Slam Dunk and Vagabond creator Takehiko Inoue illustrated the poster for the 16th World Kendo Championships, to be held May 29-31 in Tokyo. Crunchyroll rounded up some of the artist's earlier process tweets.

In Q&A on the 16th World Kendo Championships website, Inoue briefly discusses his experiences with kendo, and his approach to drawing his most famous works.

"Rather than from a distant viewpoint with similarly global aims and themes, I drew that manga [Vagabond] more from the perspective of someone on the ground and in the action," he explained. "Like being pulled along by someone in the shuffle, or following behind that character, or being on the same level as that character. So it’s not like I am intentionally selecting themes. Especially in the case of Vagabond. On the other hand, with Slam Dunk, there is a single type of theme: victory, accented by charisma and strength. I think that I was aiming toward a single type of value. I started drawing Vagabond in my 30s, so my values were different then from what I drew in my 20s. Maybe at the beginning I thought that “strength” would become the theme, but I had a feeling that it would be a different definition of strength than what I had been working with for Slam Dunk. I think that I myself have transformed as I’ve gotten older."

Inoue, who turns 48 today, recently announced the return of Vagabond to Kodansha's Morning magazine on Jan. 29 after a nearly year-long hiatus. A fictionalized account of the life of late 16th/early 17th-century Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, the series debuted in 1998.