VOLUME 11
SAITAMA
Kawagoe Little Edo, Chichibu Night Festival & Hitsujiyama Shibazakura
An Iwatsuki hina doll waits in its paulownia box. Her face is gofun, ground oyster shell layered and polished, the brows drawn in a single sumi stroke that took the painter forty seconds and forty years to learn. The hem of her juni-hitoe is silk over silk over silk, ten weights of dyed cloth stacked until the bottom layer barely shows. Saitama makes things like this. North of Tokyo, pressed between the Arakawa floodplain and the Chichibu mountains, the prefecture has always been a workshop town in disguise: Kawagoe's kurazukuri warehouses behind their black-tile roofs, Omiya's bonsai courtyards where a kuromatsu can be a hundred years old and waist-high, Kawaguchi's foundries pouring cast iron since the Edo period, Chichibu where the Yomatsuri floats sit through eleven months for the twelfth. Forty pages here. Sayama tea in a hand-turned caddy. A boatman poling the green Arakawa at Nagatoro. The painted wolf on a Mitsumine omamori. In a glass case in Iwatsuki, a second doll waits her turn, brow not yet drawn, face still blank as new snow.
“Forty pages, north of the river.”
- 40 original Saitama Prefecture illustrations
- Single-sided pages to prevent bleed-through
- 8.5 x 8.5 inch square format
- A mix of detailed and breathable compositions
- Brief editorial introduction to Saitama
- Anyone with an interest in Japan, its crafts, and its older castle and warehouse towns
- Adults who use coloring for relaxation and quiet focus, in the spirit of detailed mindful line art
- A considered gift for friends and family with a love of Japan, of tea, or of bonsai
The Saitama coloring book is Volume 11 of Sora Mikami's Prefectures of Japan series, a 47-volume collection that explores Japan one prefecture at a time. It gathers 40 original black-line illustrations of Saitama. It draws on Kawagoe Little Edo, Chichibu Night Festival, and Hitsujiyama Shibazakura, alongside the everyday scenes Saitama considers its own.
You will find Kawagoe Little Edo, Chichibu Night Festival, and Hitsujiyama Shibazakura, together with the landmarks, food, and quiet corners that give Saitama its character. The compositions move between detailed, intricate pages and calmer, more breathable ones, so there is something for every mood.
Yes. The book mixes detailed illustrations with more open, breathable designs, so beginners and experienced colorists alike can settle in. The large 8.5 x 8.5 inch square pages give you plenty of room to work, and every page is printed single-sided.
Colored pencils, markers, and gel pens all work beautifully. Because every illustration is printed single-sided on white paper, you can use heavier media without bleed-through onto another design. Slip a sheet of card behind the page if you want to be sure.
It is Volume 11 of a planned 47, one book for every Japanese prefecture. The volumes can be coloured in any order, and together they sketch the whole country one place at a time. Saitama sits in the Kanto region of Japan.
