So a few weeks ago, my japanese teacher said they were having a contest to design a poster for the local Japanese Cultural Festival. deadline in 1 week. I asked what size (A4) and what month (May). 3 days later, I handed the first draft of this in. and it won! The only changes from first draft were correcting the kanji I'd gotten wrong (i've only been taking Japanese for a month and a half) and adding the date/location information.

I asked the month, so I could look up appropriate traditional flowers and colors for the month, May is Wisteria (fuji) and Iris (ayame). while looking for references for each, I found a photo of a kimomo with an iris design similar to this, and thought it would be a nice design element, and a good place to put text. I had a kanoko shibori patterm already built, so I layered that over the backgrount element. The pictures in the fan-shapes are Mt. Fuji, Tokyo, Ikebukuro Station, and an illustration from Genji Monogatari. The reasoning for picking each was to show Nature, Modernity, People, and History.