#the aware was given by the Japanese embassy to France so… very prestigious

[beedok]

Do you know which tweet of Eguchi's has him confirm Hibari is trans? I haven't been paying much attention to his feed since it's mostly atm about his art exhibitions.

It was actually in an interview Eguchi did in France, due to the French translation of Hibari having been recently released and put up for an award.

“J'ai choisi un personnage transgenre car cela participait au ressort comique, la question transgenre au Japon à l'époque (dans les années 1980) appartenait à un milieu très fermé[…]”

Eguchi doesn’t speak much French to my knowledge, but the interview was done with the manga’s French translator serving as Eguchi’s interpreter, the pair having spent a couple of years in correspondence to make sure the translation was up to Eguchi’s standards (and they did indeed win the award for the manga’s translation), so I think it’s fairly safe to take ‘transgenre/transgender’ as a correct interpretation of Eguchi’s modern position on Hibari.