The Palace of the Dragon King: a Manual of Myths and Monsters

All About the "Servants of Ryūgū" Poster
over 2 years ago – Tue, Dec 19, 2023 at 07:18:29 PM

Hello backers!

I'd like to share some details about what is one of the coolest add-ons for this project: the Servants of Ryūgū poster. This is the first time I've offered a poster as a reward, and I am really excited to share this with you!

This idea was inspired by posters I grew up looking at as a child from publications like National Geographic, with size charts and comparisons of whales, dinosaurs, and so on. Those posters always stoked my imagination, and when I began to research all of the different type of Japanese mermaids for this book, I knew I just had to do a size comparison chart like this. And because the town I live in is famous for washi paper, I wanted to do something extra special and print this poster on washi. So it will be A1 size (33.1 x 23.4 inches) with a gorgeous washi texture.

So what are the servants of Ryūgū?

It all started with one folktale: in 1819 a mermaid appeared on the beach of Hirado, Nagasaki, and told people: "I am a messenger from the Dragon King. For seven years there will be a bumper harvest. After that, there will be an epidemic that will kill many people. But, if you copy my image and show it to people, all who see it will be spared." Then the mermaid disappeared.

This story spread like wildfire across Japan, because everyone wanted one of these magical amulets to protect against epidemics. And just like a game of "telephone," it changed a little bit with each retelling. The mermaid's shape and size changed. The place it appeared changed. The name it called itself changed. The message became more specific. And so after several years there were countless versions of this tale all over Japan. These mermaids can collectively be called "ryūgū no tsukai," or "servants of Ryūgū."

At first the images were hand-drawn, in brush and ink. Each one was copied from the last, and they vary greatly depending on the skill of the copyist. Later they appeared in printed form, on images that were carved into wooden blocks for quick reproduction. Thanks to the widespread popularity, several dozen of these images still survive today and there are certainly more hiding in storage all throughout Japan. Just as an example, this one below was discovered just last October, in the seaside town next to my home:

The 70 year old man man who discovered it had read an article about prophetic yokai like amabie in the newspaper, and how they had a huge boom in popularity due to the COVID pandemic. He remembered that his grandfather showed him this picture when he was a child, and he was so scared of it that he hid it under his family altar and forgot about it. The newspaper article jogged his memory, and he contacted the newspaper. I was lucky enough to be one of the first people to get to view the newly discovered mermaid in person. A friend who works in the newspaper arranged a meeting, and here I am with the piece last December:

One of the first things you'll notice is that the fish is pretty poorly drawn, but I think that only adds to its charm. I've taken care to reproduce the mermaids for this poster faithfully, with only a few cleanups. I wanted to show the styles just as the Edo period artists did, warts and all.

Here's a side-by-size comparison of another mermaid, which is one of my favorites in the bunch because of how bad the original drawing was:

I've only included mermaids that have illustrations to accompany them; no text-only accounts. However, there are still plenty of those! The poster has 26 different mermaids on it, and you can see just how varied they are:

What's more, all of them are drawn to scale! Here is our human diver, an ama, to give you an idea of how big these fish could get:

Of course, none of them compare in size to the largest fish ever recorded, which I couldn't even fit on the poster! So I had to make an overlay to include her:

The poster is bilingual (English and Japanese). It tells you the name, when and where they appeared, and the size of each mermaid. (And you can read the specific details about each of these mermaids in my books!) And since each one of these mermaids was said act as an amulet protecting viewers from epidemics, just imagine how much combined protection you'll get from 26 different mermaids on a single giant poster!

The data for this poster comes from this book, which was published earlier this month by my friend and colleague Nagano Eishun, an expert on prophetic yokai who spent the last couple of years tracking down the original artworks these mermaids come from and deciphering the nearly-impossible-to-read Edo period Japanese handwriting. (The book is in Japanese, but it's a probably the most authoritative source for not only mermaids, but prophetic yokai of all forms!)

You can get the poster by editing your pledge and choosing it as an add-on. The posters have free global shipping, and will ship out separately, probably in the summer, before the books go out.

Art Galleries, Prints, & Postcards
over 2 years ago – Sun, Dec 10, 2023 at 10:26:27 PM

Greetings backers!

Today I'd like to share some yokai art galleries with all of you! These galleries are full of the artwork from all of my books, including the upcoming images from The Palace of the Dragon King.

Google Drive link to the art galleries

I'm sharing these for two purposes. One is just so you all can enjoy the illustrations and look forward to the artwork you'll get in the books.

The other purpose is to help those of you ordering the Art Print (small or medium) add-ons! If you're ordering one or more art print add-ons, these are the galleries from which you can choose the art prints you'd like! Each of the images in these galleries has a title, and later on when the add-on surveys go out, you'll have a space where you can paste in the name or the URL of the images you like for your art prints.

These galleries will also be used to help decide the most popular images for the Postcard Pack add-on! The 20 most popular images from The Palace of the Dragon King will be chosen as the 20 postcards included in the postcard pack! That information will be collected later in the surveys too, but for now you can browse through and see what images you like!

I hope you all enjoy the illustrations! And there's still time to select Art Prints and Postcard Packs as add-ons, with free shipping to anywhere in the world!

- Matt

Last Chance for Early Bird Pledges
over 2 years ago – Thu, Dec 07, 2023 at 12:30:52 AM

Hey everyone!

The Palace of the Dragon King had a great launch week, with over 1350 new and returning backers joining the project. Thank you to all of you for helping this project soar past its goal so quickly this launch week!

This is a quick reminder that in just over 24 hours (by midnight on Friday, Japan time), all launch week early bird pledge levels will close!

That means if you're just browsing the project, or if you bookmarked it to back later, this is your last chance to become an early bird backer and make sure your pledge includes the free bonus set of postcards!

Also, if you backed a regular pledge level instead of an early bird pledge level by accident, this is your last chance to change that and switch into an early bird pledge!

I've got some more exciting updates coming soon! But for now I just wanted to make sure nobody misses out on their chance for free yokai postcards!

- Matt

The Year of the Dragon
over 2 years ago – Thu, Nov 30, 2023 at 07:02:59 PM

Greetings, yokai lovers!
And welcome to the Kickstarter for The Palace of the Dragon King!

We launched at 12 am here in Japan, and we shot past 100% funding at 12:02 am. I am floored, guys! Thank you all so much for backing this project! The fact that so many of you liked my previous books enough to return and support me again means a lot to me. And for those of you are backing for the first time, I hope that I can turn you into a life-long yokai fan.

2024 really will be the Year of the Dragon, which is awesome timing for this book; but to be honest I didn’t even consider that when making it. It’s just a very neat coincidence.

Now I’d like to answer a couple of great questions that sprung up overnight:

First, an announcement: please make sure that your pledge level is set to one of the “Early Bird Special” pledge levels in order to receive the bonus postcards! If you're not in an Early Bird tier, you won't get the bonus postcards! If you pledged to a non-Early Bird Special level, you can edit your pledge to switch over to an Early Bird one.

Can ebook backers order add-ons that have free global shipping?
Unfortunately, Kickstarter’s system is not complex enough to handle this. Kickstarter treats digital items and physical items separately, so people in the ebook tier are only able to order other digital items as add-ons. However, do not fret!Ebook level backers will be able to order postcard packs and the Servants of Ryūgū poster from the BackerKit pledge manager once the campaign ends!

Will you do a custom sketch in the collector’s editions?
Unfortunately the customized sketches proved to be a huge logistics problem last time and made shipping things a lot slower and more expensive. The collector's editions will all still be signed by theh author, but I'm not able to do custom signatures this time.

Can I buy these later if I can't afford them all now?
Yes, there will be a Backerkit pledge manager running for a couple of months after the campaign ends. You'll be able to buy all of the add-ons there, so if you can't afford to pledge for them all right now, you'll still have time after the Kickstarter campaign ends.

When will I get charged?
The campaign ends on January 5th, and Kickstarter usually takes a few days to process everything and start charging. You can expect to get charged probably sometime around January 6th through 9th.

That’s all for now! Thank you all again for supporting my book!