PD: She is an incredibly popular author and a very strong author. What brought her to Viz for Ooku? Did you seek her out, or vice versa? What attracted Viz to Ooku? PWCW: The English translations of Yoshinaga's other books are being put out by DMP books. So that might be what she was trying to do.
As an author she likes to explore things-relationships and preconceptions. PD: I can’t speak directly to her motivations but I do know that the Edo period is very popular for television and manga.
PWCW: What inspired Yoshinaga to write an alternate history story centered around a gender-flipped Ooku? Was she influenced by the recent (at the time she started) movie and television mini-series about the real Ooku? And why alternate history? It's a genre rarely seen in manga.
Also, she has lot of name recognition, we’re hoping fans of her other work pick it up. There’s some crossover there, but we’re not sure how much there might be. We’re hoping that people who read science fiction, alternate history, and speculative fiction will pick up on it. Pancha Diaz: This is an experiment on our part to see what the readership is. Where do you see this fitting on the American market? What is the readership that you're expecting for this book? As far as I can tell, there's nothing like it currently on the shelves. It's a historical drama full of court intrigue, an alternate history tale, a high concept science fiction or fantasy story (hard to tell which) thanks to the McGuffin, and a thoughtful examination of gender. PW Comics Week: Ooku is a rather unusual manga. PW Comics Week spoke to Yoshinaga’s Viz editor Pancha Diaz about the creation of this unusual manga and bringing Ooku to an American audience. The English translation of Ooku, published by Viz, will be released in August of this year. Ooku’s American release has been preceded by that of Antique Bakery, Yoshinaga’s manga about the customers of a high end cake shop and the men who work there. Ooku is also the winner of this year’s the highly prestigious Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for manga, whose previous winners include such famed manga-ka as Naoki Urasawa ( Pluto), Takehiko Inoue ( Vagabond) and Hideo Azuma ( Disappearance Diary.). A commercial as well as a critical success, Ooku: The Inner Chambers is a bestseller in Japan and will be adapted into a live action movie filming next year.
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