Akihiro Yamada is a Japanese illustrator and manga artist best known for his work in the sub-genre of historical fantasy, as well as character design for video games and other media. All of this art is very accomplished—he’s great with lengths of billowing fabric—while giving no hint at all of his earlier detours into cosmic horror. I’ve been familiar for some time with a couple of his covers in the “Cthulhu” series (c. 1988–1993) but hadn’t gone looking for the entire run until now. Doing so turned up another series of books published in the early 2000s by Kurodahan Press, Lairs of the Hidden Gods, with a quartet of covers in which the traditional Japanese print-making theme of the four seasons is given a demonic twist. All of these books are reprints of stories by Lovecraft and other writers, past and present, with the Kurodahan series being introduced by Robert M. Price. The artwork, meanwhile, is very different in style to Yamada’s more recent output, to an extent that you wouldn’t connect these covers with his fantasy illustrations without seeing a credit.
I’ve long been curious about Japanese representations of the Cthulhu Mythos. Lovecraft’s fiction has obvious attractions for the Japanese imagination but the art used by Japanese publishers doesn’t always travel overseas unless the artists themselves capture the attention of aficionados in other countries. ISFDB is a very useful resource but it’s still lacking when it comes to the listing of foreign editions. There’s more out there to be discovered.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Lovecraft archive
These illustrations are really great, but I love the final showings from The Lairs of the Gods. Off subject: Have you ever noticed that profiles of Greek statues such as the one on the upper left of your headliner resemble the young Elvis Presley? xox
Yes, the last four are the best, a shame he doesn’t seem to have done more like them.
It may be the lips and nose on statues that bring Elvis to mind. Many years ago I had to do a painting of Elvis in a very god-like pose which gave me an opportunity to consider the mythic qualities of his persona.
Praise the dark gods – these are wonderful! Monsters spotted amid flowers, or seen emerging from undersea grottoes… Many thanks for unearthing them… Of course, looking upon them may drive your readers insane…
Especially the ones at the top here remind me a bit of the illustrations by Kihachi Nara for The House on the Borderlands – you can see some of them here:
https://x.com/HisadomeK/status/930203605847519232
The image with the yellow border is a newer version where the cover, but not interior, illustrations were redone by a different artist pair (which I am a fan of).
I hadn’t seen Nara’s illustrations anywhere else, and his typical style seems totally different from these.
Thanks, I’d not seen any Japanese illustrations for Hodgson before! Something else to go looking for. This is what I mean about there being more to be discovered, it applies as much to Hodgson as Lovecraft.
And just yesterday I was looking for a good image of Cthulhu to use as wallpaper on the phone…
Glad to be of service!