This is Reiji Miyajima

34 year old manga creator

also known in Japanese as a mangaka living in Tokyo

and this is how he starts his day

He has a wife and kids but they don't stay with him in this apartment

as he rents this place out as a separate office

So he can focus on creating manga

as sometimes he requires complete silence to work

Plus he sometimes uses this office apartment

as a place to sleep when working late

like last night

By design his apartment office is only a short walk away from his home studio

It's typical for mangaka in Japan to work from their home

In Reiji's case

The first floor of his home is used for the office while the upper floors are for family use

So firstly in the morning, he always cleans the first floor bathroom since his home is also used as an office

It's important for him to provide a clean toilet or his assistants

All right, so it's about 6 o'clock in the morning and he's about to come through into the office

Good morning

You're up so early

What time did you sleep last night?

So this is a studio office all the extra desks are assigned to his assistants who'll be arriving later today

He built this house about five years ago and had this area designed specifically for his manga studio

It's a bit nicer and more modern compared to your stereotypical mangaka studio in Japan

So he creates the manga called

Kanojo Okarishimasu

which translates to renting a girlfriend

popular love-comedy rensai in a japanese weekly shounen magazines since 2017

Rensai means it's been turn into a comic series in partnership with the publisher

Most of all mangaka (?) are Rensai satus as it signifies that the manga is popular enough for a weekly mass audience

But as soon as a manga is no longer popular

Publishers will usually cancel the series so manga can have the pressure to continue to produce and deliver high quality manga every week

Today's Wednesday

And it's a critical part of the weekly publishing schedule as reiji's last full day before he needs to submit a genko

Which in Japanese means a final completed draft of the weekly manga to his publisher Kodansha

It's also launch day for his latest manga in the Weekly Shonen magazine

So in the morning

He usually draws a colored illustration to post on his Twitter account to promote the new release

you draw everything digitally?

I heard that many Mangaka have trouble making their weekly deadline, especially paper-based ones

But you seem so calm today, So that must make you that fastest mangaka in Japan right?

So did you study how to draw?

So he did learn in school

But he believes he learned more and more as he worked with various publishing editors overtime

And what was your first paid job and how much was it?

So he says the manga was about 55 pages with a colored title page, nine thousand yen per page

Which is about 82 dollars and the color title page was about double that

Which means he got about four thousand six hundred and seventy five dollars

That's pretty good for his first paid job, for those of you who aren't familiar with manga

Let me explain how a manga is created

Mangaka start by creating a rough sketch called Ne-Mu

which is reviewed by editors from the publishing company who review the sketch in red

Reiji told me that the ne-mu process takes the most time as it requires about four to five revisions

once editor satisfied with a sketch, a mangaka draws a final draft called genko inking the sketch now done digitally

and meticulously adding tones and filling drawings in black

So this is pretty much Reiji's morning, he gets here at 6:00 and he's just pretty much the drawers all morning

Very very simple, but it takes a lot of dedication and I think the staff doesn't come in until 10:00

So I guess we'll just wait for them to arrive.

So while he's working on his manga, let's go explore a little bit

So just right out to the office it looks like he has this like kind of little workout in gym area

It has a bicycle and he even has an exercise ball

So on the other side, what's also pretty cool is that he has a full-on wall as a chalk board if you go

On this side is a chalk board

And look he even has a slippers for he's assistants

And I think just over here there's another room

Let's go see what's inside

So this area it looks like another office space

just to the right of me here

there's a huge drawing pad

and you have all of his books behind me

Maybe let's get him to come inside here and explain a little bit more

Reiji what's that?

Oh, I see he used actual models for his drawings, so can I ask you a favor?

Can I draw one line in the manga?

So he's gonna let me draw right now. Like he just gave me the pen

All right, so I guess it's not that hard to be a mangaka, so easy right?

Wow you guys my line will be an episode 118 page 13, so check it out

There's the first assistant

So how long have you been an assistant?

And why are you wearing the same shirt?

Oh and there's another one

Hey, did you hear the assistant call Reiji sensei which means teacher in Japanese?

It's typical for our assistants and editors to call professional mangaka sensei

In Japan there are certain jobs that are given the title sensei other than teachers like lawyers doctors

governors and mangaka as a way to show respect

Now that everyone's here he instructs the each person on what to do one by one and they share all the drafts in Dropbox

Which means that reiji rarely needs to get out of his seat to work with his assistance

So it usually has four to five assistants come in every Wednesday, but some mangaka hire ten assistants on a shift basis

It really depends though on each mangaka and how they like to run their studio

It's also interesting that each of them using different drawing tools

I guess it really depends on each Mangaka

And what makes them feel comfortable when they draw

did you work as an assistant back in the day?

So looks like all four staff have already arrived

while their here

Let's ask them a few questions to see how their jobs are like

How long have you been working here?

How did you find this job?

How about you?

How did you find this job?

Do you have rensai?

So when I'm finding what's different than most offices is that they actually

Like talk of a lot of the time while they're working for some people that may be the perfect job

So reiji's two male assistants have actually got the rensai

And usually when this happens assistants quit to start off on their own

But both have decided to continue to work with Reiji

Which says a lot, but let's see is Reiji a good boss?

Yay, finally

Lunchtime he often goes to lunch with his assistants

But since it's a nice day, he's gonna take his dog for a walk in the park while also grabbing a small lunch

So lunch hasn't finished yet

They still have about 10 to 15 minutes before lunch is over and it looks like all of them are back here

They're using their own free time to work on their own manga

So, what are you working on now?

I think it's like just a little after one they're pretty much gonna be doing this the rest of the day

And took us 6 o'clock so...

So let me just take a little bit of time and explain how kind of this whole mangaka thing works

Since his manga appears in a weekly magazine

He has a one-week production cycle

He meets publishers decide the plot on Monday

works on the final sketch on Tuesday

Finishes the genko final draft with his assistants on Wednesday

and from Thursday through Sunday

He worked on drafting and creating the story for the next ne-mu

as well as gathering information

Like taking photos for Backgrounds

and then back to the publisher meeting on Monday

Okay, That was the first time he moved from his desk and during work hours

You just witness the biggest action scene at a mangaka

So what do you advise people to do who want to become a mangaka?

He says that the manga industry is short with assistants

So if artists have a set of skills, maybe that person can contact the publisher or mangaka directly for a job

He thinks is important to keep trying to submit your manga to publishers

or other manga websites like pixiv

and also to find your own unique strengths

That can compete with existing popular mangaka

Look, he uses women's magazines as a reference for female characters

And he even pulls out his heroine Miso Haru's outfit from the fashion magazine (?)

Interesting

So we're reaching the end of the day and it looks like the manga actually starting to come together

You can see that the pictures are starting to get filled out

You can see the tone so they have to actually finish all of it today and send it to the publisher

Have you and your assistants finished the genko?

I mean all of it?

Reiji usually goes straight to dinner with the staff after work

But today he has an irregular meeting with his editors

So he's joining a bit afterwards

So instead of having the weekly meeting at the office

Reiji prefers to meet with a publisher at an Izakaya Restaurant

So they can heat and drink while they discuss the next episode

By the way, Reiji is sitting at the furthest location from the door

Which is called Kamiza in japanese

It's a top seat within the room meaning the seat of Honor

and the seat closest to the door is called Shimoza

Which is the lowest seat

It date's back to the samurai days when there would be attackers came through the door

Usually the first person killed would be the person closes the door with their back turned

In Japanese business culture people still decide where to sit and stand

Based on this seating rule

And the Kamiza and Shimoza also apply to car seats and elevators as well

Nice Reiji is finally finished with the publisher meeting and is now joining dinner with his assistants

Gathering itself it's called Uchiage in japanese

which means a drink and celebrate an event in their case the finishing of this week's episode

All right

So that's the Day of life of a Japanese mangaka

What did you guys think?

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I'll leave that in the description

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