Perhaps best known for his poetic and feminine illustrations of female models with big eyes and long necks, Ed Tsuwaki has worked with everything from lingerie and cosmetics to hard cider. He was an early adopter of digital technology and remembers buying the first colour Mac IICi back in 1990 with a five-year JP¥ 2 million loan. In the 1990s, he worked mainly as an art director, designing CD and record covers (music has always been a big inspiration to him) and in 1996 made his international debut with a five-page story in the French magazine CitizenK. That lead to other international work for magazines such as Elle, Marie Claire, Wallpaper*, and Vogue, and when Vogue decided to launch in Japan in 1999, Ed made a splash with an illustrated story of how Audrey Hepburn might have dressed that year, making him a household name within the industry both locally and abroad.

Besides illustrations, he also does more personal paintings and even ceramics, but after much soul-searching is most comfortable with the rather unpretentious title of illustrator. “I like the challenge of working within a set of predefined parameters”, he explains as he shows us around his bright and spacious home and studio in Tokyo.

ACM: You were born and raised in Hiroshima. What did you do for fun as a child?

ET: I’ve always loved drawing. As well as that, I became obsessed with making plastic models of cars when I was in primary school. I would paint the body and even the windows and frames, so that’s how I got my paintbrush skills. I also did a lot of fishing and insect collecting. In junior high school, I started listening to music and, in high school, I became interested in fashion.

[When I was a child], many American families were living in my neighbourhood. By the time I was a teenager, they had all gone home. In retrospect, I think that many of them were research scientists related to the atomic bombing. I was born in 1966, only 20 years after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The city had been completely cleaned up and almost all traces of the bomb had disappeared.

Your career started with live painting and club exhibitions. How did it all begin?

In junior high school, I became quite obsessed with music. One of my favourite bands was the Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) and, when I was 14 years old, they were going to play in Hiroshima. I was too scared to go on my own, but was impressed by their visuals and the sound. I immediately bought the album Solid State Survivor and listened to it every day.