Tokyo on Foot

This prize-winning book is both an illustrated tour of a Tokyo rarely seen in other guides and an artist's warm, funny, visually rich, and always entertaining graphic memoir. Florent Chavouet, a young graphic artist, spent six months exploring Tokyo while his girlfriend interned at a company there. Each day he would set forth on his trusty bicycle or on foot, with a pouch full of coloured pencils and a sketchpad, and visit different neighborhoods. This stunning book records the city that he got to know during his adventures. it isn't the Tokyo of packaged tours and glossy guidebooks but a grittier, vibrant place, full of ordinary people going about their daily lives And The scenes and activities that unfold on the streets of a bustling metropolis. Here you find salarymen and career women, hipsters, uniformed students, grandmothers, shopkeepers, policemen, and other urban types and tribes in all manner of dress and hairstyles. A temple nestles among skyscrapers; the corner grocery anchors a diverse assortment of private dwellings, cafeacute;s, and shops-often tangled in electric lines. The artist mixes styles and tags his pictures with wry comments and explanations. Realistically rendered advertisements or posters of pop stars contrast with cartoon sketches of iconic objects or droll vignettes, like a housewife walking her pet pig, a Godzilla statue in a local park, and an urban fishing pool, 400 yen per half hour. This very personal guide to Tokyo is organised by neighborhood, with the local police precinct building or koban introducing each "chapter." Hand-drawn maps provide an overview of the neighborhoods, but what really defines them is what caught the artist's eye and attracted his formidable drawing talent. Florent Chavouet begins his introduction by observing that, "Tokyo is said to be the most beautiful ugly city in the world." With wit, a playful sense of humor, And The multicolored pencils of his kit, he sets aside the question of urban ugliness or beauty and captures the Japanese essence of a great city in this truly vital portrait.

Florent Chavouet is a young graphic artist and author living in Paris. When he returned from Japan, he realized that all the observing and sketching he had done in Tokyo led to his evolution as an artist. This is his first book. florentchavouet.com