The brief for this exercise is to create a book cover using opposition to suggest conflict. I really had no idea what to do so started browsing through fiction at Amazon. I came across an interesting looking book that I haven't read, about a Japanese priest morally compromised by an affair with his mother-in-law. The blurb at Amazon didn't provide enough detail, so I went in search of a fuller summary, which you can read here.
The current edition of the book features an ink brush painting of three figures walking through a snow covered village. The sharp black and white contrast suggests something of the story's moral backdrop, and the isolated figures in a hash landscape its psychological tone. What it lacks is any suggestion of Buddhist or religious elements.
Two Japanese covers are completely opaque. The earlier version features watercolors of fruits or vegetables, the more recent version something left to the imagination of the reader.
My initial thinking began with a bodhi leaf, of which I have several brought from Bodhgaya, the reputed site of the Buddha's enlightenment. With what, though, could I juxtapose this? I needed something suggestive of lust, desire, passion. How about color? Red, burgundy, purple suggest just this and I had just such a shirt! And to my great fortune one of my leaves was nicely shaped like a heart and had a crack in the center, which represents nicely the main character's broken ethics.
And so it came to be.
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