Arie's+Prose

Prose

Title: The Ink-Keepers Apprentice

Author: Allen Say

Illustrator: Allen Say

Summary:

Kiyoi is thirteen years old and living in Tokyo after World War II. His dream is to be a cartoonist. One day he visits the studio of Noro Shinpei, a famous cartoonist, an asks to become his apprentice. Although Master Noro already has an apprentice, Tokida, he makes Kiyoi draw a horse as a test. Impressed by Kiyoi’s dream, Master Noro agrees to become his sensei, or teacher. Kiyoi arrives at the studio the next day to begin his apprenticeship. The next day I arrived at the studio at ten in the morning. Sensei and Tokida were already at work, sitting in the same places, wearing the same clothes. Sensei’s small eyes were bloodshot and his face bristled with a heavy beard.

You’ve come just in time to give us a hand. Tokida and I have been going nonstop since you left. Have you had breakfast?

“Yes sir.”

“Pour yourself a cup of tea. A magazine reporter is coming over at two to pick up this installment. We’ll relax after that. Here, I’ll have another cup”, he said and handed me his mug. Already I was beginning to feel useful, pouring tea for the master.

“Ready to work, Kiyoi?” Tokida spoke to me for the first time. “Yes, what can I do? “

“Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty to do. You don’t know what you got yourself into, “ Tokida said. He spoke with a slight Osaka accent, which is softer and more melodious than the sharp, staccato speech of the Tokyo natives.

It was exciting, and a little eerie, to watch one of the best known comic serials come to life on front of me. Tokida penciled in the frames on thick Bristol boards with a ruler, and Sensei sketched in the rough figures with a soft-leaded pencil. He drew with tremendous peed and energy. Even when his pencil wasn’t touching the paper his hand moved round and round as if drawing hundreds of small circles. I kept looking at his hand and noticed a pea-sized callus on the middle finger, and I wondered how many hundreds of hours I had to draw to work up a callus like Sensei’s. I looked at Tokida’s drawing hand and saw a budding pea. Then I saw half of the little finger on Tokida’s left hand had been lopped off.

Sensei didn’t draw in any orderly way, but skipped from one frame to the next, as if he was working on his favorite scenes first. A steady stream of ideas seemed to rush through his head and flow out from the tip of his pencil. How did he know what size to make the balloons before putting in the words? I wondered, but was afraid to ask.

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