Zine’s Mate 2010

Tokyo Art Book Fair, organized by Oliver Watson and Hiroshi Eguchi, was held for the second time.

Welcome to the Tokyo Art Book Fair 2010, aka Zine’s Mate, held simultaneously in two venues, 3331 Arts Chiyoda and Vacant in Harajuku.

Inside was a wealth of paper, printing, illustration, photography, writing, binding, stitching, gluing and stapling.

First stop is the Chiyoda venue, formerly Rensei Chugakko Junior High School, which re-opened as a community art center this year.

Here visitors could browse from a wide choice of stalls and vendors offering their zines and publications for sale.

Just inside the entrance were racks of individual zines for sale, from first time zine makers to zines with only one edition.

How a zine is bound can be a difficult issue. There were examples of all the options: Japanese stab binding, simple folding and wool stitching can be seen here.

There was a never-ending choice of original material. Here is a pom-pommed zine, and some tiny, tiny books.

This book, from Okando Zines was printed using the now occultly recognised Gocco screen printing machine.

There was some last minute preparation (or maybe repair work) going on.

Through the white corridor leading from the entrance you could see a huge selection of both amateur and professional art books.

This nice lady from Knee High Media informed me they were celebrating fifteen years of magazine-publishing, and had constructed a giant S from a number of their publications.

Aya, who made these zines, complimented my nail polish and said the colour matched her cover. Turns out she had really amazing books. She sold me her sample copy of the white one too, I felt bad but she insisted.

You can see her work at www.rainorshinebooks.com.

I recognised this book from another shop that stocks zines in Shimokitazawa. The girls told me they share one book, starting from either end and meeting in the middle.

www.pappappap.com

Tokyo Art Beat’s own Cameron McKean was supposed to have a stall selling his zine. Unfortunately the zine didn’t get completed on time, and neither Cameron or his girlfriend were anywhere to be seen. His friend Mark (www.makingends.com) took over and hijacked the stall.

LOOK! Even Daido Moriyama had a stall...Not really, but there was a display of art books past, including some from the grandfather of the Japanese photo book.

The Chiyoda venue was hot, busy and vibrant. After exhausting all that was there, the Harajuku venue Vacant was the perfect end to the day; a quieter place to look over purchases, have a ginger ale, and read some of many art books displayed in the 'library'.

...including back issues of Studio Voice.

TABlog also has a photo report of last year’s fair.

Amy Fox

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Amy Fox

Her story starts in 1985 just north of London in the shoemaking capital of England, Northampton. After a gap year spent in shoe town, she studied at Nottingham Trent University. She spent three years analysing various media from various left wing perspectives, resulting in a B.A in Communication Studies. Her itchy feet got the better of her, thus followed jaunts around America, Europe and Asia, finally settling in Japan. After spending six months in 100% rural Nihon, this “life enriching” experience became a little too “enriching” and she headed to the bright lights of Tokyo to find her fortune. She can now be found working on her photographic and developing skills, with work centred on everyday experiences and her toy animals, raiding rental record shops, updating her blog, sporadically studying Japanese, and making photocopied picture books. <a href="http://averagecabbage.tumblr.com/">averagecabbage.tumblr.com</a>

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