September
- October 2004
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This column focuses on our international SCBWI regions. If you are a member of SCBWI living outside of the U.S. and would like to start a chapter in your area, or if you are planning on traveling overseas and would like to contact one of our international SCBWI chapters, please contact International Regional Advisor Chairperson Erzsi Deàk or visit the SCBWI International Chapters Website. |
by John Shelley
Naive. That's how I sum up my reasons for moving to Japan. There I was with a happily blooming illustration career in the UK, co-running a studio in London, a string of editorial clients, with my first major picture book about to go to press. Why give it all up and run off to the Far East?
It all started with a terrible affliction – I suffered from an infatuation with Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints (Hokusai, Utamaro, Hiroshige, etc). Through this I designed the magazine of "Anjinkai," a society representing the Anglo-Japanese community in London. And then I went to Japan. Two years at the most then back to the UK, I promised myself. Seventeen years later, I'm still in Japan.
I sought the "missing link" between the two images of Japan in the West - that of traditional Japanese culture and the high-tech modern metropolis. Where was the middle-ground? The evidence of the changeover from samurai to salaryman? As an illustrator I was far more interested in the ramshackle downtown of Tokyo's "Shitamachi" than the set-piece beauties of Kyoto, or the concrete jungles of the "Yamate" uptown. But other influences, like money, would dictate where my career was headed.
Tokyo is one of the most expensive cities in the world. I may have been in pursuit of the "missing link," but a man has to eat, and in general, the Japanese are not that interested in dreamy westerners searching for old-fashioned and rundown aspects of their country. The Japanese creative market tends toward fantasy– fantasies of fashionable lifestyle and fantasies of image. Overseas artists are part of that. The Japanese expect foreigners to represent their countries, to be ambassadors of their own culture in a way that's suitable for Japanese tastes.
Through my London connections, I was commissioned to illustrate a summer poster for Tsukashin department store in Osaka. When the poster came out, the designer had blown up a tiny detail in my complicated drawing to create a striking graphic image full of impact I'd never have dreamed of myself. First lesson in Japanese commercial illustration: Keep it simple! Happily, advertising work kept coming. But what about my love,
children's book illustration?
Fearing I might be losing direction, I approached Japanese publishers for children's book work in Japan. Several surprises lay in store.
First surprise: Deadline. I was used to working to deadlines of six months or more in the UK. Not so in Japan – three months or less is very common. The first book I did here I actually turned over in ten days!
Next surprise was dealing with some editors who had no deep experience in children's books. Some of the more corporate companies shift around their staff like pawns in a chess game. This year such-and-such an editor is working in fashion magazines, next year she's a children's editor.
The third surprise was that print runs for hardback picture books by new writers/artists are generally very small, and foreign co-editions, rare. Small print-runs (3,000-5000 average first print run in lower bracket; sometimes get as high as 15,000 for titles with backing and promotion behind them) mean small money for the writer/artist, you may never see your book on the shelves of your local bookshop. Japan's publishing industry is massive, but children's books compete with the enormous manga (Japanese comic) market. Alot of picture books are printed, but only a small percentage of them reach general bookshops. There is just not enough shelf-space for children's books, so, inevitably, big sellers dominate. There are however some great specialist children's bookshops which carry most titles, if you can find them!
Publishers have ways to get around the low print run problem: Release picture books in paperback first, as part of a monthly series sent out to subscribers, almost like magazines. Fukuinkan Shoten runs it's popular "Kodomo no Tomo" series this way, Shikosha has "Kodomo no Sekai", Hikari no Kuni "O Hanashi Daisuki" and so-on. This way they can print many copies cheaply and pay the authors. On the downside the "magazine" format means your book is only a single issue of a series, and can be forgotten after a month or so, no matter how good or bad the book may be. Fukuinkan re-releases the "most popular" titles from "Kodomo no Tomo" as regular hard-cover books after 5 years, but if it's a subscription publication how can they tell which titles are popular?
Commercial tie-ins. The book might be sold through a clothes retailer with their logo on it, or (as in one recent book I completed) linked with a tour company to promote tourism, as well as through general bookshops.
Picture books have recently become fashionable accessories for young trendies, both to read and to create. These books target adult (or adolescents), using child-like simple words as if the reader were 5, rather than 25. Sometimes they approach poetry, sometimes simple stories of pithy characters. Frequently it's not at all clear what they are. But are they popular! Check-out www.pooka.jp/information/index.html for an example of this style. Tom's Box is a well-known gallery and shop that publishes as well as sells them: www.tomsbox.co.jp.
Add to this frenzy, picture-book competitions. They are cropping up in the oddest places: Tully's coffee shop chain is running its own picture book competition, with the winner's books on sale in their shops. Beware: the quality is unreliable.
The redeeming factor of children's publishing in Japan is that the sheer range of children's books printed means there can be more versatility than in the West (books with a less "commercial" feel to them,
fairy tales, specialized books, etc.) As long as you don't expect to make much money out of it, Japanese publishing can be a very creative market. Since helping to set up SCBWI here, I've learned a great deal about Japanese publishing outside my own experiences, and it seems that not all publishers expect artwork next week, nor have a rotating staff.
Japan may no longer be the lucrative place for artists it was during the 1980's, but I'm still here looking for that "missing link."
Children's Bookstores in Japan
Nihonbashi branch of the Maruzen general bookshop: http//www.maruzen.co.jp/home-eng/.
Crayon House, children's only bookshop: 3-8015 Kita Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo. Tel: 03-3407-9568.
Foreign language and Japanese: http://www.crayonhouse.co.jp/index.htm (Japanese only site). Also publishes two monthly magazines, Cooyon and Kodomo Ron; have branches in Tokyo and Osaka.
