The grass on the other side is green until you die! How to deal with jealousy of others' work

The grass on the other side is too green!

Event posters, book cover art, merchandise, picture books, and so on. On Threads, Instagram, X... various illustrators are buzzing on social media with

“I drew this for a job.”

posts like this. Every time I see work in a genre I don't do much of, the buds of jealousy sprout like weeds—'Oh wow, I'm so envious... I want to do that... I wish I had done that'—and before I know it, my heart's garden is overgrown with weeds. It's what's known as 'the grass is greener on the other side.' The English idiom,

“The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”

is a phrase that means everything belonging to others looks better, but the troublesome thing is that the grass of one's peers looks even greener. So, if you get older and gain more experience, will you stop worrying about other people's gardens? Not necessarily. The prime example of this is the god of manga, Osamu Tezuka.

Even the god of manga thinks the grass on the other side is greener

When you think of Osamu Tezuka, you think of a genius everyone knows. A god-like figure who had a massive influence on the post-war Japanese manga world. However, even Osamu Tezuka was a bundle of jealousy. At a dinner party, he said to Katsuhiro Otomo, who drew AKIRA,

This story is passed down as the 'I can draw that too' incident, but Katsuhiro Otomo is 20 years younger than Osamu Tezuka. What's terrifying about this is that even for the god of manga, whom everyone looks up to, the grass on the other side is forever green until you die, and it never withers.

Give me a break, I think.

If you mention the god of the Japanese manga world, everyone would say Osamu Tezuka. Even the great Master Tezuka, who created so many masterpieces that it's endless—Astro Boy, Phoenix, Buddha—harbored complexes toward younger artists and spread jealousy. Even after becoming a figure worshipped as a god, the flames of jealousy were roaring. In other words, you can never be satisfied until you die.

If even someone called a god is like that, then for someone of my standing, it's only natural that the grass on the other side is green. I have no choice but to live with it for the rest of my life.

Burning jealousy to build your own garden

However, jealousy is also a powerful fuel.

“The flames of jealousy burn up”

As the saying goes, the emotion of jealousy is literally flammable and becomes fuel. There is no reason not to use this heat. Master Tezuka created 'Dororo' out of jealousy for the master of horror manga, Shigeru Mizuki, and created the super masterpiece 'Black Jack' out of a complex about gekiga works.

It's no use staring at someone else's garden with your finger in your mouth. Burn your jealousy, turn the turbine, and turn it into creative energy. The key is to mow, pluck, ferment, and compost the infinitely sprouting buds of jealousy, using them as fertilizer to landscape your own garden in your own way. It doesn't have to be a Western-style garden with lush green grass; a Japanese garden with budding fresh greenery or a wetland biotope full of living things is fine too.

I will create my own garden!

I will make a garden that makes my peers want to peek over and say, 'That's a nice garden!'

Thank you for reading.

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*This article is an updated version of one written in April 2025, with additional text and illustrations.