Suddenly
running off overseas is pretty extreme, even if you were feeling fed up with things...
Well, I have a certain idiotic
decisiveness in situations like that. It was the same with graphic design—I
suddenly got sick of it and quit. I partnered with a guy by the name of Jerry
Ukai in those days, and dipped my toes into fashion advertising and art direction. Once that got on a roll, I suddenly declared that design was a
pain in the ass and I hated it, so I was throwing in the towel. I quit
illustration, I quit design, and fell into a messy state where even I didn’t
know what I wanted to do.
You were in a lost era.
I would still do CD design and
illustration jobs occasionally, but only for friends. I was still living at
home, too, so it was an era where I was nobody, where I didn’t even know what
to call myself. I got the offer for a serial column in this magazine Zyappu right around that time. I drew every day, kind of like an art diary, and then
turned it in to the editors, who then ran excerpts they took as-is in the
magazine. They had all these special rules to follow, like everything had to be
in romaji, “ja” had to “jya”, and so on, so it was extremely nitpicky and
annoying. Not to mention embarrassing since I was putting stuff from my private
life in there, too.