Daily Book Graphics #1338

©1965 / Design: Martin Bronkhurst

Daily Book Graphics #1139

©1970 / Design: R. Scudellari / Cover woodcut, Women with Shimada Hair Style, Walking on the Bridge from the Tokaido Series by Shiko Munakata

Big in Japan

Last year Graniph, a Japanese T-shirt company, asked me to license the above faux book cover to be used on a shirt. I just received a box of shirts in the mail on Friday, you can check it out here. It's a crazy, globalized world!

Daily Book Graphics #163 / The Fourth Protocol

I can't tell you too much about these books, they appear to be 1984 Japanese editions of Frederick Forsyth's novel the Fourth Protocol. A friend of mine had these at a street sale over weekend. Pretty cool.

Daily Book Graphics #114 / Birds of Japan

I got this 2007 field guide in Tokyo last year. I wish I could have purchased more Japanese field guides. The bird and insect sections of the chain book stores are probably ten times the size of what you get at the average Barnes & Noble here. Despite the title being in English, the only roman characters on the inside are the Latin names of the species.

I love the logo for the Wild Bird Society of Japan.

Daily Book Graphics #37 / Insects of Japan

I bought Field Guide Vol. 11 Insects of Japan (©1993) in Tokyo last year. I generally don't like photography based field guides (despite being the author of one), but this one does it right. The photographs in this book are all very crisp and give more space around the subject than most photo guides.

Japanese Matchbox Graphics

A friend just sent me this link to an amazing Flickr set of Japanese matchbox graphics from the 20s, 30s and 40s. I recommend viewing it as a slide show.

Kumataka / Mountain Hawk-eagle

I have always been curious about the raptor depicted in the two images below. I finally got around to figuring out what it is, (not terribly difficult in the age of the internet), I picked up some Japanese field guides when I was in Japan, which gave me the latin name. The species name is Spizaetus nipalensis, in Japanese it is called a Kumataka and in English it is known as a Mountain Hawk-eagle, a weirdly awkward, but kind of cool name.

Fukagawa Susaki Jumantsubo (5/1857) from the 100 Views of Edo series by Hiroshige

Kumataka catching a monkey, illustration from Nigiri Kobushi (The Clenched Fist) a Japanese manual for falconry published in 1750, I found the image in Japanese Book Illustration by Yu-Ying Brown, 1988

I am not sure about the title of this book (the only English says Field Best Encyclopedia vol. 8: Wild Birds in Japan) but it was one of the better photo based field guides I could find in Japan. The Kumataka is clutching a duck in the picture, just like it is clutching a monkey in the illustration.


This is the best illustration based field Guide that I found in Japan, it appears to be their closest approximation to the Sibley Guides here. The Kumataka is in the upper right. I like the cover.

Miwa Koizumi

I recently met Brooklyn-based Japanese artist Miwa Koizumi while we were both installing our pieces at Socrates Sculpture Center. I've since become a great admirer of her work, check out her content rich website. The pieces she made at the park, like the ones above, are fantastic re-workings of plastic bottles.

This hasty installation shot I took at Socrates does not do the justice to the piece. There are three drums in all.

Another Japanese Acquisition

I'm going to give this one to a friend. Presumably this figure is based on a character from anime or manga. It's a bit hard to imagine the convoluted story that would require an armed cat woman (note the ears, the tail is not visible in this picture) with WWII airplane fuselages for legs.

More Fantastic Purchases from Japan

I bought the above figures in Akihabara, the nerd district in Tokyo, last week (the top one is 5" tall and the bottom one is 2.5" high). On top is Pestar, a monster from the Ultraman TV series. Ultraman was a show with the exact same aesthetic and production values of the Godzilla films. When I first saw the Pestar figure I was hoping he was some kind of mushroom, but apparently he is conjoined starfish twins with a bat's head, who lives in the sea and devours oil. I could find almost no references in English to Pestar on the web, but the ones I did find, seemed to think that he was one of the lamest Ultraman monsters ever.

The second monster should be easily recognizable to any culturally literate person, it is Gamera the 200 ft long, jet powered turtle. Gamera was introduced by the Daiei Motion Picture Company to rival the success of Godzilla. I've always liked Gamera, even though I have probably only ever seen half of one movie. What got me was a scene where a boy and girl in school uniforms are watching Gamera fly overhead and the little girl yells "Gamera's my boyfriend!" This trailer tells you what you need to know.

TMI

Believe it or not these bathrooms are not part of some showroom, but actual bathrooms for residences! (I spotted these from the 7-11 parking lot previously mentioned in the Black Kite Post) I assume that there is some sort of shade that goes down when one enters the room, but still, it seems a bit much.

Back in B-Lo

I got back from Tokyo yesterday afternoon, it was a 22 hour trip from door to door, incredibly short considering the distances involved. I still have a few more Japan related blog posts to put up before I get back into Occidental concerns. Above is a label that I cut off a Dr. Pepper bottle, it looks like they have a slightly different marketing strategy in Japan. Make sure you click to enlarge the picture, there is a lot of dripping Dr. Peppery detail in there. It's hard to say what I like best about the illustration, is it the phallic guns that squirt Dr. Pepper or the tiny purple top hat she is wearing?

Black Kites

Black Kite over Kamakura

Black Kites over a 7-11 parking lot

Last weekend I took a lot of pictures of Black Kites. They behave a bit like gulls or vultures, Wikipedia describes their behaviour thusly:

Black Kites will take small live prey as well as fish, household refuse and carrion. They are attracted to fires and smoke where they seek escaping insect prey. They are well adapted to living in cities and are found even in densely populated areas. Large numbers may be seen soaring in thermals over cities. In some places they will readily swoop to take to food offered by humans, their habit of swooping to pick up dead rodents from roads often leads to them being hit by vehicles. They are also a major nuisance at some airports where they are considered important birdstrike hazards.

I watched one swoop down and hit the heads of two teenage girls who were eating a snack in a 7-11 parking lot. With a wingspan of about four feet it was pretty intimidating. I was urged by my companions to retreat to the safety of the car.

Pimped out Japanese Trucks

PingMag has an interview with photographer Masuru Tatsuki about his decade long project of photographing elaborately decorated Japanese trucks (Decotora in Japanese).

Saturday in Kamakura/Chigasaki

Huge Medieval Buddha

Typical open-jawed train sleeping

Coy in the temple gardens

Masashi & Yuka

My first (and hopefully not last) view of Mount Fuji.

A few more pictures here.

Turn of the Century Japanese Toy Design

There is an interesting set of images of turn of the century Japanese toy design at BibliOdyssey. They link to a large archive of images here. For the greatest Japanese children's television program about a rageful red octopus go here.

More Tokyo Images

More Tokyo images at Flickr.

Tokyo / Second Half of First Day