[Locale Part II] Process.

part ii: zine

Not gonna lie for the zine I was pretty lost?? Initially I had ideas but like I didn’t know it had to be..ABSTRACT….so when I heard that I was like Oh No how??

But eventually the plan of action was to have the spreads follow a chronological order of changes within the cemetery, with a focus on unique Japanese visual cues:

  • First spread: Pre-war period
    • Origins of the Cemetery: Karayuki-san
    • Family tombs: Kamon family crests
  • Second spread: Wartime
    • War memorials
  • Third: Post-war period
    • What do we see in the park now? Joggers, students…

first spread: pre war spread

Since I wanted to incorporate the karayuki-san, who were the first to be buried in the cemetery, as well as the interesting motifs in the kamon family crests found on some of the graves, I thought I could combine the two into one spread.

In total I found seven different crests (Some of them might not be crests like the non-circle one??? I can’t be certain.) and tried my best to reproduce them even though a lot of them were very faded.

Karayuki-san in Singapore. Source: Edmund Yeo. http://www.edmundyeo.com/2011/10/karayuki-san-forgotten-japanese.html

I sketched out karayuki-san from a photo, purposely leaving out their faces (apart from not wanting to burden myself with facial features) to drive home the point about the forgotten souls that rest in the place, as a lot of them died in the conditions they were under, with diseases like cholera and dysentery spreading. 🙁

Original pencil and brush sketch of the photo (middle two karayuki-san)
Cleaned up sketch on Ps
Final result

Continue reading “[Locale Part II] Process.”