Mastering Drunken Love
By JORDAN IKEDA
Rafu Staff Writer
Saturday, Jan. 26, 2008

Artist Kiyoshi Nakazawa talks about his zine ‘Drunken Master’ and fascination for comics and mixed martial arts.

Michael Hirano Culross
Kiyoshi Nakazawa

Artwork courtesy of Kiyoshi Nakazawa
“I’m putting certain manga-like trappings on my art like the way I do Isao’s spiky hair,” said Nakazawa about Prize. “But my art isn’t manga.”

Kiyoshi Nakazawa works as a bouncer. He makes a living letting people into and escorting people out of Bordello, a bar in Downtown Los Angeles. Patrons have threatened to shoot him. Threatened to stab him. He’s seen his share of hairy situa­tions, like the time an inebriated, corvette-driving hipster tried to burn down the bar by lighting a table umbrella on fire.

No, he’s not 6’5. He’s not packing sinewy Mr. Olympia arms. He doesn’t scowl or wear brass knuckles. But he does know judo. Been doing it since he was a kid.

“I’m the smallest bouncer you’ll ever meet,” said Nak­azawa, who looks oddly enough like a punk rock kung fu fighter and stands a whopping 5 feet 9 inches tall. “My whole strategy is not to be a tough guy, or an in-your-face guy. By default, by my presence, I have to be a diplomat.”

Nakagawa is also a family man. Devoted husband to his writer wife Maja D’Aoust who just finished a book entitled “The Secret Source” and his two daughters—the loves of his life—Momoko and Namiye whom he is able to spend a great deal of time with due to his unusual working hours.

“We’ve had to create a lifestyle that allows us to continue to pursue what we want to do,” he said.

And what he wants to do, what he has been doing in what­ever spare moments he can find, is create art. In all honesty, bouncing is just a means to pay the bills. At his core, in his blood, Nakagawa is an artist. Comic book artist actually.

His other baby, the other love of his life into which he has personally invested money, time, work, art, blood, sweat, tears and all that, is his comic/zine “Drunken Master.”

“Drunken Master” (DM) started as a hobby when he was a kid and has since blossomed into a life-long passion that has contin­ued in spite of marriage, in spite of kids, and into his 30s.

The main story, Prize, in its third chapter in DM issue #10, mixes cultural familiarities with superb writing to put a radically refreshing twist on a tried and true genre. Without spoiling the story, it follows the life and action of a young man becoming a fighter.

Nakazawa writes, draws, publishes and produces the zine, once, sometimes twice a year. He prints a thousand copies and sells them from the trunk of his car and a few at a time to local comic shops.

He does this not to make money, as he says himself, “If it was to make money, it would be the most failed attempt at doing so ever.” Instead, he does so because he has a love for art, for story.

And as crazy as it sounds—a married 30 something-year-old father of two who works as a bouncer at night in order to self-publish his own comic book—there’s nothing that sounds more pure or genuine either.

The Rafu sat down with Nakazawa and talked about the comic/zine, about mixed martial arts, and about life in general.

The Rafu: First off, for some of our readers who don’t know, what exactly is a zine?

Kiyoshi Nakazawa: A zine is any form of self-published work that is done out of love for a subject or passion to create. Zines are fueled by personal expression rather than profit. A zine can take any form from Xerox staple-folded editions of 100 cop­ies, hand silk screen books in limited editions of 5, off set printed in editions of 10,000 or even a hand-written edition of one.

Rafu: So where’d you get the name for the comic/zine?

KN: All zines start as larks, and I think that’s how they get done. If you take it too seriously you would second-guess yourself at every step. It’s sort of a tradition in zines to pick an obtuse name that doesn’t really help you at all. I picked “Drunken Master 2.”

Rafu: Sorry, but why the number 2?

KN: I thought from the very first issue that every issue would be number 2. Comics are just obsessed with number ones.

Rafu: So why “Drunken Master”?

KN: I stole it from Jackie Chan. I grew up loving him from a very young age. I started using it before his movies came to America. It was a reference to something obscure. Then, “Rumble in the Bronx” came out and he just blew up in the States. Then my zine name became like a rip off. But it was so low radar that I just kept using it.

Rafu: Unafraid of legal issues?

KN: I had been using it already and didn’t want to mess up the continuity, and I figured that the best thing that could happen to me is that he sued me and I got free press.

Rafu: You like kung fu stuff?

KN: I grew up doing judo, which I love and still do to this day. I grew up loving kung fu movies, martial arts, whatever. I didn’t know a lick about taekwondo but Chuck Norris was sure fun to watch in movies. I mean, it’s kicking ass, what’s better than that? Bruce Lee, the Shaw Brothers, all that.

Rafu: What about mixed martial arts fighting?

KN: When ultimate fighting first came out in the 90s, I couldn’t believe it. It made me nervous to watch it. I was like, “Oh my gosh, what’s going to happen? Is he going to gouge his eyes out on live T.V.?” I saw Royce Gracie, the smallest guy in the ring tap out all these really big, bad dudes.

Rafu: So Ultimate Fighting is something you like to watch?

KN: My love for mixed martial arts is understated for a guy who doesn’t even have cable. When I’m able to watch athletes at that level competing, I have hope for humanity.

Rafu: Hope for humanity?

KN: I think that people get caught up in the conflict. That it’s these two guys that are trying to hurt each other. And yeah, that is one way to look at it and that is what is going to happen. But I think it shows a level of commitment and self-transformation to raise yourself to a level of performance like that. It shows that you can basically do or overcome anything. You can do whatever you want in life.

Rafu: Sounds almost religious, or at the very least inspir­ing.

KN: I’m always impressed by the technique. By the power. For me watching fighters is like how certain people would watch an opera. I’m just completely taken by what’s going on.

Rafu: Have you ever fought in a match?

KN: I’ve never done a mixed martial arts match, but as soon as they create a seniors division, I’m in there.

Rafu: So what’s the main draw, what about the match itself takes you?

KN: A lot of the average viewers only understand knock­outs, strikes and like the most obvious, violent choke. But these guys are so good that they are able to avoid violence on their person. If they were any less of a fighter, they would have broken bones. A lot of viewers want the bloodbath. And they’re missing out on a large part of the real drama that is going on in the ring, on amazing subtleties and techniques that are happening in front of them. That’s the real show.

Rafu: Even though professional boxing is going down, how much do the guys in UFC or mixed martial arts make?

KN: The top guys are making hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the undercard guys are making like four thousand. If they are the top undercard guys they might fight four times a year.

Rafu: Wow. That’s not much money, man. Not at all.

KN: Every guy understands the risks. There is something inside of people, when you’re a fighter, there is something inside of you, it just doesn’t matter the risk. The risk is all part of it. No one wants to get hurt or wants to die. But that’s what makes some fighters and others not.

Rafu: Yeah, injury must be a huge risk factor.

KN: All of the submission moves will cripple you for the rest of your life. And yet, people will still go into the ring to fight. So it isn’t about the money. There’s something else. I think that even if people weren’t getting paid, even if mixed martial arts and cage fighting wasn’t financially validated, these people would still be doing it. That’s what fighters are, that’s what they do. These people were just born hundreds of years too late. They should have been in the coliseum.

Rafu: So are they just crazy then? What sort of role models are these types of athletes?

KN: Fighters are not role models. I don’t think athletes are role models either. You hear about athletes killing dogs and doing drugs. And that is all bad news, but their private lives are their own problems, their own business. And the same goes for fighters. They are not role models. But, in a broader human sense, they are heroes. In the sense that they are doing the things that we want to do but we can’t.

Rafu: Speaking of heroes, Isao, the main protagonist at the center of your work Prize might be read as a hero. And he’s Japanese American.

KN: For myself, growing up as fourth generation Japanese American in a town that was not Asian American, I was very aware of the highly limited representations of people that looked like me in media. I mean, you’re either Bruce Lee or Sulu. I was very sensitive to that at an early age.

Rafu: With Asian males, especially Asian male heroes, be­ing nonexistent in media, was there ever a thought as to making your hero anything different than what he is now?

KN: My art is a reflection of my environment, the things I’ve absorbed and the things I think about, the things that are underrepresented. Why can’t I make it Japanese Ameri­can? Why can’t I make references to my own culture? Even though, it may alienate a lot of readers, or it might be dif­ficult for a lot of readers to engage my references. But my comic is not an intro into the Japanese American culture. It’s not a tourist book. People are going to get it or not get it. And if they don’t get it because they aren’t Japanese American, I encourage them to ask, or to study, or to look something up.

Rafu: Do you find yourself ever struggling with stereotypes when writing or even drawing?

KN: I don’t want it to be stereotypical. Are there stereo­typical trappings? I mean, yeah, he’s an Asian guy who does martial arts. I made a concerted effort to make sure it didn’t look like a kung fu comic. But ultimately, my effort is to make it a much more complex story, showing a human being with a full range of feelings and a legitimate conflict and dealing with them in a human-like manner.

Rafu: What about style-wise? Some might say your art has manga-like qualities.

KN: I do have a manga influence. Manga has a whole genre of kung fu, martial arts, and action comics. And there are a lot of amazing lessons to be learned by studying manga, which I’m trying to adopt and incorporate into my own technique. At the same time, I don’t want to make it look juvenile—Sailor Moon-type art. However, if you keep the art way too dirty, there will be people who enjoy the story but are turned off by the drawings. That’s why when people say that my art looks kind of like manga, that’s okay because it works as a hook.

The Rafu: When you say dirty, you’re not talking content-wise, though there is a great deal of violence, but dirty as in style-wise. Your work kind of has a Frank Miller feel…

KN: Oh yeah. Frank Miller is great. I would definitely cite him as an influence.

Rafu: What other artists have influenced you?

KN: Kent Williams, Dave McKeon, George Pratt, EC comics of the 1950s, especially “Two Fisted Tales” and the “Horror Comics,” Harvey Kurtzman, The Hernandez Broth­ers, Art Spiegelman, Gary Panter.

Rafu: How about Marvel?

KN: Growing up I loved superhero comic books. Mostly Marvel and some D.C. In the early 80s I was introduced to underground comics. “Love and Rockets” was like the gate­way comic that led to so many other comic books.

Rafu: Where’d the manga come from?

KN: Very early on I was influenced by Japanese kids manga. I couldn’t read it. It was given to me as gifts. I remember that these comics were so different from the American comics I was reading at the time. Very early on I was struck by their ability for narrative. I couldn’t read Japanese, and yet I was totally engrossed with the comic, picture reading, trying to figure out what was going on. Much later in life, I discovered underground Japanese manga. I’ve gone back to those with a passion. I can’t believe the level of research, writing ability and comic ability.

Rafu: Have you ever considered doing a comic book full time?

KN: Yeah, I would but I’ve worked so long working for myself. Right now I’m my own editor and publisher and inker and artist and writer. I don’t know what would happen if a publisher let me do a comic but told me how to do it. That isn’t so attractive, but I have to work so I wouldn’t say no. And you have to start somewhere.

The Rafu: Where’d you learn how to do all of that stuff? The publishing and the distribution, etc.?

KN: I have to thank Giant Robot Magazine. I had known them as Zine friends. They were a big influence on me. I was given an advertisement job by the publisher Eric Nakamura. When I worked there, I really saw how much
hard work goes into the process of creating one’s own publication.

Rafu: Giant Robot Magazine has gotten pretty big, are you trying to follow in their footsteps?

KN: At this point, my dream is not to take “Drunken Master” into a more slick, newsstand look like Giant Robot is now. Personality-wise I do not have the temperament to create something like “Giant Robot.” There’s a lot that I’m inspired by, writing style and content, but in the end, that’s Eric and Martin’s (Wong) show. It’s not how I would take my work. My work is going to be dirtier.

Rafu: Your zine is definitely more punk rock. How do you keep it real or maintain that street cred?

KN: You have to always be clear with your intent in everything you do. You can’t kid yourself.

Rafu: So the ultimate dream would be…

KN: If I could blue sky it, I would love to work for any large publisher who would let me do what I want to do. Let me do my story, my art and my way. If that actually happens in the industry I don’t know. But that’s the dream.

Rafu: In the end, what is your vision of “Drunken Master”?

KN: It’s about comics, art and rock and roll. Really all it is a personal art project that comes out infrequently. It’s something that’s being worked on all the time. It’s made for everybody, except kids. I have no expectations for everybody to like it, but everybody is welcome to engage it—to check it out and come to their own conclusions on whether to like or dislike it.

Rafu: It’s like a love for you.

KN: People who do zines, well, I can only speak for myself, but I don’t do it to make money. It’s just my work. It’s just what I do. It’s like fighters who fight despite injury and risk. People who do zines still do it. You do it or you don’t do it. It’s like Yoda said, you are or you are not.

For more information on how to obtain copies of Drunken Master email Kiyoshi at dmz777@gmail.com.