I wanted this piece to be kind of a cross between traditional Japanese art and a great poster for a piece-of-crap samurai/yakuza movie from the '60s, complete with ridiculously Romantic captions. My poem in the top right reads:
Twilight to dusk, we fall like two beasts, leaving a trail of blood.
The only thing I believe in is your sweetness. And this one blade.
My insatiable lips gulp your sweetness like a grape sake.
There may not be daybreak for us, but right now, right here,
We shelter each other in love and feel each other's pulse in our nakedness.
I wanted this piece to be preposterously over the top...But there is something undeniably sincere and meaningful about the allegory of lovers holding onto each other, trying to shelter each other from a hostile world and their inevitable fates. Speaking of allegories, the characters on the katana (samurai sward) reads, "To Live Is To Fight."
A ronin was a masterless samurai. And geishas, contrary to popular belief, do not necessarily sleep with their clients. They are highly educated in the arts, and are trained to be intellectual and emotional companions for their clients. Sexual services may or may not be exchanged, at her discretion. There is still a small population of practicing geishas in Japan.
The cast toward the bottom are some of my favorite actors and actresses (some of them have been dead for many years). Some of them are porn stars. The pink, bow-tie shaped insert toward the bottom is one of those color film sales pitches (ie. Technicolor, Metrocolor, Eastman Color), with which film studio's tried to lure lagging audiences in the '60s, each competing with their own "unique" brand of color technology, which was essencially the same thing as the others. I took this charming one which was used by an obscure Japanese adult film studio simply called Movie, and it says, "Sexy Color."