Japanese Artist’s Sketches of Hakka Impressions Hit Bookstores in Taiwan, Japan

Written by Hakka Affairs Council

TAIPEI, TAIWAN - Media OutReach - 1 April 2022 - Taiwan Hakka Sketchbook, a collection of works by renowned Japanese illustrator Amigos Koike while serving as a resident artist in seven Hakka townships along Provincial Highway 3, was published in Taiwan and Japan in March.

Taiwan Hakka Sketchbook published in Taiwan and Japan simultaneously

The book has its origins in 2019 when the Hakka Affairs Council (HAC), with a view to promoting the international visibility of the said cluster of Hakka communities along one of the most important thoroughfares in this country, invited the Japanese illustrator to become an artist-in-residence there. A Gunma Prefecture (Gunma-ken) native, Amigos Koike has worked as a freelance illustrator contributing to books, magazines, and ads since 1988. Over the course of his 21-day stay in Taiwan in 2019, he came up with more than 280 sketch and watercolor illustrations of the scenery, flowers, and people of the Hakka communities along Provincial Highway 3. After returning to his home country, he presented these works in a number of exhibitions to make Taiwan's Hakka townships better known to more Japanese.

The publication of Taiwan Hakka Sketchbook took more than one year of meticulous preparations as the HAC put together the Japanese illustrator's wonderfully conceived works and complemented them with texts fitting for his Hakka experience. Yo Kimiko, a multiple Japan Academy Film Prize winner whose father is a Hakka Taiwanese, was invited to write the preface to the book that extends a welcome to more Japanese to come to Taiwan and experience the Hakka culture and way of life in Hakka communities. To learn more about this latest publication, please go to the link Taiwan Hakka Sketchbook ^[2].

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