Blue Moon: The Ono no Komachi Poems is a collection of tanka written in the voice of Japan’s famous waka (tanka) poet, Ono no Komachi, who lived and wrote in the Heian Court, Japan’s golden era of literature.
The challenge was to create a book respecting the traditional Japanese format, yet be able to accommodate a western style text block of individually folded pages that could be printed and reproduced with both text and images. Traditional Japanese paper was used for the cover, in a pattern that was used for kimonos for hundreds of years. It was wrapped as a brush mat would be, with a bone clasp. Each toji, as it is known, is created by hand using traditional Japanese tools and hand-sewn in a toji pattern. Original artwork was created to complement the poems, including the cover title.
