bed quilt in those days

I was often asked to research things, as I was the only one in the team who can search things in Japanese. Also often they've got images but didn't know the name of those thing - like those ‘Shinto - lightening’ I can look for the names, and collect some information about those things, ready for my team mates.

And often things were quite interesting, the things unknown or the reason why they are like so it never bothered me, looking into things.

Bed quilt was one of those things.
When we dressed Mike's bed room in Kira's, the designer wanted to know about how it was like. I went to fetch some information and they used to be a kimono.

This photograph, they said, was taken a little bit later than 47 era but you can see sleeves on quilt.
They put a lots of cotton inside so they are super warm. And they also said that people were wearing these in a house in colder days.

It sounded like one of these, over all fleece blanket - comfy to watch TV on your sofa! I found this quite funny - never changing lazy style... Imagine you wear your quilt has sleeves and you are wearing it in your lounge.

And pillows.

How can you sleep on those unnatural hight but these were the standard type of pillows of this era - because they had their complicated hair-do. They didn't wash, comb and do-ups their hair everyday so due to keep their professionally done style, they had to sleep on those.

I remember ladies in Drape section were making the softer bits on top.
We used to, and still do use the husks of buckwheat for the stuffing of pillow but as they can't get those in UK, they went for alternative, cous-cous. Similar feeling but might get moldy after a while....

Nothing to do letterings or calligraphy but those thing are still very much interesting for me.

more props for the village set

Among the things I dressed or helped making things for the village set were, often, didn't need to be me dressing. I wanted to be in that lovely set, I tried to find any excuses to extend my stay.

Only thing it had to be me is the water storage. Because our farmer's houses were built with wood and paper, it was essential to have emergency water storage in corners in a village.
That was our version of those after we found a reference from wood block print.

‘Water’ character on bottom and a house mark of a village chief on buckets. I pasted paper talisman on corner too to protect our village from fire.

The other things were nothing to do with calligraphy at all.
There was a village shrine at street corner, and they wanted me to dress inside. Could not find any suitable sitting Buddha inside, I decided to have a large rock instead of statue - might have happened at that time, some natural things can be an object of worship.

Neighbors change a cup of water everyday, giving some seasonal vegetables and fruits. Put one ‘Shinto lightning’ too. Mixture of Buddhism and Shinto.

It didn't need to be me at all to make some dried fruits and veg to dress our village houses but I also enjoyed making dried Kaki (persimmon)  and dried radish too!

Notice board in a village

I kept telling the designer how much I love working in a village set - I really loved being outside in fine May, June sky.

Then I was getting more props that I can work on.
The notice board was one of those.
At the wall of a house in a middle of the village high street, there was a board to put the public notice or any important messages.

I don't where this shape came from - it was there when I was told to go and do. A board with a pretty little hat on. Frame and boards are all nicely aged down.

I don't know either whether village people can read the notices. I suppose someone who can read used to tell what it is about to the who can't.

With a oil based paint, I put the heading ‘notice board to the who lives in Ako village’.
Then they can have a paper notice pasted everytime they get one.
Paper was slightly thicker than the normal Japanese handmade paper but has similar looking. I wrote the wording, sprayed to be water proof, and then aging spray.

Looking at now, the edge of the paper looks too sharp as they should not have any sharp knife!

I did put some more bits of papers and peeled them out to look old and used afterwards.

Sinto Lightning

They are called ‘si de’ in Japanese, if you translate this word straight forward, the meaning would be ‘dropped paper’.

They are the paper decoration, shaped like lightning so we called them as ‘Sinto Lightning’. They are to protect or divide area and places from the evil outside. Or to show us this is the sacred area.

It made me smile when I researched more, ‘si de’ shaped like lightning because they are meant to be scary to the evil - so we called lightning wasn't that far off!

I don't know why that was me to make those but I had been making them since I found how to make one. Even with some letterings which you would not see in Japan.

It was fun to find out how to make one and I used them for decorating the little shrine or prayer alters.

When we were preparing for the Kira fortress, our designer wanted to have some of these but really huge. We found some references from books too.

This is the picture from the festival held in Handa, Aichi, Japan. The familiar looking banners has some decorations on top. They were bamboo branches but some are shown with these lightnings.

We figured out how big they should be from the picture, and the buyer got some IKEA white poly blinds - as they would be sturdy in the rain outside.

Cut, folded, spray mounted and stitched together on the top of the high bamboo bars.

Could it be a little bigger and fluffier? 

The bamboo ones were used too on one of our tall banners at the fortress.

I don't why they are bamboos. We saw vary decorations - five coloured silks, three umbrellas,,, they must have some sort of meaning for each one I'm sure.

It was nice to know the proper name for this paper decorations which we don't know how to called them normally even in Japan and even how to make some. 

How to fold

I was helping to set up Mika's rooms after Kira took her away.
The Witch didn't like Mika at all and in our script she was harassing Mika in many ways while she was there.

One scene was Witch encouraged Mika to kill herself with powder, saying killing her is much easier and less damaged than forty seven of them, including Kai and Oiish risking their lives to rescue her.

Designer asked me to sort this powder package.
When I was a small child, the doctors gave me some paper folded sachets, powder medicine inside it. I don't know this was happening in 47's era but that was the only thing I could think of.

I decided to use poem written paper to make some sachets. Chose a poem, wrote it, photo-copied and cut into square.
Needed to know where the poem to be shown when its folded.

Poem is about the loving couple, feeling sad not be able to see each other that often.

I needed to ask Internet how to fold this sachet.

Used sugar from the kitchen to make it real, and there you have medicine sachets.

According to the script, this happens when the two ladies eating their dinners together. And the designer asked me to choose suitable chopsticks from the stock room. We could not find the suitable pair so we decided to paint the wooden pairs.

I don't know why it was me but they asked me to paint them using the safe paint as the actors may chew during the shoot. I've asked how to to the painter and decided the colour and design and there we had them.

I think the powder medicine gone out of the film but two ladies are still at the dinner table. I remember Witch pointed Mika with her chop sticks at the end tip of her snakey hair... But not sure they are my chop sticks or not.
But seeing these two ladies have been very well and active, I guess those were made safe enough.

Buddhist temple

There was a scene where we need to decorate the chapel which Mika prays for their ancestors. They said it is a room within Ako, so I thought it could be just a room with Buddhist alter. But it was going to be a proper little temple as an individual building.

We gathered information what it would be like.

Asano family was Soto sector of Buddhism and their temple are quite gorgeous...

with these golden danglings from the ceiling...

The buyers got many things from Japan and we gathered most of things from what they bought. But needed to make some new things.

Obviously my area was something with letters.

This is a tablet with the after death name written on and it often sit in the alter with Buddha. In my grand parent's house they only had a tablet without any statue of Buddha which is kind of usual for the small house hold nowadays.

I was writing Asano's after death name - which is one of the longest of kind apparently...

Try to fit into the space.

Yes, originally there was a name written on it but I wiped away - which is bad as I can go to hell... And then written it properly with paint.

And assembled with other bits. Its wooden and painted. It did not look that old.

This is only for Asano himself but you can often see the tablet with some names or just to say the ancestor of family of --- .
But they are not always golden like this.

Also the wooden tablets with prayers written. Not quite often we see it nowadays but we found them on many references of 16c and decided to make some.

They can be either as a medallion from Temple/Shrine to protect you, or you write your wishes and give them to temple.

I figured out how big the should be and prop men made some burned wooden tablets. I wrote them in different styles so that looks like written by many people. And magic Aging spray.

We searched and gathered lots of things from prop warehouse to make the room looks like a temple. Incense burner, lights, prayers books, vases and mattresses,,, And had to make some to finish the look.

You can see the tablets in the centre.

It is a shame that we cannot see this on screen - they shot the scene but never appeared. But it looked quite real in the end.

talismans

When we worked for the village of Ako, I just came across some references and thought it might be good to have some paper talismans from their local shrine / temple.

They are just papers but people at shrines / temples made prayer to make these paper special. So that they became talismans which have power to protect people, houses / area.

Here is some talisman samples I found. There is red chop on background then the main writings on top.

 This is a sort of sign book you can carry around, and when you visit temples / shrines, you can show this booklet to the monks. If they can they make special page for you. We call them ‘the red chop booklet’.
Above is from Sugimoto temple, Kamakura.

They are different from paper talismans but construction is the same...

Below is from Kumano taisha, Wakayama.
Their symbol is a special crow has three legs. And these crow pattern making special letterings here.
This is only seen in Kumano, and people used to make a vow to get these. If they break their vow after getting those, they'll be punished....
I personally love this one!

Anyway I made below combined with red chop and the prayer text with the name of their shrine.

 And printed onto tinted parchment like papers... and made them look older afterwards.

They appeared everywhere in the village - like this water tank on the corner.

It was fun to search all these designs of red chops and the writings...

permission of traveling through

They used to have check points and travellers usually need permissions to go through each feudal domains.

For the scene of Oishi and Kai got into Kira's castle with the traveling actors, we needed to make some permissions.

Still now we see wooden ‘pass’ in many sight seeing places as souvenirs. My first image of ‘pass’ was one of these wooden ones.

But then when I researched through references I only came across paper ones. Notes that says whoever carry this allowed to pass the check points.

Practical but still beautiful writings.

So we made some of those but we also decided to go for the wooden ones, too.
I just showed rough images of wooden passes to prop maker, and he wonderfully made some pieces of wood shortly afterwards. These guys can make anything marvelously.

Then I wrote, painted dirty afterwards with some stamps to make them look authentic but actually stamp only says names of flowers or something completely unrelated. Anyway.
They have never been seen on screen.

They say ‘going through’ 

maps & battle venue.

Out set dec team has one graphic designer and we made lots of things together with my Japanese writings and her creative images.
Maps of Kira's land was one of them.

I found many good examples of old maps mainly at some universities online archives which was very helpful for making these. I wished I could visited there or library to see the actual ones.

We, I at least, enjoyed making this with detail information which you cannot see but you can see the map on screen when Oishi and fellow discussed how to get into Kira's place.

The others we created together was the plan of battle festival.
It meant to be a celebration, show case of battle with Shogun with them and the festival was names Blue Lotus festival - that is why you can see the lotus flower in the middle.

You can't see this on screen at all which is a shame but again I enjoyed the process of making it.

There were also millions of flags on this scene which everyone who hasn't got any urgent job had to help painting, and others like arrows or gunpowder containers.

There is an actual tiger skin (unreal? not sure) I painted ‘tiger’ on the back as the Tiger clan battle flag. Again I could not find it on screen but it was there.

The skin was probably taller than me, on the working table and I was standing over it to paint one letter. I did not have a big enough brush and also it was not distant enough between the skin and me to look it properly but it was okay. 

There were many other stuff we made for this scene but I may talk about them later. 

sake bottles

From the beginning we knew we are going to need some ‘sake’ bottles for many different scenes.



 Looked for the references from books and online...


And the buyers bought many bottles in Japan and brought them back - I went to see them at the prop warehouse.

They've got telephone numbers on their bodies....


Of course there wasn't any in Ronin era. So we decided to paint them over to cover them and I write them over.






I used black emulsion to write ‘sake’ and the painter painted over again to make them look old and dirty afterwards.


I also wrote some in Budapest. They were for the battle scene at Dejima, when Kai fought vs Oishi and they were those special breakable ones - they break really easy so that people would not hurt when they are smacked.
And they were, really, easily breaking.


I painted with a guy who was actually making some more and I broke at least three in front of him. If I placed it on a table as we all normally do, it broke. It was like you handle empty egg shell. He was crossed a bit after I broke three or more but it was really interesting...

Books and flyers

 When we were just prepared before shooting started, we have still got time to try making something. There were a lots of books Buyers took back from Japan. Wooden printed.

I thought it was interesting - there are bigger margins on top than bottom, letters were printed to right on the edges of pages.Western manuscripts were completely opposite. Maybe we used to bind in a different way?
Wood cut letters looks interesting, too. They remind me R.Koch's gothic letters.





How lucky I was - getting paid, do this kind a thing!
This was my copy.








Then put cloths covers front and back, bound in Japanese way.

Later I also made a series of manner books in Kira's chamber. Never dreamt those are in actual shots.





Also in the references we found this lovely looking thing not knowing what this was. With online search help, this was a sort of manner books to show how to behave in the palace...  Where to enter, vow and dismiss from Shogun's place.





Copied diagram, make a little notebooks, put them in a case as in the references and tied with silken thread.
Used paper from Falkiners / Shepherds, of course.






Designer and Art Director liked it, wanted to use it as leaflets to the audience and fighters to Blue Lotus game. Show where Shogun is, each team were sitting.
‘Ok. How many do you need?’
‘Hmm about 200? Shooting is tomorrow after sunset.’






Had to use copier machine!
Chose paper which still looks like old handmade Japanese paper that copier likes, folded and glued.







There you go, 200 of them!
I bet no one notice these also on a film, too!