'Japan: Breeding ground for innovative approaches to Western traditions.’

There have been a few surveys of graffiti in Japan recently and they have all been pretty decent, there seems to be the same high level of interest in Japanese writers as there is in Japanese culture in general. Although little of what seems to get painted uses Japanese letter characters some elements of this style are clearly visible. Overall, this book covers some new ground and so is a good compliment and accompaniment to the others.

This is a well designed publication, but aesthetically the cover is really nothing short of dire, sometimes you can look at it and think that you understand what they were trying to do and then you lose it again. You could probably pass by this thing in a shop a million times before you ever noticed it; which is a real shame, but what’s in a cover? Once you discover this book, pick it up and have a look inside you’ll be very pleasantly surprised. You’ll find a pair of fold out pages inside the front and back covers which allow good space to display some decent looking productions.

The author and Kress start proceedings off with a pair of interesting introductions. A few pages are then given over to each profiled writer; we are given an introduction to them through questions and answers. There is an impressive array of different styles of work on display here, with so many influences in the melting pot and such a deep and ancient respect for the art of lettering this comes as no great surprise. Some of my favourite sections were those given to piecer Kress and bomber QP, these individuals are both very good writers in very different ways. Also to be seen is the work of people such as Suiko, Emar, Tenga, Sasu and Kami, Butobask, Esow, Very and Fate amongst others. Next up are pages dedicated to large Japanese cities, for example Osaka, Hiroshima and Tokyo place. There are pages of photos from each of the cities showing street bombing and hall of fame pieces, there are also a few little facts about each city; for example, did you know that the population of Tokyo is around 12.8 million people? Finally, there is a section showing the work of some foreigners in Japan, contained here is a fairly weak selection of stencil and paste up work from the likes of Bast, Faile, TLP, WK interact and Obey. The only good stuff in this section is really some bombing from NeckFace and a classy looking Josh piece by Twist.

I like this book mainly for the photos and I’m really glad that Kress and QP are included, but there are also a whole load of other good photos to geek out over This is one for the fans of Japanese writing.

Review by Sami Montague.