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JA Artist Edward Luper chats with Founder and CEO Anna Dingley about the FT Nikkei UK Ekiden Year 3 poster, discussing how it blends Japanese and British traditions and celebrates both cultures through the shared backdrop of the UK and the historic Japanese Ekiden race.
Anna: Can you tell us how you became such an expert in Japanese prints and how you learned how to create these wonderful images?
Edward: My interest began very early, long before I had any formal understanding of Japanese art. When I was seven, my parents took me to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where I saw samurai armour for the first time. I didn’t have the vocabulary for it then, but the shapes, materials, and presence of those objects made a very deep impression on me.
Not long afterwards, I started copying images of samurai from Japanese woodblock prints. At the time, I didn’t really understand that they were woodblock prints, or the cultural traditions behind them. I was simply drawn to their bold lines, flat colours, and dramatic compositions. Gradually, that curiosity deepened. By the time I was thirteen, I did a school project on Hokusai, the artist behind the ‘great wave’, and that was the moment when I began to understand these images as part of a long and sophisticated artistic tradition called Ukiyo-e or ‘pictures of the floating world’.
Later, while I was still at university, I worked in the Japanese gallery in Angel, Islington. That was a turning point, because I began handling real antique Japanese prints, and learning how they were looked at, discussed, and valued. After graduating, I worked at an auction house, which allowed me to examine Japanese prints very closely and regularly. Seeing originals up close, their line quality, paper, pigments, and wear, teaches you things no book or reproduction ever can.
Figure 1 Edward Luper looking at Hokusai’s ‘Great Wave’ at an auction preview, 2019
As for how I learned to make such images: technology played an important role. When the iPad with apple pencil became available, it allowed me to work digitally in a way that finally made sense for this kind of imagery: not as imitation, but as a contemporary tool. I could create genuine flat colour and bold contour, which are essential to the graphic language of Japanese prints, in a way that was very difficult with just pen, pencil or watercolour alone.
Only later did I have the chance to study Japanese woodblock printing itself through short courses. I didn’t have access to that kind of training growing up, but by then I already had a deep respect for the tradition. My work today sits somewhere between study, homage, and continuation, using modern tools to think carefully about a very old visual language.
Figure 2 Edward Luper, BT Tower by Omotesando, ’36 Views of the BT Tower’, 2021
Anna: Like the FT Nikkei UK Ekiden itself, your work often brings together Japanese and British culture. Where do you find inspiration for this kind of cross-cultural work?
Edward: My love of Japanese prints has been embedded in me for a very long time, but at a certain point I realised I didn’t want simply to copy them, as I had done when I was a child or teenager. I wanted to make work that was genuinely my own, while still being in conversation with that tradition.
When you look at artists like Hokusai, what’s so striking is not just the style, but the structure of his thinking. In Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, the mountain is a fixed point, an anchor, around which everything else changes: seasons, weather, human activity, mood. Monet was inspired by this and did something similar with his haystacks. That made me ask a simple but important question: what is the fixed point in my own life?
For me, somewhat unexpectedly, it turned out to be the BT Tower. It’s a constant presence in London, visible from many places where I lived, studied or worked, and it became my equivalent of Mount Fuji: a stable point of security in my life where everything else changes. Creating Thirty-Six Views of the BT Tower was a way of paying homage to Hokusai while translating his way of seeing into my own world.
More broadly, I find that Edo-period urban culture has a surprising amount in common with modern London. Both are dense, energetic cities shaped by movement, commerce, and everyday life. I sometimes say that London is my Edo. Even small details resonate! a Deliveroo rider with a square box on his back can remind me of an Edo-period courier carrying goods through the city.
The ukiyo-e tradition was never only about landscapes. It was also about popular culture: actors, beautiful women, sumo wrestlers, festivals, bridges, and seasons. That feels entirely transferable to the present day. Today’s equivalents might be actors, athletes, footballers, or runners in a race. What interests me is not recreating the past, but using its visual language to look closely at the world we’re living in now.
Figure 3 Katsushika Hokusai, ‘Red Fuji’ from the series 36 Views of Mt Fuji, 1830s
Anna: I’ve been a fan of your work for some time, and we have several pieces from your BT Tower series at home. Before we approached you about the Year 3 FT Nikkei UK Ekiden poster, had you heard of ekiden? And what was your reaction to the proposal?
Edward: I had heard of ekiden, but only indirectly through the Japanese television drama Rikuo, which I watched on Netflix. It tells the story of athletes competing in an ekiden race, and although I should confess that I’m not a runner myself, the idea of the relay stayed with me.
So when you got in touch about creating the Year 3 FT Nikkei UK Ekiden poster, I was instantly delighted. It felt like a perfect opportunity to bring together Britain and Japan through the visual language of ukiyo-e.
One of the things that excited me most was the historical echo of the project. Antique ukiyo-e prints were not originally regarded as “fine art” in the way we think of them today. They were everyday objects: posters, advertisements, illustrated news, souvenirs, made to be seen, used, and enjoyed by a wide audience. In that sense, designing a poster for the UK Ekiden felt wonderfully authentic. It allowed me to continue, in a small way, along the same path as the Edo-period printmakers, using a traditional visual language to communicate something lively, contemporary, and public-facing.
Anna: The FT Nikkei UK Ekiden print is full of references to ukiyo-e and Hiroshige, but also includes playful, modern details. Could you talk us through some of the key elements and what was important to you stylistically?
Edward: The starting point was, of course, the brief. The poster needed to include Windsor Castle, the Thames, and the runners, which immediately posed a compositional challenge. In reality, the castle sits on the far side of the river, and fitting all of that into a vertical A3 format without it feeling awkward was not straightforward.
Japanese artists solved similar problems centuries ago. In ukiyo-e, clouds are often used as visual “breaks” in space; a way of separating distance while still keeping everything within a single image. I borrowed that idea here. Windsor Castle is partially veiled by clouds, which helps compress space while maintaining a sense of depth. Historically, Edo Castle was also frequently shown shrouded in clouds, as it was seen as a place beyond the reach of ordinary people, so applying the same treatment to Windsor felt both fitting and playful. The approach is inspired in particular by Hiroshige’s Suruga Street, where clouds divide Mount Fuji from the bustling city below.
Figure 4 Hiroshige, Suruga-cho, ‘One Hundred Famous Views of Edo’, 1856
That said, I was aware that many Western viewers don’t immediately read these clouds in the same way, sometimes interpreting them as a separate shoreline. To resolve that, I broke the cloud layer and revealed a path of trees, gently clarifying that everything belongs to the same landscape.
The border and cartouches were also important. Traditional ukiyo-e prints often frame the image with title boxes and seals, and I wanted to echo that structure while keeping it alive. One small detail I enjoy is that a runner’s foot crosses the border, breaking the frame. It’s a visual way of collapsing time and space, an Edo-period courier running alongside modern athletes in a contemporary race.
Those courier figures are drawn directly from Edo-period prints of messengers running along routes like the Tokaido and Kisokaido. In many ways, these couriers are the historical ancestors of the relay race, passing information and objects from one place to another, so it felt entirely natural to include them.
Figure 5 Detail of a print by Hiroshige showing a courier, 19th century
As for the cat perched on the delivery box: that’s simply me. Cats appear often in Japanese prints, and I couldn’t resist adding a moment of warmth and humour. For extra authenticity, I also included Edo-period publisher and kiwame seals, which were historically applied by censors to approve prints for publication.
There’s even a second Edo runner lifted directly from a Hiroshige design. In the original, his mouth is wide open in exertion, almost like The Scream, but here I softened it into a gentler expression, still energetic, but more welcoming.
Anna: Finally, for readers discovering your work through the FT Nikkei UK Ekiden, where can they see more of what you do?
Edward: People can see my work through my website edwardluperart.com and online platforms such as Instagram (edward.luper.art), where I document both finished artworks and longer-term projects. I recently had an exhibition in Ginza, Tokyo, which was a very special experience, showing work shaped so strongly by Japanese visual traditions in Japan itself.
Much of my practice focuses on building bodies of work over time rather than constant exhibitions. Like the ekiden, it’s about sustained effort, continuity, and allowing ideas to unfold gradually.
