Peppe Peppe is an Italian manga artist who has won his first serialization with the manga Mingo: Itariajin ga Minna Moteru to Omou na yo (English title|Mingo: Don’t think that all Italians would be popular with the girls!) (Shogakukan). Peppe is also active as a model, appearing in Japanese reality television show Terrace House Tokyo in 2019.
We at TOKION asked Peppe to create a manga series to find out what an Italian man thinks of Japanese culture. In the series, Peppe will experience Japan’s unique culture and introduce it in the form of a short manga story. In the fifth installment, Peppe goes to Sumida-ku, Tokyo, to experience for the first time the design of “Edo Kiriko” (a generic name for faceted glassware produced in Tokyo from the end of the Edo period to the present). Discover how it turned out.
–This time, you tried your hand at designing “Edo Kiriko,” a traditional form of Japanese glass art designated as one of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s traditional crafts.
Peppe: I was truly committed to it for an hour and a half, so it was just as or even more tiring than when I concentrate on drawing manga. Or it was probably because I am just getting older (laughs). I had a vague idea of what “Edo Kiriko” was, but it was great to know that this is how it is made.
–How was it to actually sharpen and design the glass?
Peppe: At first, as a manga artist, I was really worried that I might cut my hand on the machine. So this time I tried to express that fear in the manga as well (laughs). But in reality, I was able to work safely. And just as I had expected, it was fun to create things with my hands.
Just like when I drew manga for the first time, I couldn’t do it right at first. I really wanted to try a more complicated design, but I thought I must not fail, so I decided to keep it simple this time, using the form of a bamboo thicket. Now that I know how to do it, I would like to do it again after developing a specific design.
