Ohatsu and Tokubei - A Love Story

As a photographer I consider myself pretty able to capture a veritable feast of ideas depending on the occasion: whimsical and ethereal, dark and brooding. Weddings. So when my amazingly creative friend Jess - aka Xelyna the Gothic Lolita (www.thegothiclolita.blogspot.com) requested my help on a high art project I set myself the challenge. Jess has spent some considerable time in Japan and so has an enviable knowledge of local customs, subcultures, history and folktales. One of these tales, the story of Ohatsu and Tokubei, goes a little something like this: Ohatsu is a concubine, Tokubei, a samurai. They want to marry, but due to a series of unfortunate dramas, find they have no choice but to run away in the dead of night, and commit suicide in the forest. So I've cut the premise way down, but in Japan, this story it to them like Waltzing Matilda is to (some of) us. When Jess was asked to contribute to an art exhibition, this is what we came up with...