The journey of the fisherman Urashima Tarō

Legend has it that, many years ago, there was a young fisherman in Japan, Urashima Tarō, who saved a turtle caught in his net. In gratitude, the turtle, who was actually the emperor’s daughter, invited him to his palace at the bottom of the sea. There they spent 3 days, until Urashima decided to return home. Before saying goodbye to him, the princess gave him a mysterious box making him promise that he would never open it.

Upon his return, the fisherman discovered that not three days have passed but three hundred years, and that his loved ones are no longer there. Desperate, Urashima opens the box and suddenly he is turned into an old man, from the box comes a voice that says, “I warned you never to open the box, because your age lives in it.”

This magical journey through time has inspired the design of the window display, where the fish on the seabed have been made through the “gyotaku”, an ancient Japanese fish stamping technique. The process consists of imprinting the fish’s outline, then placing whashi paper on top, and with a light pressure of the fingers thus the silhouette of the fish is printed on the surface. The fishermen thought that in this way they managed to capture their soul and their essence, making their memory last over time.

The turtle, daughter of the emperor, made entirely of paper and hand painted with watercolor, is the other great protagonist of the design of this shop window. She appears swimming towards the mysterious box, accompanied by the fish.