Ghosts of Japan

Ghosts of Japan is an interesting modern view of Japanese mythology and folklore. That uses Japanese craftsmanship. This zine is a blend of culture and craftsmanship

First the physical item is just a few pages with images printed onto delicate rice paper and hand stitched together. The whole zine itself has a traditional feel as it uses methods of production. The zine maker is unknown but they did leave a “hanko” a stamp on the last pages maybe of the maker?

The zine maker used traditional methods print the images onto rice paper and uses Yotsume Toji: Japanese four-hole binding method.

The choices of images for the content is chosen well, the cover of the zine is cleverly crafted around the  Japanese 1000 yen note which the real currency has the image of Hideyo Noguchi (bacteriologist ) on the cover and the images inside are of ghosts of Japan. The traditional type of ghost that is from Ukiyo-e print.

Everything about this zine has the hand-crafted. The images which reminds of the traditional Japanese woodblock printing method Ukiyo-e. Images are of from Japanese folklore and mythology from the lady with the stretching neck to the more familiar ghost umbrella “Kasa-Obake”.

An interesting zine that makes one consider how mythology and folklore are part of our lives from films, animations, story-telling traditions.

We have a copy in our collection: Library Catalogue