Rakugo is a traditional art form of Japanese entertainment using dialogue. People have been enjoying this form of entertainment ever since it has flourished in Edo period. The lone storyteller sits on stage and uses only a fan and a hand towel as props. With changing intonation, pitch, the tone of voice and a slight turn of the head, the storyteller plays two or more different characters.
Yanagiya Sankyo is one of the most popular contemporary masters of storytelling. By using a graphical and colourful style, my role was to showcase his excellence in lively human rakugo.
For the covers, pictures of the most impressive scenes of the stories were selected. My interest is to represent the stories by choosing and combining colours and the way to crop the pictures to tell the story. For the volume 13, blue for the background and black clothes were used to describe the man holding an umbrella in the rain at night. The comical story of “instruction of yawning” was expressed with pale yellow and pastel light blue on volume 12. A sneezing man, who had too much pepper, was described with the contrast between vivid red, blue and lime green on the 11th.
cover of vol. 12
cover of vol. 11