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SOJ Vagabond · The Art Books
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What are Vagabond's art books, Sumi and Water?

Two books, split exactly the way Inoue works: one for the ink, one for the water.

On October 23, 2006, Kodansha published the twin pillars of Vagabond as art objects. Water collects the color work, the paintings. Sumi collects the black-and-white work, the brush drawings, down to the rough sketches. Between them they hold nearly everything the tankobon covers and magazine pages only hint at: Inoue's art at the size and reproduction quality it was made for.

Viz Media brought both to North America on September 16, 2008. Two years later the same art, enlarged to wall size, became The LAST Manga Exhibition in Tokyo, and the show produced two more books, the INOUENO catalogues, which close this page.

THE TWO GREAT VOLUMES

Kodansha · October 23, 2006
Water
The color book. Water gathers the manga's painted art: the tankobon covers, the magazine color pages, and new pieces painted for the volume. If Vagabond's reputation as painting rests on one object, it is this one.
Sumi (墨)
The ink book. Sumi, named for the ink stick, gathers the black-and-white art: brush pages at full bleed, plus early rough sketches that show Inoue finding Musashi's face.
The English editions
Viz Media published both books in North America on September 16, 2008, keeping the Japanese titles. They are the same books in English dress, long out of print.
Why two books
The split is the method: everything Inoue does in Vagabond is either ink or water. Sumi is the line, Water is the wash, and together they are the complete toolkit.

THE EXHIBITION CATALOGUES

INOUENO · 2008
INOUENO: Mikazuki (Crescent Moon)
The first of the two catalogues of The LAST Manga Exhibition, documenting the show's making: photographs, essays, and Inoue's own account of why he held it.
INOUENO: Mangetsu (Full Moon)
The complete catalogue: every work shown at the Ueno Royal Museum, more than one hundred pieces, reproduced in full, including the exhibition's original final chapter of Vagabond, with English translations of the panels.
The documentary DVD
A making-of film and a slideshow of every exhibited panel were sold alongside the catalogues, at the exhibition only.
Availability, honestly
The catalogues were exhibition merchandise, never general retail stock. Surviving copies move through the Japanese secondhand market and auction sites, and good ones are not cheap.

THE COVER THAT ANNOUNCED IT

Morning 2008 No.25

The exhibition, announced on a magazine cover

Inoue draws Musashi, and Morning prints the drawing of the drawing
Weekly Morning 2008 No.25 cover
Morning · 2008 No.25The cover of the issue that carried the announcement: Inoue's hand at work on a Musashi portrait, under the banner for the unprecedented solo exhibition at the Ueno Royal Museum.

No other object ties the manga, the art books, and the exhibition together so neatly. The paintings in Water and the drawings in Sumi were about to hang in a museum, and Morning told its readers so with a cover that is itself a picture of the art being made.

What was The LAST Manga Exhibition? →
Why the covers are paintings →
MORE FROM THE VAGABOND ARCHIVE →
One shelf of the Library. Browse them all →

THE FIRST WORD

New pages and new pieces, first.