Akumu means Nightmare in Japanese. As Dora states – “We get our inspirations from Japanese horror movies and hardcore music. We translate these inspirations into large graphics that we screen print onto American Apparel t-shirts.” I’m a big fan of Japanese horror, in fact most Asian horror of the 1990′s and beyond have trashed anything on par from the States. Japanese horror dwells in places you wouldn’t want to dream, confronts ideas you’d rather not tackle, and delivers images that imprint on your subconscious far more deeply than any trash gore flick could manage. I was expecting to see some references to Original Japanese versions of The Ring or Ju-on: The Grudge, (not the awful American remakes), but copyright concerns mean t-shirt designers have to think “outside the box” when it comes to appropriated influences.

Cut Cut at Akumu Ink. I’ve seen quite a few scissors on t-shirts before, I unlike many it seems think the knife rates higher in fear factor than scissors, although I will make an exception for this work which seems to splatter the pain right across the design.

This work suits my current mood perfectly, botched operations and pain beyond death are part of the staple diet of many Japanese horror films, there seems to be a lot more attention to detail paid to the art of biological and physiological horror in the East, roaming through an asylum of fear, a culture of self-harm, and the inevitable suicidal tendencies that follows.

Japan is unique for its compulsion for suicide cults without involving any pseudo-religious organisation or belief system. Perhaps it’s the pressure to succeed or the fear of failure, but death seems to be as fascinating to Japan as violence is for America. Painfully cute in pink!

Impaled is a far more sombre design, it conjures up images of Vlad the Impaler, the ancient practice of trephining (or trepanning) – which is the ancient practice of cutting holes in the skull – supposedly to let out ‘the bad spirits’ (perhaps I could do with a little of that). The gothic Edgar Allen Poe gothic style of the image is certainly striking.

I particularly like the perspective of this composition, the cannibalistic arrangement of skulls is something I’d expect you’d see in some last lost tribe of South America, or something back in Africa’s history. I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets taken up as a government solution to the overcrowding of many of our countries’ cemeteries. You know many ancient graves are filled with stacks of bodies wrapped in swaddling. Even then they knew it didn’t make sense to fill up the land with the dead. Who knows, it’s a lot less ecologically damaging to stick a pile of skulls on a spike than bury them across the hills and valleys as far as the eye can see.

Talking of Poe! This t-shirt is called Nevermore and is takes direct reference from the famous Edgar Allen Poe poem ‘The Raven‘. If you haven’t heard of the poem then you probably don’t read, it’s even been featured on The Simpsons in one of the eclectic Treehouse of Horror compendium episodes.

Essentially it was scary at the time, I’m sure, but I can understand why a Raven perching on your door frame quoting ‘Nevermore’ at the end of every sentence may seem a little tame. But as with all of Poe’s works, it’s about the expectation of impending doom, something of a credo in my life, and perhaps many miserable Northern Europeans. Essentially, life is awful, and when it isn’t it’s a nice surprise isn’t it?

I’d like to see a series of Poe tees from Akumu, the next should most certainly be The Pit and The Pendulum. Now that’s a creepy tome. Ironically the Nevermore t-shirt is one of the least horrifying on the site, in fact it’s rather majestic, let’s hope that Akumu spreads their wings further in the next few years.

They offer a rock-bottom $3.95 shipping to USA and Canada and print all their designs on high quality American Apparel T-Shirts. Worth keeping an eye on – but make sure they don’t poke it out with a sharp stick or something :p