I managed to translate part of it on the tidbits of time I had. The interview is 9 pages long, Anon asked the first two pages but I intend on translating it all when I have time, because it’s interesting. So this is a wip post I’ll keep updated with the rest of the translation (when I’ll have time to finish it).





1/9

Kishimoto Masashi-sensei X Yahagi Kosuke (first editor*)

Conversation transcript.

Saying everything you need to know about characters and jutsu!!

T/N: *Lit.: “first in charge”. Kosuke Yahagi was the first editor of Naruto (up to the Sasuke vs. Itachi fight).

The secrets of “Naruto” that haven’t been told so far are disclosed here…!?

The vital point of character design are “eyes”

—Today we’d like to hear about the making off of his initial stage of his production, especially the characters and the jutsu, with Yahagi-san, who worked as the first editor in charge with Kishimoto-sensei.

Kishimoto & Yahagi: Please treat me well. (T/N: could also mean “Thanks in advance” or “Nice to meet you” or whatever, it’s a formal expression.)

—First of all, a question for Kishimoto-sensei: the characters or the jutsu that appear in “Naruto”, which ones are created first usually?

Kishimoto: Generally, characters first, then jutsu.

—Do you proceed in a way of thinking, like, ‘such character shows such jutsu’?

Kishimoto: Other than that, upon seeing that there’s a generally good balance with the characters that are around them, I develop the idea from parts that has been decided, such as the whole body of the characters, so that they don’t look similar, and their personal history, and if in the end it’s something I can imagine, I give them a shape.

[Quote:] After I thought about characters, I think about their jutsu. – Kishimoto.

[Early picture of Naruto:] Naruto Rough sketch drawn before the beginning of the serialisation. The badge on his chest and the shoes have been somehow revised.





2/9

—Kishimoto-sensei, when you think about the design of a character, what’s the most important thing?

Kishimoto: The eyes. So that the shape of their eyes won’t look similar to the other characters’.

—The eyes, huh?

“Drawing lively eyes” is not an overly idealistic thing. I pay attention so that the shapes don’t look similar, and each one design is different. At first, since I was told by Yahagi-san that “Putting shadows under the protagonist’s eyes is not shōnen-like” when he took me in at first, I stopped that. Then I received the advise “Make the protagonist’s eyes one-fold”. And then, “Make them two rivals”.



[T/N: I didn’t manage to understand the next two sentences (sorry), so I’m not writing them here. It’s something about the editor telling Masashi-sensei to create a rival for Naruto - that is, Sasuke’s introduction. Then, a question for Yahagi: “Is there such a rule (that in shonen there must be a rival)?”, with Yahagi answering (once again, I couldn’t understand it clearly) that it was just his personal impression.]

As for the Fourth, I was drawing him with a dreadful impression.

Yahagi: If I think about it, it’s very awesome that takes after both his father and his mother. Despite his face is different from both, there are traces of them both in him, aren’t there? If we talk about the part of the eyes, his mother is more cheerful on the inside, or rather, her lines enter immediately. The shape of her eyes in itself is more similar to Naruto’s.

Kishimoto: I made it the same as Naruto’s.

Yahagi: Only the line of the eyes is a little bit different. Or rather, you made it two-fold.

Kishimoto: Only making the line encroach on the inside, I draw it like the standard one-fold. As for Minato, I draw his eyes a little bit smaller, and make the line double.

Yahagi: And then, they’re also thinner.

—When you designed Naruto, did you have the idea of the design to some extent also about Kushina and Minato?

Kishimoto: No, I hadn’t got it yet at all. But, I drew the Fourth’s face in the Hokage Mountain at the beginning of the story. At the beginning of the serialisation I drew him with the image of a messy dreadful face, but in midway it became “different”. When I made him appear for real, I tried to draw him with a kinder image.

[Quote:] It’s awesome that he takes after both Minato and Kushina. – Yahagi.





3/9

[Quote:] This guy’s Gaara’s original form. – Kishimoto.

Widening the character’s frame is important

—Well, if we look at the sketches that served for the conception that Kishimoto-sensei drew before the beginning of the serialisation, we hope we’ll approach to the source of the characters design. Which one did you draw first?

Kishimoto: Since Naruto was already completed, if I said among these sketches there’s Team Itachi. The plan was that he’d come out as Naruto’s enemy, but only the setup and the name remained.

—Yahagi-san, when sensei created the characters, what advises did you tell him?

Yahagi: First of all, I thought that he had to show the variation of the characters, or rather, to spread the frame of his visual. For this reason, we talked together about the balance, the guys that not only weren’t cool characters but they had little personality, and the old men that appeared among other things. Even at the time of the Chuunin Exams, we’ve decided the girls with a cool character in each team, and then a character that had a style that looked like Lee.

Kishimoto: Yahagi-san drew Lee’s draft design for me.

Yahagi: A design, that was completely different from the draft, improved, but I’m glad that it was awesome. That was pleasant.

Kishimoto: Moreover, since all the characters…



[Early picture of Itachi] Team Itachi Konoha’s Special Assassination and Tactical Squad. Itachi was the leader of four teams of 70 people in a special group of assassinations and illegal activities.

[Picture of a kid with a dog] Kumomaru: An elite ninja, who had made been addicted to drugs since he was seven and has his body functions raised to the limit.

4/9

(con’t) were steadily giving the impression of being alike, we paid more attention.

Yahagi: While we resuscitated from the start some characters, we spread their variation. Gaara was like that. He had a nice design.

Kishimoto: This illustration of Kumomaru is Gaara’s original form.

Yahagi: Originally, the plan was he’d come out in his original version as it is, right?

Kishimoto: Yes. After much troubles, through a revision of the character’s name and design, he became the current Gaara.

—When we think about Gaara’s design, the kanji “Love” on his forehead wasn’t there from the start?

Kishimoto: I added that. At first, I had thought of the name “Kotarou” [T/N: lit. ‘small eldest son’, Tarou is a common suffix for male names], but after we talked about it over and over it became Gaara.

Yahagi: He was introduced for the first time as a character that was in the same circumstance of Naruto. Since we thought that he was an important character, I thought that he had to have a name like that. Since the “love” on his forehead was awfully symbolic, I wanted to include it inside his name, too. [T/N: the second kanji of the name Gaara is, indeed, the kanji for ‘love’]

[Early picture of Genma] Genma: His trademark use of a toothpick and the bandana coiled around his head haven’t changed since the beginning. (Bubble speech: Hoo~! It wasn’t too bad, right?)

[Early picture of Kakashi] Kakashi: The mask that covers his mouth and the forehead protector worn at an angle complete his design. (Speech bubble: that idiot).

[Early picture of Zabuza] Zabuza: At this level, also his favourite blade wasn’t a long sword, and was a pair of swords with a chain attacked to the hilts.

->Also the long sword that he carried on his shoulders was even huger when it was ideated.





—So this is the secret history of his birth! Let’s see another picture.

Yahagi: This is Genma.

Kishimoto: That’s right. And that one is the Kakashi I have drawn at the beginning.

Yahagi: I missed him. Also Zabuza, this was him at the beginning.

Kishimoto: At the beginning, he had a bear next to him, but we discussed about the fact that it was better if I turned it into a human, and so Haku was born. Yahagi-san named him Zabuza.

Yahagi: What was it at the beginning?

Kishimoto:

Momochi Momotarou (laugh). [T/N: written as “桃太郎”, lit. “peach boy”, it’s the name of a Japanese legendary boy] And speaking of unforgettable things about Zabuza, there’s the length of his sword, isn’t it?



Yahagi: Something was vertically piercing through the huge hideout, and when I asked he said: «It’s a sword.» It was, like, 100 metres long.



Kishimoto: At first, the plan was that Naruto would become as huge as a bridge, more or less, thinking that he had to turn that big to oppose to that sword.



Yahagi: When I tried to hear him out anyway, he said it was a folding sword, and then it widened.







—He had a plan, just in case.

Yahagi: The fact that he tried to make the story seem perfectly coherent was amazing.

[Quote:] I had designed also Zabuza like that at the beginning. – Kishimoto





5/9

[Quote:] Images began overflowing. – Kishimoto

[Sketch of a huge mob at the top of the page, and early sketch of a bijuu transformation at the bottom]

Bijuu

In the first stage, apparently there was also the idea that the body emerged from a sacrifice. [I can’t decipher the writings in the bubble speech. Above the boy, there’s the writing 6号, which means ‘sixth’.]

—There’s also an illustration with an assembly of shinobi.

Yahagi: He draws an awesome quantity of people.

Kishimoto: The images were spreading out, you know. Even though I had no plan of using them, I drew such a big mob.

Yahagi: Moreover, he doesn’t use them very much.

Kishimoto: No: that one, among the others, is Kidoumaru of the Sound Four. And that one has two heads, so they’re Sakon and Ukon. And there’s also Jirobou.





—You’ve been looking again at your sketches, afterwards.

Kishimoto: This Sixth is a bijuu. Sixth is the Six-Tails, Ninth is the Nine-Tails. At that point in time, I had thought from the first up to the sixth. [T/N: I don’t get if rokugou is used as numeral or as a name, like he planned on calling the Kyuubi “Kyuugou” and so forth.]

The “Absolute Defence” was modelled after a food toy?

—There’s another thing I want to ask you: who’s the most memorable character for you two?

Kishimoto: For me, it’s Sasuke. It’s difficult to draw his expression well, and Yahagi-san often fixed it.





6/9

(con’t) It’s amazingly difficult to give him a child-like face but a cool adult-like impression. It was cool as we fixed it, and then it turned awful. We fixed things like the shape of his eyes quite attentively.

Yahagi: Since he’s Naruto’s exact opposite, I wanted to give him a cool impression. However, I don’t think that we had troubles with the drawings. He could draw him well from the start so much. On the contrary, I remember that we had troubles with his words. We’ve been amazingly decreasing the words themselves.

Kishimoto: When we erased more than this, we decreased them to the point that I said that I didn’t understand the meaning.





—In that way, Sasuke’s cool image was created. Yahagi-san, please tell us also about your favourite character.

Yahagi: It’s Gaara of course. Gaara’s design, and also his techniques, are maybe my most favourite. When he fought with the Amegakure shinobi in the Chuunin Exams, he has a technique that protects him with sand, which becomes like an eggshell, right? For that, we used a chocolate egg as a model (※ food toys that have a figurine inside some egg-shaped chocolate).

—Really!

Yahagi: At that time, they were amazingly popular among the members of the editorial team. Seeing those, I thought it would be interesting if there were a child that looked like a monster inside an egg.

—Did you two discuss about it?

Kishimoto: Yes. There was also the rule that he couldn’t move. We decided that because he attacks with his arms crossed. We came to decide it when we were discussing this.

[Quote:] At the very beginning of the serialization, it was hard to draw Sasuke. – Kishimoto





7/9

[Quote:] A technique is good when you instinctively want to shout its name. – Yahagi

Naming the techniques is extremely important.

—Now, I want to hear about various things about techniques. When you think about ninjutsu, Kishimoto-sensei, what do you think it’s the most important thing?

Kishimoto: The fact that it’s something that’s not out of place with the character’s image. And the fact that it’s in line with the configuration that character itself has. I think within the range hypothesised from things like the context, and the clan’s lineage.

—You create it with the feeling that it wouldn’t be inconsistent with the world. [T/N: I think they mean it in broad sense, like “the world of Naruto” or “the whole background story of the character”.] Yahagi-san, as the editor, what do you see it’s important in the process of creating a technique?

Yahagi: Of course, first of all it’s the appearance of it, when you turn it into a drawing. Then, I think that also the name is important. A name, typical of a special move, that makes you want to cry it, is good. Besides, I think it’s good the fact that the structure and the results of the techniques are as memorable as possible. Easy to understand, without reaching the point of being stupid. Because I want to decrease the explanations as much as possible.





—During an interview, which was recorded in a compilation of words of wisdom released before, we’ve heard that you, Yahagi-san, rejected the name of the techniques many times over, but what was the reason?

Yahagi: In short, I wanted to strengthen the background world [T/N: Once again, generally speaking]. Especially at the beginning of the serialization, when we published the names of various types of techniques, I thought that it would be difficult for the readers to understand this ninja world.

Kishimoto: When I told him to talk about this story, in short, he meant that the names of the techniques were out of fashion… my way of recording the names of the techniques wasn’t regulated and was disconnected. However, I recorded the names according to my mood (laugh). I thought that, perhaps, the images were somehow consistent but, more than that, I felt that sometimes the coolness had the priority.

[After this, Yahagi speaks again, but I can’t completely get what he’s trying to say. To summarise, I think he’s saying that at first the names of the techniques felt disconnected, but as the whole plot expanded things like the Sharingan and the kekkei genkai began having sense, so it was good.]





8/9

Kishimoto: After Yahagi-san was out of charge, maybe the sense of naming the techniques changed.

Yahagi: Which, for example?

Kishimoto: Like, Killer Bee. When Yahagi-san was in charge, maybe he wouldn’t have come out.

Yahagi: I love that character, technique names included! However, every time I think about that speech, I think that it’s difficult.

Kishimoto: In the case of that speech, since it’s very difficult, I make other characters explain something.

Yahagi: So, when the Eight-Tails explains it. It’s good that the configuration of his extremely good relationship with the Eight-Tails was born in such a shape.

Kishimoto: If I don’t include a component that is a little different from when Yahagi-san was in charge… since I had this thought, I gave it a try.





The inventor of the technique: “Sexy Jutsu”

—Another thing I want to ask about techniques: what was the technique that came into your mind for the very first time?

Yahagi: The first thing that I drew was the standard “Henge no Jutsu” [transformation tech.]. Well, it’s used in various ninja manga from the start, but…

Kishimoto: From there, the “Kage Bunshin no Jutsu” [shadow clone tech.] and the “Oiroke no Jutsu” [sexy tech.] were born.

Yahagi: Right.

Kishimoto: However, if you mean ‘original’, it’s the “Oiroke no Jutsu”, of course. I think it has also more entertainment than the “Henge no Jutsu”. Then, there’s the “Harem no Jutsu” that appeared in the second episode, but that was an unforgettable episode. When I suggested «The “Oiroke no Jutsu” that appeared last time, how about we make it a “Harem no Jutsu” combining it with the “Kage Bunshin no Jutsu”?» during the preparatory meeting, «Hahaha» Yahagi-san laughed, and then he said «How about we start this meeting seriously?» (laugh). Even I had said it as a joke, but when I proposed it again out of desperation, it became «Let’s give it a try.», and when I tried to draw it I managed to make him say «Interesting.» It’s a profoundly memorable technique.

[Quote:] When I proposed the “Harem no Jutsu”, nobody listened to me at first. – Kishimoto





9/9



[Quote:] I have fun while drawing the “Baika no Jutsu”. – Kishimoto

[Quote:] The doujutsu plot is too cool. – Yahagi

—Sensei, what’s your favourite technique?

Kishimoto: The one that’s funny to draw, Chouji’s “Baika no Jutsu” [multi-size tech.]. Because somehow I have a good feeling if I draw things big, without worrying about small things. Contrariwise, the most painful is the “Tajuu: Kage Bunshin no Jutsu” [massive shadow clone tech.] (laugh). In any case, I have to move my hands [T/N: I guess he means something along the lines of “I have to work a lot.”].

—Yahagi-san, what’s the jutsu you thought «It’s amazing» when you looked at it, as the editor?

Yahagi: There are too many. But since the plot of the doujutsu [ocular tech.] became more and more complicated, I thought that it was great. The “Izanami”, in which you fall into an infinite loop, and “Izanagi”, in which you get out of a loop. When we talked about these, it was difficult both thinking about it and transmit it. And I’ve always been looking excitedly at techniques with awesome movements, like the “Lion Combo” and the “Lotus”, since the beginning of the serialization.

—At last, time’s over. Please, one final message from Yahagi-san to Kishimoto-sensei.

Yahagi: Thanks for this long-lasting serialization [お疲れさま ‘otsukaresama’ is a fixed expression, it literally means “it’s been a painful work”]. After you rested for a while, please give us another manga. Also all the readers are waiting for it!