Matt Schley
June 2, 2024 
There’s an old adage that Japan is a combination of the past and the future, and what better to prove that point than classic ukiyo-e woodblock prints representing the cybernetic world of Ghost in the Shell?
These prints, just unveiled by AKIHABARA PREMIUM COLLECTION, are based on the poster art from the 1995 Mamoru Oshii Ghost in the Shell film. The woodblock was carved in the style of Hasui Kawase, a prolific ukiyo-e artist who lived from 1883 to 1957. The prints are printed on Echizen washi paper made using traditional methods by Ichibei Iwano, who has been declared a living national treasure by the Japanese government.
There are a total of 300 prints up for preorder. One print costs 80,000 yen, or $509.
Here’s how Lionsgate describes the film:
Set in the year 2029 and following World Wars III and IV, a Japanese-led Asian block dominates world affairs. The alliance maintains its international supremacy through its elite security force whose cybernetically enhanced operatives tackle an array of hi-tech terrorists and other threats to international security. These augmented agents can “ghost hack” (i.e., download their consciousness) via the now omnipresent internet into other machines and human/machine cross breeds. Major Motoko Kusanagi, a cybernetically augmented female agent, has been tracking a virtual entity known as the Puppet Master with her crack squad of security agents. The shape-shifting Puppet Master, a rogue creation of a rival agency of the security apparatus, has concluded that it is a life form in its own right, “born in sea of information,” and requested political asylum and true physical existence in defiance of its creators.
Source: Comic Natalie
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