I’ve persuaded Ross at Japanese Laundry to upload photos at Flickr, so this will probably be your first sneak peek at their shirts including their Harajuku Showgirls Tee. Unless of course you’ve read the technical review of their merchandise at DapperDude.co.uk. In the meantime feast your eyes on these which will all be available in a variety of difference colours…

Asai Tee

Yoshihiro Asai is a Japanese Wrestler, and is the only professional wrestler in the world to hold 11 titles at the same time. Better known as Último Dragón (ウルティモ ドラゴン) – his mask is the inspiration behind this design

Fukuoko 7 Tee

Nagoya Grampus 8, based in Nagoya play in the J. League. Originally founded as the company team of the Toyota Motor Corp. in 1939.

Nagoya Gampus 8 Tee

Nagoya Grampus 8, based in Nagoya play in the J. League. Originally founded as the company team of the Toyota Motor Corp. in 1939.

Safe Tee

This design features the “Love Cannon” condom box, one of Japan’s less strange condoms packets! The packet features Gundam the Japanese famous robot.

Lee Medlin Tee

“Pedlin” Lee Medlin’s first race for Kuwahara Cycles Ltd (only the finest BMX manufacturer in Japan founded in 1916) was the NBL Grand Nationals on August the 30th 1980. Pedlin Medlin rode No.7 in that first race.

Tokyo Fixed Gear Tee

Tokyo Fixed started as a web only shop in Tokyo, using small quality brands who have a passion for both style and function.

Harajuku Show Girls Tee

Japan is a place where everyone is individual – Harajuku became famous in the 1980s due to the street performers and wildly-dressed teens who gathered there on Sundays.

Keep an eye out for the grand opening sometime at the end of January at www.JapaneseLaundry.com.

Anyway check these out:

Nicholas Lorden vol.02 Tee

An absolutely gorgeous ladies cut & sew tee by photographer Nicholas Lorden. Very moody. In case you’re wondering what the big deal is about a cut & sew tee, essentially panels of cloth are printed cut to size and then sewn together to create all over and jumbo prints. The same applies to side seam tees although they don’t seem as popular plus there’s also a technique using a belt screen printer which was big in the 90s. Check this post out at T-shirt Forums for some handy links.

Marcus Walters vol.2 Ladies Tee

A highly amusing tee by Marcus Walters featuring one of my fave artworks by the greatest conceptualist of all time. If you’re scratching your head right now, think about it. Over a 100 years ago a highly respected and influential artist ruins his career in order to point out the hipocracy of the gallery/salon system. Marcel Duchamp made the last factory worker on the line producing gents toilets to sign it, R. Mutt. Marcel was probably the nearest to a futurologist this world has ever seen, his conceptual ideas influenced most of the 20th Century, including artists like Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons. Duchamp is the man, and La Fontaine is the most hilarious sculpture ever produced…

National Flag Skull Tee

A smart idea, not sure how well it turned out visually but I love the concept all the same.

Colourful Mushrooms Tee

I spent my late teens scrabbling around damp hills surrounding Brighton, usually in October, all for the love of shrooms. Crazy design, turn on, tune in, tee out. Love that generous print size right up to the seams!

Naughty Ape Tee

Very Banksy. Although I am getting a little sick of ape designs, this tee is definitely cute!

Swifty 001 Tee

This superb take on a classic Warhol is by Swifty, a highly talented UK street artist…

Jack a Dandy Tee

This one is just plain weird, which is good by the way lol.

Alice Wars 2 Tee

Another edition of the classic Alice Wars tee. Balloons and guns, a perfect combo!

Andy Smith vol.03 Tee

Love this one, it’s by the designer/illustrator Andy Smith. Flying rats never looked so cute.

See ‘em all at www.graniph.com and make sure you check the sizes though as Japanese sizes can be a little less forgiving :p

Their latest T-shirts on sale were originally designed in collaboration with iconic (famous in the 80′s) Australian artist Keith Haring, other t-shirts using work by the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat as well as a line devoted to the 50th anniversary of Manga magazines. Usually on sale at £12.99 you can grab these groovy tees for as little as £2.99 whilst the sale is on! There are some real beauties there for men and women, and at these prices you can’t really complain, can you? Besides with the way that GBP Sterling is tumbling I’m sure most of the world will agree :p

	Osamu Tezuka Pink T-Shirt designed by Keith Haring – reduced from £12.99 to just £4.99.
	Soul Glide Surf printed T-shirt (as cheap as they get) – reduced from £12.99 to just £2.99!!
	Osamu Tezuka Light Blue T-Shirt reduced from £12.99 to just £4.99.
	Purple Manga Magazine T-Shirt (for men) reduced from £12.99 to just £4.99.
	Purple Kojien Short Sleeve T-Shirt (for men) reduced from £12.99 to just £4.99.
	Blue Kojien Short Sleeve T-Shirt (for men) reduced from £12.99 to just £4.99.
	Yellow Basquiat Tee (for men) reduced from £12.99 to just £4.99.
	Black Keith Haring Birthday T-Shirt (for men) reduced from £12.99 to just £4.99.

If Uniqlo really want to guarantee massive success in all their sales I’d get the next famous artist or actor they find to sign a few of them too, but when the prices are this low I’m probably asking too much, who knows. Anyway check out the other 50 or so of their highly original art shirts on sale now at Uniqlo.co.uk.

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