Interview with Lars Martinson: Cartoonist

Lars Martinson: Cartoonist

It’s on his business cards. It’s on his blog. Lest you think it’s an empty title, he has three graphic novels and the accolades to back it up. I sat down with Mr. Martinson to ask him about Tonoharu Parts 1 and 2, the first half of a series based on his experience as an JET Program teacher in rural Fukuoka.

1) When was it exactly that you figured out your JET experience could and should be interpreted in graphic novel form?
It was inspired largely by a desire to articulate the experience. Whenever I’d try to talk about my life in Japan with friends and family back home, it didn’t take long before their eyes would start to glaze over. I just couldn’t explain it in an engaging way. So I thought that a comic might be the way to go. I hoped that words & pictures would paint a more visceral portrait than words alone.

from Tonoharu Part 2

 2) Dan’s experience as an ALT is chock full of what I’m going to call “real Japan things,” such as the grammatical mistakes his teachers make, the infrequent trains to his town, and the weird products he sees in stores. How much did you draw from your own experience to create his environment? Did you enjoy your first year in Japan any more than he?

I tried as best as I could to faithfully reproduce the life of an ALT, and drew heavily from my own experience. I took tons of photos, and did my best to recreate the teachers’ rooms, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, and cramped apartments that ALTs inhabit.

That said, the book is a work of fiction, and I made many changes for dramatic purposes and for the sake of brevity. I thought I was painting an honest, balanced portrait, but now I wonder if I was a little overzealous in representing the loneliness and isolation incumbent to the experience. Many readers assume I had an absolutely horrible time based on the book, which wasn’t the case at all.

 3) Any particular reason you made the narrator of the prologue a smoker?

The only reason I made him a smoker was I wanted a visual cue to represent “pensiveness” in the last panel of the prologue. I thought that curling cigarette smoke might provide that. So I condemned the character to a life of cardiovascular health problems so I could get one nice looking panel.

 4) Did the storyline or your perspective of it change when you returned to Japan?

It has. For the section of the story I’m working on now, the main character of the book has been in Japan for about eight months, and speaks very little Japanese. I, on the other hand, have lived in Japan off and on for a total of six years, and speak imperfect (but passable) conversational Japanese. So yeah, I have to admit I feel sort of distanced from the material at this point. I guess that’s the problem with drawing a comic in an art style that takes so long to draw.

 5) Do you receive different reactions from readers who have never been to Japan and those who have?

I tried to make the comic accessible regardless of prior experience abroad, but it goes without saying that people who have lived in Japan get more out of the book. ALTs notice little subtle details that others don’t. There are a bunch of little “Easter eggs” throughout the book. The use of Japanese would be an example. All the spoken Japanese is left untranslated. None of it is important to the plot, the assumption being that most readers will just skip over it. But it is meaningful, and if you can read it, it adds another dimension to the story.

Tonoharu Part 2

 6) Did the publishing company notice the shout-out on the cover of Tonoharu: Part Two?

Actually, the book is self-published; Pliant Press is a sole-proprietorship run by me. So… yes! I did notice that thing that I drew. :-)

 7) Being a JET (having a full-time job) and working on a comic can’t be easy. What does an ideal productive week look like? What’s the reality?

I suppose ideally I’d like to get up early every morning and draw comics for an hour before work, and then come home and draw for another four or five hours after work. I’m not sure if I’ve ever done that, actually. I usually drag myself out of bed at the last possible second before I have to go to work (especially now that it’s so damn cold), and only very rarely put in more than two or three hours of cartooning at night. But I usually get at least *some* work done on the book every day, so that’s something I guess.

Tonoharu Part 1

8) In the first two parts of Tonoharu, Dan is [still?] in his first year. What inspired you to focus on that time, especially given that you had lived abroad for extended periods before coming to Japan?

I wrote the script for Tonoharu when I was still in my first year as a JET, and started illustrating it as I entered my second year. Originally I figured I’d be done with the whole thing before the end of my third year. Now, more than eight years later, I’m a little more than halfway done with it. God, that’s depressing. But anyway, that’s why it’s so first year-centric.
That said, I still think if you have to focus on just one year, the first year is the most interesting, as you navigate the unfamiliar surroundings and try to find your place in them.

Though he continues work on Tonoharu, Lars has also documented his most recent ALT adventures in comic form. Download it for your iAnything or read it online here: http://larsmartinson.com/kameoka-diaries-1/

You can find Tonoharu Parts 1 and 2 at http://larsmartinson.com/buy/. We know it says no more signed copies, but if you’re in the Japan area…

All images are courtesy of Lars Martinson.

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