Hirohiko Araki and Naoki Urasawa Draw Breathtaking Posters for the Tokyo 2020 Games

In the lead up to the Tokyo Olympics this year, 20 posters created by some of the best and most renowned artists will be exhibited in the entrance hall of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo until February 16. The posters were created in the themes of the Olympics and Paralympics and “use them as posters in order to foster momentum in the build-up to the Games,” the website for the event explains.

Manga creators, Hirohiko Araki (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) and Naoki Urasawa (20th Century Boys, Monster), were among the 20 artists chosen by the Artists Selection Committee Members to create posters that will go down in history.

Hirohiko Araki (manga creator for JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) was inspired by The Great Wave off Kanagawa woodblock print by Hokusai to create a Paralympics poster that oozes traditional Japan. Araki said in a comment that he “imagined the gods of sports descending on Japan from a sky filled with clouds resembling turbulent waves” and found it difficult to decide on a color for Mt. Fuji, but settled “on a honey color.”

Naoki Urasawa (manga creator of Pluto, Monster) ran with the sports manga motif for his poster about the Olympic games. Urasawa commented that “sports manga played a significant role in the evolution … of Japanese manga” because of the “thrill of heated matches” and “excitement of sporting events” that are captured in the ink. His poster is his “attempt at representations that transcend sporting events, race and gender.”

The above posters, alongside the 18 others by famous Japanese creators such as calligrapher Shoko Kanazawa and film director/photographer Mika Ninagawa (Ningen Shikkaku, AKB48 music videos “Heavy Rotation” and “Kimi wa Melody”), will be shown off in the entrance hall of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo in Koto City, Tokyo until February 16, free of charge.

Source: Tokyo 2020 website via Comic Natalie

—-

Daryl Harding is a Japan Correspondent for Crunchyroll News. He also runs the YouTube channel about Japan stuff called TheDoctorDazza, tweets at @DoctorDazza and posts photo of his travels on Instagram.