“If I weren’t an artist, I might have been a criminal.”
This candid confession from Japanese ero-guro maestro Shintaro Kago isn’t made in jest or meant to elicit a reaction—he’s simply making his thoughts known, no matter how odd or offputting it might be, just as he’s done with his art for the past 30 plus years. His contributions to the manga world have allowed the most perverse recesses of his imagination to take root in the real world, culminating in a body of work that teeters between the disturbing and the humorous.
“如果我不是艺术家，我可能会成为一个罪犯。”
这句来自日本 ero-guro 派大师驾笼真太郎（Shintaro Kago）的坦率自白并不是开玩笑，也不是刻意要激起人们反感——他只是在表明自己的想法，就像过去 30 多年所做的艺术一样。他之于漫画世界的贡献，因此允许他藏在脑海深处、那些最荒诞怪异的思想在现实落脚，伴随着在惊悚和诙谐之间徘徊不定的表现手法，最终走到极致。
Despite Kago’s fame now, his career started off rather quietly. In 1988, his first published work appeared in Japan’s Comic Box magazine, and it went largely unnoticed. “I was known to many readers about a decade after that debut,” he says. His creative convictions and disciplined work ethic paid off eventually.
尽管现在驾笼真太郎已经享负盛名，但他早先度过了一段默默无名的职业起步期。1988 年，他的作品第一次刊登在日本杂志《Comic Box》上，当时并没有引起太多注意。“大约是在那次发表十年之后，我才真正被读者认识。”他说。他的创新信念和严谨的职业操守，终究获得了回报。
With influences ranging from Katsuhiro Otomo and Fujiko Fujio to Salvador Dali, to films like the Monty Python series and the body horror of David Cronenberg, he began accumulating an oeuvre of illustrations, mangas, and one-shots (which are standalone, short-form comics made for manga magazines) with a highly grotesque slant. These works—filled with sexual depravity, scat play, and quartered human bodies—are designed to leave viewers shell shocked.
受到从大友克洋、藤子不二雄、萨尔瓦多·达利，再到巨蟒剧团、大卫·柯南伯格的肉体恐怖电影的影响，他累积一系列风格极度诡谲的插画、漫画、单篇（one-shots，指通常为杂志制作的非连载短篇漫画），充斥着性虐、嗜粪和五马分尸的奇观，旨在给人呈现触目惊心的冲击感。
For Kago, nothing is off-limits, nothing is sacred—not even Christmas. In a one-shot titled “Holy Night,” a town is terrorized by a Santa who rains down a maelstrom of gifts, inflicting injury and even crushing people to death. Those who aren’t harmed open the wrapped presents to discover a plethora of dildos, vibrators, and condoms that are put to prompt use. The pièces de résistance of the story is the final gift—a dead baby stuffed in a box. “There’s no taboo that I wouldn’t work with,” Kago admits.
对驾笼真太郎来说，无甚禁忌，更无所神圣——甚至连圣诞节也能揶揄一番。在名为《圣夜》（Holy Night）的单篇里，故事发生在一个被圣诞老人毁坏的小镇，数以万件礼物从天而降，造成无数伤害、甚至压死居民。而那些没有受伤的人打开包装好的礼物，发现意在被立即使用的大量假阳具、震动棒和避孕套。故事高潮落在最后一件礼物——装在盒子里的死去的婴儿。驾笼真太郎承认：“我的创作没有任何忌讳。”
In some one-shots, he enjoys pushing a visual motif to its absolute limit, such as “Labyrinth,” which begins with a girl lost in a maze. As she meets other individuals lost in the maze, the world around her—and even her own body—begin deteriorating into different maze-like arrangements. At one point, a rape scene and penis dismemberment are shown in four bizarre panels of unsolvable mazes, with only the dialogue giving context to the events unfolding. The comic concludes with the girl finding her way home, and ultimately accepting her assimilation with her maze-filled reality.
在一些作品中，他喜欢将视觉张力推向极限。例如《迷宫》（Labyrinth），故事始于迷宫里一个迷路的女孩，当她遇到其他迷路的人时，她周遭的世界——甚至她自己的身体——开始恶化变形成迷宫的形状。甚至有一段四面无解的诡异迷宫中展示着强奸的场景和肢解的阴茎，并只用对话带出事件背景。结局是女孩找到了回家的路，接受自己被迷宫同化的现实。
“I also used to draw a lot of comics with the theme of shit,” he says. The trope made Kago stand out from his peers, and he considers the encouragement of publications he was making material for as major catalysts. The compilation manga Hell Season featured an especially nasty shit-themed story by Kago titled “When All’s Said and Done” in which, an epidemic of constipation becomes a bloody quest of anal destruction and coprophagia to get the maggot-ridden turds out of different women.
His interest in both feces and film led to the creation of the Shit Film Festival, “I was very interested in what kind of images various filmmakers would make under the theme of shit,” he says.
His interest in filmmaking isn’t only limited to the festival. He’s also produced numerous short films and hopes to one day make a full-length feature in the absurd stylist of one of his early influences, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
“我也画过很多以粪便为主题的漫画。”他说。这猎奇的题材让驾笼真太郎从同侪中脱颖而出，他为出版品制作的素材也催生了后来书籍的出版。漫画合集《地狱季节》（Hell Season）里有一篇特别恶心、关于大便的故事，名为《When All’s Said and Done》。故事中流行着一种传染病，便秘成为破坏肛门和食粪的腥膻欲求，为的是从不同女人身上取出满是蛆虫的粪便。
他对粪便和电影的兴趣促成了大便电影节（Shit Film Festival）的诞生，“我对于不同电影人针对大便主题，会拍出什么样的画面非常感兴趣。”他说。
而他对电影的喜好也不仅限于创立电影节。他还制作了许多短片，并希望有一天能完成一部长片，向他早期的影响、邪典名片《巨蟒与圣杯》致敬。
With a steady output of unnerving, mind-bending content, he’s gained a cult fan-base which grew yearly in his native Japan. His repulsive works only began gaining an international audience in 2008, when one of his works was featured on the cover of VICE magazine. “That is when Americans became more interested in my work,” he recalls.
Since then, Kago has published many memorable full-length graphic novels in English, including his infamous murder mystery Fraction, the absurdly comedic The Princess of the Never-ending Castle,which, at 192 pages, is his lengthiest manga to date. While many of Kago’s most famous illustrations are rendered in vivid colors, his mangas are solely released in black and white. “Colors may be necessary or it may not be necessary,” he shrugs. “All I know is I often do not like to add color to mangas because it distracts from the story.”
随着他离奇怪诞的创作不断推陈出新，他在家乡日本拥有一个每年都在增长的粉丝群。一直到 2008 年作品登上《VICE》杂志封面，他让人坐立难安的作品才开始获得国际观众的青睐。“这时候美国人开始对我的创作展现更多兴趣。”他回忆道。
从那时起，驾笼真太郎用英语出版了许多令人难忘的长篇图像小说，包括臭名昭著的谋杀疑案《Fraction》、荒谬的喜剧《The Princess of the Never-ending Castle》，长达 192 页，是他迄今为止最长的漫画。虽然许多笔下著名的插图都是以生动的色彩去呈现，但驾笼真太郎的漫画却完全是黑白的。“颜色可能必要，也可能不是。”他耸耸肩，“我只知道我经常不喜欢给漫画加颜色，因为这会分散故事的注意力。”
Kago has also lent out his art for musicians, with his work serving as the album art for Flying Lotus’s You’re Dead!, and Offset’s upcoming LP Bent Benevolence. Despite his achievements, Kago remains humble about his growing status as a pop-culture icon, crediting his rising popularity not to himself, but to the genre he works in.
The release of The Shintaro Kago Art Book this year marks a new milestone for him. The 128 page, A4 sized book assembles 277 illustrations spanning his entire career, including colored paper works to posters, flyers, T-shirts, and works for CDs and DVDs. “I have published many comic books so far, but few books consist solely of illustrations,” he says. “I feel it is a new step in my career to put this out.”
驾笼真太郎的艺术还跨界到了音乐领域，他的作品成为飞莲之音（Flying Lotus）的专辑《你死定了！》（You’re Dead!）、以及 Offset 即将发行的黑胶《Bent Benevolence》的封面艺术。尽管成就显着，驾笼真太郎对自己日益成为流行文化指标的地位仍保持谦虚，将名气归功于他的艺术派别，而不是自己。
他于今年发行的《The Shintaro Kago Art Book》标志着一个新的里程碑。这本 128 页、A4 大小的书汇集了 277 幅贯穿他整个艺术生涯的插画作品，包括涂色插图、海报、传单、T恤，以及为音乐和电影做的创作。他说：“至今我出版了很多漫画书，但几乎没有只收录插图的书。”他说，“我觉得这是我职业生涯中的新一步。”
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Contributor: Ryan Dyer
Chinese Translation: Yang Yixuan
Images Courtesy of Shintaro Kago
