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A nuanced approach to Japanese literature in the project of a student of Ƶ
16 August

Alina Anisimova, a student of the Higher School of Printing and Media Technologies of Ƶ, has developed a design project for the design of Kobo Abe's book «The Box Man». Scientific supervisor - Associate Professor of the Graphics Department of Ƶ Alexander Kobyak. The project became Alina's thesis.

The book project was developed mainly for fans of translated complex foreign prose, who prefer to supplement their perception of specific text material with an appropriate illustrative series. The result was the development of a design layout of the novel «The Box Man», in which not only a special «nuanced» approach to Japanese translated psychological literature was found, but also an interesting, relevant for readers of different age categories imaginative series.

A modern book in the perspective of such a design acts as a symbiotic subject that can not only arouse the reader's directed interest, but also surprise him, immerse him in his unique space through not only the text being presented, but also with the help of a complex visual-associative accompaniment that interprets the work in one way or another and concretizes it.

The work on the work of Kobo Abe assumed the active use of the ethnic and cultural originality of the material, however, adjusted for the Japan of modern times without going into the interpretations of ancient art and visual stereotypes. The most interesting variant of continuity and reference to the cultural context was the idea of using hanko (or inkan) as an additional visual material in playing and completing collage illustrations, as well as as a pleasant find for, for example, Orientalists or translators, to whom familiar signatures can provide additional interest and immersion in the narrative.

In the interpretations of the «The Box Man», objectivity is also very conditional: this book is a multifaceted novel–parable, in which there is a dense series of surreal metaphorical images, and the depicted space then expands to vast labyrinths of dynamic streets, then shrinks to a crack in a cardboard box. Thus, for the illustrations, it was possible to choose the most «concentrated» episodes, which, due to a certain system of alternation, would create either a picture of the imaginary real, or an impossible inner one.