Philadelphia based artist/designer Mirim Seo sent her Special Sashimi project to me last week. For the first two or three pages, I thought “Oh, cute. A book about Sushi” … and then a few pages later, I gasped.
“Special Sashimi is about the slaughter of dolphins in Japan. The story topicted in this book is true. Each year Japan fishermen kill around 2,300 dolphins as a form of pest control, which has been accepted as tradition. And the killed dolphins end up in freezers and served sashimi in Japan. Illustrated with hand-sewing and watercolor on fabric. With this book, I hope to spread the true and help stop the senseless killing of the Taiji dolphins.”
Such a sad story, so beautifully told. If you’re interested to learn more, please visit this project on Mirim’s site.
incredible work. what a brilliant way to deliver such a message.
Well, I’m Japanese myself and I’ve never eaten Dolphins in my whole life… it’s a sad truth that happens in this one region in Japan and I’m strongly against what they do to those poor dolphins. That said, it’s absolutely not true that “the special sashimi” is very common in Japan. The book make it sounds like the entire Japanese population are dolphin eaters… beautiful work tho, but sad that it’s gonna cause misunderstanding to demonize all Japanese.
Where and when can one purchase the book?
Manamana – I’m relieved to hear that it’s not “common”! Hopefully one day it won’t even be on a menu! (and I can’t speak for the artist, but I don’t believe her intent was to demonize all Japanese – I hope her intent was just to bring awareness to the killing of these dolphins)
Saver – you can buy the book on her site via the links in the post, but it appears that her site is down at the moment. Hopefully it will be back online soon.
beautiful work. thanks for sharing it.
This is beautiful but feel so much sorrow from the graphic. Anyway, the artist Mirim Seo’s was down. Unable to access and error message is all in Korean. Hope to see the full project!
Wow, beautiful, powerful, horrifying. Thank you for sharing this.
Hi, thank you so much loving my project. Now, you can access to my website.
To Manamana, sorry to make you feel bad. I wanted to show the fact about the slaughter of dolphins in Japan with the different point of approaching. So, it makes it seems like eating Dolphin sashimi is truly popular in Japan. I am sorry and I did not intend. I hope you can understand me. Thank you!
While I enjoy the art aspect of this, and understand that people will feel for the killing of animals, this is the cycle of life. The dolphins are being eaten by people, they aren’t just killed for sport as in the clubbing of seals or things like that. What about pigs and cows being strung up and stabbed in the neck so they bleed out before we make them into meat? Its a sad truth that we can’t get our meat without killing animals. While I do understand the emotion of it, and agree that it is sad, especially since dolphins are such intelligent creatures, unless everyone commenting on this is a vegetarian, it is a bit hypocritical. If anything, I can certainly strongly agree that their method should be more humane, but after googling this issue, it seems that many people rely on this economically.
[…] Hat tip: The Jealous Curator […]
so touching
Ashley,
dolphins are self aware, are intelligent, care for their sick and elderly; they are individuals. Few animals have this sort of non-human personhood; killing and eating a fish or a chicken is not the same.
You probably won’t come back to read this, but anyone else who does should look at the research.