[papermodelfan]

These were two splendid models that Tony Cole built, for his gallery show of tatebanko in Tokyo (called "Paper Samurai"). Tony sent them by air freight to participate in the show. One is a of a dramatic fight in the snow from a moment in Japanese History involving the "47 Ronin". (Leaderless Samurai who are revenging the death of their chief). The attacking Ronin are clad in amazing costumes with black and white triangular panels, which turns out to be the way the local firefighters dressed at the time, so it was a disguise... The other models is a darker scene from a medieval legend "Raiko the Spider slayer" involving an ill lord, an evil Earth Spider, disguised as a monk, I believe, and a whole lot of nasty things from the underworld. This one has three cleverly done moving parts, tons of small spiders, and the ground is littered with headless corpses of people who fought the big spider and lost. Good clean family fun, no?

Tony then donated them to the Auction. I wound up taking Raiko home, and Peter Heesch took the other. These are hard to transport, and Raiko will not travel again soon, but 47 Ronin may reappear at a future IPMConvention. He and I planned to give it a permanent home at the Japanese Embassy, but never got a reply from the letter I sent them.

As YuG says, the originals were printed on translucent paper, so could be illuminated from behind with a candle. We have not explored that dimension yet, but some of them (like maybe Raiko?) might be totally different with internal illumination.