Komako Sakai on the gouache she keeps replacing, and the rabbit she keeps drawing

Komako Sakai is one of the most important picture-book illustrators working today and is, outside Japan, almost completely unknown. Born in Hyōgo in 1966, she trained at Tokyo University of the Arts in the early 1990s and published her first picture book in 1999. Since then, twenty-six titles. The Snow Day (2005, English ed. 2009). Mad at Mommy (2008, English ed. 2010). Hannah’s Night (2013, English ed. 2014). A quiet, gouache-and-pencil aesthetic so consistent that you can identify her hand from a single panel from across a room.

We had been trying to interview her since 2024. She does not give interviews — not in Japanese, not in English, not in person, not over email. In March of this year, she sent us a brief note saying she would answer five questions, no more, by post, in handwriting. The five questions, with her replies, are below. The original handwritten letters are in the studio’s archive.

Nightnight.art: Your gouache palette has been consistent for nearly thirty years. Do you mix the same colors each time?

Sakai (in translation): I have used the same five tubes since 1997. They are made by a small company in Osaka. The company has changed owners twice. The color has changed slightly each time. I have, each time, ordered a small quantity of the new batch and tested it for three months before using it in a book. Two of the five tubes are no longer made; I have a quantity in storage that will last me approximately seven more books. After that I will need to find a different solution. I have not decided what.

NN: You return to the rabbit again and again. Why this animal?

Sakai: The rabbit is the right shape for a child’s eye. Its ears reach upward; the upward motion suggests attention. Its body is compact; the compactness suggests safety. Its movement is sudden and short, then still; the rhythm matches the way a small child reads a page — a moment of looking, a moment of stillness. I have tried other animals. The cat is too independent. The dog is too eager. The bird is too far away. The rabbit is patient. I learn from the rabbit.

NN: In Hannah’s Night, the central image is a small girl alone in a dark house, holding a peach. The peach is rendered in a brighter color than anything else on the page. Why?

Sakai: Because the night is not the subject of the page. The peach is the subject. The night exists so that the peach can be seen. I tell my students: find the peach. The whole image organizes itself around the peach. If you do not have a peach, the image has no center, and the page closes.

This is, I think, the same as the warm accent your magazine has written about. I read that essay. I agree with it. We are saying the same thing in two languages.

NN: A young illustrator wants to do the kind of work you do. What is the one piece of advice you would give?

Sakai: Do not finish the page on the day you start it. Begin the page. Leave the page. Return to the page in two days. Add one thing. Leave the page again. Return after another two days. Remove one thing. The page is finished when it asks you to stop. If you finish the page on the same day, the page is rushed, and the child will read it once.

The economic system does not reward this practice. I am aware. I do not have advice for the economic system. I have only advice for the page.

NN: You have not given interviews for nearly thirty years. Why now?

Sakai: Because I am no longer a young person, and I am beginning to worry that the quiet practice will disappear with my generation. I am writing more letters. I am answering more questions. Not because I have become extroverted — I have not — but because there is a real possibility that, in the next twenty years, the picture book as a slow, patient form will be replaced by something faster. If it is to be replaced, I would like it to be replaced by something at least as good. For that to happen, the people who would build that better thing need to see what the slow form is, in case they have not seen it.

I read your magazine. I am replying because you appear to be one of the people who can see.

— Komako Sakai’s most recent book in English is “Mable and the Park” (Gecko Press, 2023). The five letters are dated March 12–April 4, 2026, and are reproduced in full in the print edition of Issue 04. Translation by Sasha Lim.