk". ("And who was responsible for that?" he asks.)
He has met his collaborator on Oishinbo, the artist Akira Hanasaki, only seven times in 28 years. But because each script he sends is like a letter, it's like they know each other well.
He visited friends in the tsunami disaster area recently, and was moved by what he saw. He will be putting some of his experiences into a future chapter of Oishinbo, called "People Never Give Up".
He sees food as a tool for conveying his thoughts about the world. He said that you can read an article in a newspaper or magazine and soon forget about it, but manga lasts. There are kids today picking up the first volume, who were not yet born when it originally came out.
I never realised before that he lives in Sydney. He has done so for over 20 years. He moved overseas because he didn't want his four children to have to endure the Japanese education system, and he decided on Sydney because it had a good fish market and a good Chinatown.
He talked about growing up with his dad after World War 2, when food was hard to come by, and how his dad did the best he could, and instilled in him a love of food and cooking.
He talked about his clashes with the big food corporations, since he was uncompromising in the criticisms he put in his manga. (Which annoyed them, and resulted in the animated series only lasting one season.) He would assert that soy sauce made with the crushed remains of soybeans was inferior to that made with whole soybeans, and that Japanese milk could be stored forever in the cupboard "because this milk is already dead!" Nowadays, soy sauce manufacturers advertise that their soy sauce is made with "whole soybeans", and milk manufacturers advertise that their milk is "natural milk". ("And who was responsible for that?" he asks.)
He has met his collaborator on Oishinbo, the artist Akira Hanasaki, only seven times in 28 years. But because each script he sends is like a letter, it's like they know each other well.
He visited friends in the tsunami disaster area recently, and was moved by what he saw. He will be putting some of his experiences into a future chapter of Oishinbo, called "People Never Give Up".
He sees food as a tool for conveying his thoughts about the world. He said that you can read an article in a newspaper or magazine and soon forget about it, but manga lasts. There are kids today picking up the first volume, who were not yet born when it originally came out.
