Ayumi Kasai Illustration Book

ISBN: 4-87519-402-1 C0071
Publisher: kufusha shuppan

"Look at the moon. How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising from a tomb. She is like a dead woman. One might fancy she was looking for dead things."

-Salome, by Oscar Wilde

When I opened this illustration book, a little advertisement insert from the publisher dropped out, and somehow I was not surprised to find Aubrey Beardsley's famous illustration of Salome on the page. Beside a collection of illustrations by Beardsley, the insert also advertised a survey of bishounen through by ages by Tatsuro Saneyoshi, as well as Ai no Kusabi and Agnus Dei.

In fact, Ayumi Kasai seems to sit right at the center of the curious and jumbled intersection of English Aestheticism, Japanese tanbi and June.  No artist today represent the concepts of tanbi, or aestheticism, so well.She favors a palate of off-tones, chartreuse green and fuchsia,  faded reds, evocative of both the Belle Époque posters and the Japanese ukiyoe.   All the trappings of decadence and decay are present. Butterflies and pomegranate, lotus flowers.  And like Modoru Motoni, she also shares the nostalgia for the Taisho era. Old-fashioned bicycles, elegant kimonos and Western style uniforms appear in the most unexpected places.

Many of you will know Ayumi Kasai as the artist responsible for the lush covers of Reijin. I can not count the number of times that I have bought Reijin on the strength of the cover alone.  This book, however, does not contain any of her Reijin covers, but most of her illustrations and artworks between 1989 and 1993.  There is also the inevitable set of tarot cards illustrations, with an exceptionally elegant set of minor archana.