Biography

He cites mystery/adventure writers Agatha Christie, Robert Louis Stevenson ("Treasure Island") and Alexandre Dumas ("The Count of Monte Cristo", "The Three Musketeers"), the films of Alfred Hitchcock, the crime capers shows Mission: Impossible (1966) and Columbo (1971), and MAD Magazine artists Mort Drucker and Sergio Aragonés as an influence on his work.

The name "Monkey Punch" was not his idea, nor does he particularly like the name. It came about when his editor and publisher both noticed the somewhat Western-style drawing in his artwork, and decided, along with him, to create an name that would keep Japanese audiences guessing about his nationality. The name that the editor and publisher jointly came up with, much to his chagrin, was "Monkey Punch."

According to interviews, he is a fan of MAD Magazine.

He prefers Lupin III to wear a red jacket since he feels red is a flashy and sexy colour. Lupin has worn a red, green, pink and blue jacket throughout his animated history.

He formed the Japanese Manga Artists Club (J-Mac), a group of artists who specialize in digital manga. He originally hadn't planned on it becoming a king-size guild; he just called together a couple of digital artists to work on a project, and thanks to word of mouth the club had expended to about 1500 members.

About his pseudonym: To be honest, I don't really like the name Monkey Punch, I never have.

About the Digital Manga Group We're in the preparation stage, but this is a completely professional digital manga group I've brought together and hopefully we'll be able to create some fantastic things for everybody. And ultimately I'd like this to expand beyond the borders of Japan to other countries to other professional comic book artists that want to use the digital medium. I would love for them to come and join our group. Sony and various game companies have taken an interest in our group; they want to learn a lot more about us, so we're just now starting talks with them. So hopefully, this will be something big.

About the Japanese Manga Artists Club: It wasn't really ever meant to be a club, it wasn't a group I formed to invite people in, it's more a couple of people I knew who were using Macs to do artwork and I gave them a call, and say, "Hey, want to get together for a little bit?" And before you knew it, it had 1500 members!

There's a lot of Japanese humor that doesn't make it outside of the country and is not felt the same way. However, I think it's not just America, I think it's worldwide. I think there are a lot of different cultures that do affect how people interpret my work. But it's not something I really worry about too much.

I guess you could say that part of the appeal [of Lupin III] is that my works have been directed at the youth of the nation and of the world, the younger generation, so in a sense, I wasn't really ever restricted with political barriers. It was easy for me to continue writing and drawing in that sense because it was freedom.