{"id":982,"date":"2015-10-05T19:45:55","date_gmt":"2015-10-05T10:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/?p=982"},"modified":"2016-03-11T19:54:25","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T10:54:25","slug":"manga-artist-and-alumnus-shares-memories-from-the-waseda-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/feature-en\/2015\/10\/05\/982\/","title":{"rendered":"Manga artist and alumnus shares memories from the Waseda Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

Waseda Festival memories and life in the Manga Research Society<\/h3>\n

Waseda alumnus and manga artist Mitsuru Yaku talks about his path to success and shares memories from the annual Waseda Festival.<\/p>\n

From Manga Research Society to the manga industry<\/h3>\n
\"A<\/a>

A 1981 graduate of the School of Commerce, Yaku has gone on to become a manga artist, essayist, and commentator for TV, radio, and other media platforms.<\/p><\/div>\n

While studying at Waseda, I spent almost all my time with the Manga Research Society (MRS). I grew interested in MRS after seeing them on TV doing group reviews of manga when I was a high school student. I thought, “I want to go to Waseda so I can join MRS.” After enrolling, \u00a0I went straight to the MRS clubroom. At that time they were in the old Student Union Building and I found the chaotic atmosphere exciting.<\/p>\n

The MRS held seminars and I participated in \u00a0one on single-panel manga. I actually had not read many shounen\u00a0<\/em>style manga, but joined because I wanted to be in an atmosphere with lively discussions.\u00a0\u00a0I was not able to immediately draw manga with a deep story so I worked on single-panel manga instead.<\/p>\n

The manga that I drew appeared in a magazine that was published by the MRS for the annual Waseda Festival. On the day of the festival I did nothing but draw sketches of visitors so I did not see any other projects. I had a long queue of people wanting to be drawn so I could hardly get away! I was so engrossed in my own project, but looking back I think I should have had a look at some of the other projects.<\/p>\n

Turning an extracurricular activity into a living<\/h3>\n

After graduating from Waseda I was wearing two hats: one as an employee at a publisher and the other as a manga artist. Because I had trouble getting an informal job offer while at Waseda, I decided to repeat a year and continue job hunting the following year. In order to pay for tuition, I accepted an offer to draw a serialized manga but later finally received and informal job offer at the end of the year. \u00a0In the morning I would draw manga until I had to go to work by taxi. Now that I think about it, I was an unusual hire to say the least.<\/p>\n

\"Yaku<\/a>

Yaku during his Waseda days<\/p><\/div>\n

In my fourth year after joining the publisher, I received an offer to draw the cover and opening manga for a certain \u00a0manga magazine. Around the same time I was transferred to another division within the publisher so I thought this was a perfect time to quit. From that point on I furiously drew manga and the number of episodes in the serial grew to nearly 40. I began appearing on TV and other media long after this time period. I hadn\u2019t join the MRS to make manga my lifelong career. It is incredible that I have been able to make a living through an extracurricular club activity!<\/p>\n

“Be yourself” – The Waseda principle<\/h3>\n

Waseda\u2019s students are characteristically unaffected, sincere and posses fortitude and vigor. These principles form the core of who we are. This truth has remained unchanged all these years\u00a0and I would like today\u2019s students to hold this dear to their hearts. However, no need to overdo it. Just be yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Waseda Festival memories and life in the Manga Research Society Waseda alumnus and manga artist Mitsuru Yaku t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=982"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":989,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions\/989"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}