[images: 1) Screenshot of Maiji/Mary Huang's exhibitor page on the TCAF Digital Marketplace, with a creator bio, followed by products. 2) Photo of Now Recharging Books 1, 2 and 3 showing the main robot characters in different states of eyes-closed rest in ink and watercolour with gold foil stamping; 3) Surprise! zine & print pack preview showing an assortment of artbooks, zines, and prints; 4) Surprise! Genjimonogatari print set showing an assortment of ink illustrations from the series.]
It's the wonderful month of TCAF - the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, one of my favourite events! Showcasing 700+ comics, zines, graphic novels, art prints, and other amazing items from 90+ artists, publishers, and comics creators from all over the world!
The physical festival takes place April 29-30, but the TCAF Digital Marketplace runs from April 21 to May 7!
It's super amazing because you can explore and shop from all of these creators in one place instead of dealing with separate online stores/shipping. You can imagine this is such an impressive thing to coordinate, and so great for small indie creators and the readers who support them alike!
Shop page
Direct link to my exhibitor shop page
In my shop, you'll find the print debut of Now Recharging Book 3, and lots of other comics, zines and print goodies. Including surprise packs with great deals!
In celebration, I'm also doing a show special on the Genjimonogatari deck! You can use the coupon code TCAF2023 for a 15% discount while TCAF 2023 Digital Marketplace is on!
[image set: Pair of images. 1) genjimonogatari deck mint tin case with ink and watercolour art and calligraphy resting on gold washi/Japanese paper with plum blossom designs. 2) The case next to two cards featuring ink and watercolour illustrations lying next to a stack of the rest of the cards in the deck, also on the same gold washi. A ruler appears alongside for size comparison.]
Signal boosts appreciated! <3 Please check out this event, virtually or in person, if you can!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Qualityā Free Actions
Free to watch ā¢ No registration required ā¢ HD streaming
the womans names and what they mean in the tale of genji
I want to ask about the names of the woman in the novel and what they represent, on what the flower and nature of the names are symbols used to represent on their personality and fates in the novel.
[images: photos of the genjimonogatari art/card deck showcasing 1) the cover of the mint tin container; 2) the mint tin open with back of card lying on the lid and Flower of Purple card on the top of the pile; 3) rows of the cards laid out neatly; 4) the cards with Moon Above the Gate card on top; 5) a hand holding the cards from the side to show their edges and the trim of the art]
Itās here!! Yaaaay!!
Years of reading, rereading, drawing and obsessing later, I'm super excited to be able to say that the genjimonogatari card deck is a reality!
It's a portable mini-art deck featuring all 55 illustrations I created in the Genjimonogatari series from 2018 to 2022 in ink and watercolour and comes in a cute little mint tin. You can enjoy it as a straightforward visual art deck, or use it as a tool to help deepen your understanding of the many fascinating themes and relationships in the Tale of Genji - and as a playable deck for fun minigames!
If you check out the product page, there's a companion PDF booklet - for free, you don't need to buy the physical deck to be able to download and read it!
It includes:
A high-level introduction to the Tale of Genji and why it's so amazing
Ideas and examples for using the deck as a tool and to create/play an assortment of simple Tale of Genji-themed games
An overview of all 55 cards by illustration accompanied by my amateur attempt at compressing the richness of every single character down to one very short paragraph each to help you get to know them
A big thank you to @ancient-trees (who creates a wonderful fantasy adventure webcomic called Tamuran) for helping me to review the booklet. (Any mistakes are my own. If you find any horrible glaring typos/issues in the booklet, let me know and I will do my best to update/correct where possible. I have spent way too long flipping back and forth on footnotes and commentary and references... so grateful for Royall Tyler's detailed footnotes and appendices!)
All 55 illustrations of the Genjimonogatari series in one collage!
One of the main ideas behind this series is that you can combine the illustrations in different ways to showcase various relationships, thematic groupings, and key narrative connections. Many of the illustrations were designed with these potential groupings in mind, so youāll notice things like similar or mirrored/complementary compositions and colour palettes. These groupings make great print displays or inspirations! For me personally, itās also a fun way to learn, reinforce and even discover new things about this rich literary masterpiece!
Read on for some groupings!Ā https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/2717844
See the full list of illustrations
All illustrations available as prints on INPRNT (my INPRNT shop / direct link to the Genjimonogatari series collection)
[images: 1) Preview sample of Genjimonogatari series cards with symbols that look like red stamped seals. 2) Screenshot of file folder with art files of the packaging, card back, card front files. 3) Screenshot of Affinity Publisher with page layouts of the accompanying booklet]
I've been working on something different: a card deck for the Genjimonogatari illustration series! It can be used as an art deck or as the base for a selection of simple Tale of Genji-themed games. I'm also putting together a companion booklet (PDF download only) to go with the cards. The booklet will provide context/background, starter game ideas and instructions, and summaries of all the characters featured in the illustrations!
Below the cut is my progress, originally posted on my Pillowfort.
Iāve really wanted to turn the Genjimonogatari illustration series into a card deck ever since the overall direction became apparent to me. My ambitions for this are quite low; the main reason Iām doing this is because I would like a card deck to play with and create different combinations and pairings in a way that isnāt feasible with a static artbook or prints intended for display. Something that can be used for portable aesthetic appreciation/inspiration as well as very simple little Tale of Genji-themed games.
When the lovely @delphina2kāĀ told me a while back about Game Crafter, a POD (print-on-demand) service for game designers, I got super excited. Surfing through their catalogue, I discovered they have a mint tin card deck option that fits exactly 55 cards. I was smitten by how small and cute it is. Look at it!!
In addition to the card deck, Iām also putting together an accompanying booklet - a PDF-only download to keep costs down and things simple. It'll provide a bit of background and context for the Tale of Genji, and explain how to come up with simple games using the cards with a few starter ideas and instructions. The games can become more complex/interesting with more knowledge of the story and characters. There will also be a summary of each illustration, listing the characters featured and a significantly condensed/cleaned-up version of some of my commentary from each illustration post. I am very grateful to past me for writing so many walls of text when I originally posted every picture, as itāll be easier to cull down some of those thoughts than to reread the entire Tale of Genji and write them anewā¦ itās pretty funny rereading some of my random or sarcastic comments about the characters and the story, haha.
What actually took the most time with getting this card deck together was deciding on symbols and who gets what. The idea is that some cards will have these marks that can be used in different games for special rules or scoring or whatnot. There are three basic symbols:
āDestinyā (star/sparkles) - people associated with prophecies or special destinies in the story
āImperialā (a chrysanthemum, inspired by the imperial crest of Japan) - royal people who thus have super special significant social status - emperors, empresses, princes, princesses etc.
āKeyā (a simple key shape) - main characters and select prime plot movers
Hereās an example of how it looks on the Niou and Kaoru cards, and on the super powerful OTP of the gods card (the only one that will have all three symbols).Ā
[image:Ā same image as the first one in this post. Left to right: His Highness of War with Imperial and Key symbols; Fragrance with Destiny and Key symbols; Present Day with Destiny, Imperial and Key symbols.]
At first I thought the imperial designation was going to be the hardest to figure out due to complicated Heian era court society rules and my lack of expertise, but then the deeper I got into it the more I was contorting myself over trying to decide which characters count as ākeyā without basically slapping it on nearly every card. Since the Tale of Genji doesn't exactly follow the structure or characterization techniques of a typical Western novel, and is so long with so many characters, things get blurry... I debated with myself for a long time, constantly changing my mind over days and weeks, before finally settling (I think) on a list and now I donāt want to think about it anymore. Iām putting a lot of disclaimers in the booklet that this is only one limited interpretation. Hooray for disclaimersā¦
Currently the symbols affect approximately 32/55 cards. To test my ideas out, I cut some scrap paper into teeny tiny cards and ran a few test games with them to make sure things made sense and were workable. While playing I actually found some interesting patterns and relationships with the characters I wouldnāt have thought about otherwise!
[image: Photo of small handmade paper card mockups in a pile next to a pencil for scale. The paper cards have the info of each card written messily in pencil.]
Itās my first time trying something like this, and I hope it works out! After months of hemming and hawing and fiddling with card back designs, I finally sent off my files today and am looking forward to seeing how they turn out in a month or so! (Production and shipping challenges continue to abound through the industryā¦) In the meantime, I'll keep working on finishing the booklet. Fingers crossed on all fronts!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Qualityā Free Actions
Free to watch ā¢ No registration required ā¢ HD streaming
[images: Three photos showcasing various groupings with the Genjimonogatari art/game card deck. The cards are laid on top of a print of a painting with clouds of gold leaf, dancers in costume and flowering trees]
I've been playing with fun groupings with the genjimonogatari deck! Here are a few I haven't mentioned or shared previously! See below the cut for more info as well as some thoughts about the making of the illustrations themselves, and links for more info on the deck!
Suzaku's Story Makes Me Sad So Here He Is With the All the Women He Loved But Lost Because of Genji: Aoi, Oborozukiyo, Akikonomu, and of course Suzaku. When illustrating them, I purposefully made sure all of them were facing in the opposite direction Suzaku was facing. Oborozukiyo, his true love, was the one that I really concentrated on making a complement to his card, aiming for a bit of a "sun and moon" kind of feel. Akikonomu needed to match Reizei, but her colours work really well with Suzaku. In Aoi's case, I thought a lot about having her work as a triad with the Rokujo Lady and Yugao.
Maiji's Favourite Illustrations: Utsusemi, Nokiba no Ogi, Kurodo no Shosho, Tamakazura, Yokawa no Souzu. All of the illustrations were challenging in their own ways. It's easier for me to feel satisfied with the project as a whole than with each illustration, because the bigger picture perspective helps me be less focused on (obsessed with?) all the minute issues I have with every individual piece. But now that I've finished the series, I feel like I can be a little more objective - or at least more objective than when I was working on them! These five are probably my favourite illustrations from the series, and in many cases, they are more minor characters. Not too surprising - fewer expectations means less pressure. Utsusemi (Cicada Shell) and Nokiba no Ogi (Reeds Beneath the Eaves) were probably my biggest pleasant surprise; I love how they turned out as separate artworks, and as a pair!
Maiji's Favourite Characters: Kaoru, Suzaku, Koremitsu, Akashi Lady, Hanachirusato. Aaaaand Yugiri, who's falling off at the end because I'm still sometimes conflicted about him. But to be honest it's really that one Yugiri chapter... Can you see a pattern in the kinds of characters I like? haha. I would have put Kaoru in "Maiji's Favourite Illustrations" as well, but part of me feels like it's mostly because I have a hard time distinguishing between my personal bias for the character and how well I actually think the illustration was executed. Hanachirusato was the very first illustration in the entire series, and I was pretty happy with how she turned out... otherwise I probably wouldn't have continued with the rest! I also like Koremitsu's quite a bit as well, especially in terms of how the patches of ink break in ways that make me think of dapplings of light or rain. The inspiration is the scene in Chapter 15 Yomogiu (Waste of Weeds) when he makes his way through all the dew-drenched weeds to the house.
The full illustration series: http://www.humangray.com/genjimonogatari-series/
The card deck: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/genjimonogatari
Individual prints on INPRNT - for charity
The background in these photos is the back of The Tale of Genji - A Japanese Classic Illuminated, featuring Tosa Mitsuyoshi's depiction of Chapter 24 Kochi/Butterflies. You can see more about this series here. The book is actually the exhibit catalogue for a glorious exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art back in 2019, an incredible showcase of fandom history across a millennium from Buddhist artifacts to manga. There were even rare objects on display for the first time outside of Japan from Ishiyamadera, the temple where, according to legend, Murasaki Shikibu wrote the novel. I sadly wasn't able to see it in person but the catalogue itself is also quite glorious.
Sumori (āNest of Protectionā) is the granddaughter of Prince Hotaru, Genjiās younger half-brother, but you won't find her in a single line of the novel we know today as the Tale of Genji.
You will find her in the apocryphal chapter āSumoriā.
For hundreds of years there have been writings floating around claiming to be secret or ālostā chapters of the Tale of Genji. Many fakes, of course, but itās not an impossible idea. A thousand years is a long time, and the tale was written and shared as it was being created. Distribution was a super manual process of copying, and there were certainly errors, edits and tweaks by the author (or authors, depending on what theories you subscribe to) and by the copyists. The Tale of Genji we have today is remarkably coherent in no small part thanks to the diligence of centuries of fans.
There are three chapters generally considered to have higher-than-average likelihood of being legit parts of the Tale of Genji written by Murasaki Shikibu. Of these, Sumori appears to be the best documented. It exists only in fragments today, but these fragments contain people and pieces of poetry that are actually mentioned in some very, very old critiques and analyses of the Tale of Genji - including genealogies that map out the relationships of the characters. Such references have aided in its partial reconstruction. The gist of the pieced-together plot is that Niou is pursuing Sumori, who canāt stand him and his philandering ways. She falls in love with Kaoru instead because he's so noble and sincere. When Niou tries to go after her again, she's like "get away from me you creep" and runs away to the mountains, where Kaoru visits her.
There are several theories about what Sumori really is. One is that itās a Kamakura-period fanfic written by a Kaoru fan unhappy with how the Uji chapters ended. If this theory is true, itās a classic move in the long-running history of fandom, and it wouldnāt have been the only historical fanfic attempting to right perceived wrongs against a beloved character. (Go Team Kaoru!)
Another interesting hypothesis is that Sumori is actually an early draft of what would later be polished into the Uji chapters. It has quite a few similarities and parallels, particularly Niou and Kaoru in a love triangle with a woman who then becomes a nun. If this theory is true, itās intriguing that the original concept is a lot more sympathetic and favourable to Kaoru - giving him a āgoodā ending - than the version we know today, 1,000 years later.
Fascinating, right? As a creator and participant/appreciator of fandoms, Sumori sums up so many things I love about stories in general and Tale of Genji studies in particular!
You can read more about the "lost" chapters of the Tale of Genji here: https://yab.yomiuri.co.jp/adv/chuo/dy/research/20100204.html
Reading the Tale of Genji is a fantastic resource for this and many other Tale of Genji apocrypha: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/reading-the-tale-of-genji/9780231537209
And aaaahhhhhhh I did it!! Nearly five years later, the Genjimonogatari series is now complete! For fun, I've included some wip photos showing the progress of this particular piece, including my trying to figure out the palette from looking at my fountain pen ink swatches, on my Pillowfort!
You can see all 55 illustrations one for each chapter of the tale (including the blank chapter Kumogakure), on my website. The commentary for each illustration is here on Tumblr and on Pillowfort!
Nowā¦ I hope to do something with all these illustrationsā¦ when I have time...
humangray.com / Print available on INPRNT / Genjimonogatari series
Something thatās easy to forget, especially when reading the Tale of Genji from a modern perspective, is that the characters are rarely āaloneā. Though the text may not explicitly indicate this, the main characters we follow are usually accompanied by retainers, servants, and so on. The cast is huge, as befitting a courtly world full of complex family and social relationships. Many ābackgroundā characters do a ton of grunt work in propelling the story's events, bringing news (or gossip); transporting, hiding or impeding people; and so on.
I found that even though a lot of characters appear so briefly, I had a strong sense of them as people, with their own stories. That I was just seeing tiny slices of them. Maybe itās because of the taleās framing, that someone's telling you about all these events with side commentary. Maybe itās because, more than once, one of these seemingly fleeting mentions reappears later, with a lot more presence. So I came to feel that anybody could easily burst to the forefront of the narrative; it was just a matter of perspective. As I noted before, whenever I browse the Tale of Genji again, I frequently run into people with fits of recognition from the future, because I didnāt pay attention to them the first (or second, or third) time around: āHey! That guy who appears later, this is him as a kid, singing! I didnāt realize he shows up way before his more narratively-famous brother!!ā (Kobai, little brother of the notorious Kashiwagi.) āOh I didnāt realize this lady appeared so early before I actually noticed her!ā (Hanachirusato, who by the time I started paying attention was already living in Genjiās house.)
Obviously I do not have the time nor willpower to depict everyone, though quite a few of the less prominent folks did make it into some of my other illustrations because I love obscure characters. For everyone I didnāt catch, these two images represent all of those wonderful consequential and incidental figures who create the rich fabric that is the Tale of Genji. A world long ago, yet remarkably familiar.
Below the cut are a random smattering of people I thought about as I was working on these pieces. There are, of course, so many more!
These are the third- and second-last illustrations in the Genjimonogatari series - #52 and #53 in a 54-illustration set I've been working on intermittently since 2018. Wow, I canāt believe it! Only one more illustration left! The last one will feature a very, very special character.
humangray.com / Print available on INPRNTĀ / Genjimonogatari series
Taifu no Myobu. I kind of think of her as the female Koremitsu, because her mom is also one of Genjiās nursemaids. She seems pretty close to Genji, though she only appears in one chapter. Their relationship is more casual, āhang out ācause we want toā, and at one point Genji even worries about how she must be judging him based on his treatment of another woman heās pursuing. The two of them come off more like brother and sister to me, especially in Yamato Wakiās depiction. They hassle each other about their relationship habits, and he keeps bothering her to introduce him to more women. She tells him about Suetsumuhana basically to get him off her back.
Jijiu. She serves Suetsumuhana and appears in two chapters, is a smart cookie and not afraid to take initiative. She verbally answers Genji on behalf of Suetsumuhana when the latter is too shy and nervous to respond, surprising him by how boldly she speaks as her mistress. The chapter when sheās forced to leave Suetsumuhana is very touching. The historical AU fanfic Inaka Genji actually blends Jijiu and Suetsumuhana together, flipping their characters around as one of AU detective Genji's counterplots. I personally find Murasaki Shikibuās original approach more nuanced and real, but Inaka Genji was meant to be a fun ride, and I thought it was interesting to see that take.
Ukon. One of many Ukons in the story, as lots of serving ladies have similar nicknames. She serves Yugao and then Murasaki after Yugaoās death. Her miraculous reunion with Yugaoās daughter Tamakazura many years later in a chance encounter is very memorable, and was listed by some historical fans as a top scene when answering ancient memes about favourite Tale of Genji moments.
Michisada, Nakanobu, and Tokikata. These guys are very special because those are their actual names! Theyāre not high-born nobles and aristocrats so the narrator calls them by name. Michisada and Tokikata are Niouās retainers, while Nakanobu is Kaoruās retainer. Funnily enough Nakanobu is also Michisadaās father-in-law. Mustāve been extra awkward when Niou and Kaoru were trying to keep Ukifune away from each otherā¦ I read a paper or a book that basically described these guys as Niou and Kaoruās thugs, which cracked me up. I feel like it was Tyler or Seidensticker who said this, but I canāt remember.
Hyotoda the Bungo Deputy. His father, Dazai no Shoni (the Dazaifu Assistant) was the husband of Yugaoās nurse, who took care of Tamakazura after her mother Yugao disappeared. Before dying, the Dazaifu Assistant asks his three sons to help get Tamakazura back to the city where she might find her father To no Chujo. Hyotoda is the only one who dedicates himself to this, working with his mom and sisters to protect Tamakazura from getting married off to Taifu no Gen and escorting her safely away. Yamato Waki depicts him as a very kindly-looking and caring man, weeping and thinking of the family he had to leave behind in order to fulfil his duty.
