Why Inoue Takehiko started Vagabond
Japanese blog Katsujichuudoku reports that the book “Manga note” has a part on magazine editors where they revealed the reason why Inoue Takehiko made the strange decision to leave Shounen Jump after Slam Dunk ended to start a manga on Miyamoto Musashi in the magazine “Morning”.
Apparently, editors from various magazines had approached Inoue Takehiko to start a new serialization on their magazine after Slam Dunk ended.
The reason for why he picked to go to Morning was because amongst all the editors that approached him, every one of them told him that he can draw anything he likes on their magazine, however, the editor from Morning was the only person who had a plan on the manga that they wanted Inoue to do in their magazine. The editor asked him to do a manga adaptation of Yoshikawa Eiji’s Miyamoto Musashi.
Though the author of the book also adds that the story was not heard directly from Inoue Takehito himself, so he is not 100% sure if the story is completely true.
The story is definitely very plausible considering the unexpected move and the completely different genre that he started on at the time. And if it is true, it is a great story, showing a different side to the manga industry, since there are more than a handful manga authors in the industry that wish they were free to draw whatever they want to instead of being forced to do topics imposed by the editors.
Edit: corrected a big mistake. Morning magazine, not Evening!
