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We see snow-capped mountains, a white roof, and pine trees.
The Straw Hat Pirates, O-Tama, and Komachiyo are depicted against a snowy landscape.
On the left side of the illustration, smiling Jizo (guardian deity of children, travelers, and the departed) statues are arranged in a line. Conical hats are placed over their heads.
“Kasa Jizo” is a well-known folk tale in Japan. One snowy New Year’s Eve, an old man places leftover hats he could not sell on the heads of some Jizo statues. Despite being unable to move, the statues visit the old man’s house to repay the favor.
In this piece, the Straw Hat Pirates and O-Tama are the ones placing the conical hats on the Jizo statues’ heads. Chopper is placing a hat on one statue, while Nami carefully wraps a scarf around its neck.
It seems they were one hat short, because O-Tama has run off with Luffy’s hat so she can give it to the Jizo statue closest to us.
His mouth stuffed with rice balls, Luffy rushes after O-Tama with his hand outstretched, paying no mind to the rice balls dropping to the ground. Sanji laughs as he grabs Luffy's hood to stop him.
Another curious feature is the raccoon dog at Zoro’s feet. Its body is a tea kettle. This seems to be a reference to another Japanese folk tale, “Bunbuku Chagama.” The story is about a raccoon dog that disguises itself as a tea kettle. In this illustration, the snow under the raccoon dog’s feet is melting, likely due to the heat from the tea kettle.
This humorous work ties Wanokuni together with Japanese folk tales.
*The work is made up of a set of 2prints
*Signature on prints (seal)
In 1992, Oda received the Weekly Shonen Jump Tezuka Award for Wanted! Serialization of ONE PIECE began five years later in 1997. In the same year, the first tankobon (individual) volume of the series was released. In 1999, the title was made into an animated series. The first ONE PIECE exhibition was held in 2012.
In 1992, Oda received the 2nd place prize in the 44th Tezuka Award for Wanted! (under the pseudonym "Tsuki Himizu Kikondo"). In 1993, Oda was selected for the 104th Hop Step Award for Ikki Yako. In 2006, ONE PIECE chosen in the Japanese Media Arts Festival 100 Manga Selection. In 2012, Oda received first prize in the 41st Japan Cartoonists Association Award for ONE PIECE. In 2018, Oda received the Kumamoto Prefecture Honorary Award.
The magazine carrying the series was Weekly Shonen Jump, The year the series started was 1997. A heroic pirate adventure story revolving around a treasure known as "One Piece." In this adventure, Monkey D. Luffy sets out to become the King of the Pirates. The work was made into an animated television series in 1999. On June 15, 2015, One Piece attained the Guinness World Record for most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author. The total worldwide circulation exceeds 500 million copies as of August 2022.
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Shueisha Manga-Art Heritage has entered into a business partnership with Epson, entrusting them with color management support and printing. The pigment inks used in the company’s inkjet printers are lightfast, preserving the original colors even under lighting that would cause the dye-based color inks used in the original artwork to fade.
On the other hand, original manga artwork is highly prone to fading, especially when it comes to color illustrations created using dye-based markers. Illustrations created for the covers of manga magazines, frontispieces, and comic book covers were not originally intended to be displayed or appreciated as works of art. They were designed to be printed and viewed by readers in magazines and comic books. Illustrations were often colored over copied line art, and in some cases, the characters and backgrounds were cut out and pasted in separately. To transform such illustrations into manga-art, they need to be retouched, such as by correcting discolored areas.
Since 2008, Shueisha has been working to digitally archive manga. Initially, we captured color originals using the EverSmart Supreme II, a high-precision scanner, and in 2015, we began using the Phase One IQ180, a high-resolution digital camera. Since 2020, we have been using Phase One’s Cultural Heritage series. This has allowed us to capture and preserve colors beyond the reproducible range of commercial printing, while also retaining the texture of the paper on which the illustrations were created.
Using this digitally archived data and imaging equipment, we retouch the artwork, restoring the original colors as they were when the illustrations were created. To produce the final print, color is carefully managed at each stage, from the original artwork to the captured data and printing.
For illustrations that were created digitally, we perform color management and printing in the wider-gamut Adobe RGB color space, instead of the sRGB space typically used in commercial printing, resulting in deeper and more vibrant colors.
