01 The Coming of War

The first work shows the scene of a large amount of oil falling from the army planes attacking Okinawa. The black water with rainbow colors is the “free granary” of the story's prototype, a large amount of oil, and the giant octopus in the sky is controlling the planes, showing the bondage of war. On the shore are garbage, ruins of trenches, weeds and so on, showing the broken scene after the war. The background of the sky was chosen to be a fragment of a Chinese newspaper from World War II, showing the timeline of events.

02 The Ruins

The second image pulls in closer to see more detail of the sea and shore. The octopus tentacles at the top of the frame echo Figure 1, with the tentacles again excreting motor oil. On the shore are crumbling walls, bound and entangled by vines. A pair of skeletal hands hold up fried tempura in the machine oil, and there are eyeballs in the large puddle of machine oil, these are the people who lost their lives because they ate the fried tempura in the machine oil. The vines on the bank were intertwined with each other, and the crazy spikes indicated the barrenness of the place. Two of the vines have the structure of human blood vessels, and the entanglement of these vines is also a representation of the people being bound.

03 Effects on Moderns

The third image shows modern day Okinawans, reflecting the high rate of obesity that characterizes Okinawa. The entire table in front of the fat man in the center is full of food but reveals filth. The most conspicuous features are the sake cups and tempura, which represent the fact that the drinking rate of today's Okinawans is one of the highest in Japan, and are echoed by the deep-fried tempura. The fried tempura is topped with eyeballs, screws, skeleton hands, octopus horns, and bugs, indicating that it is a plate of deep-fried tempura in machine oil. In the background, a pair of skeleton hands reach out to the man, these are the old generation who died from eating deep fried tempura. The man has black and white newspaper on his body, alluding to the fact that he was one of the victims of the war.

04 Exposure & Attention

The fourth piece is from the modern era, when more and more people are beginning to notice this event and its impact on the Okinawan people. In this work, we used the microphone used by some modern Japanese TV stations for interviews, such as hand mikes. The image of the interview is shown with the logo of the TV station, such as a hand microphone. The background of a Japanese newspaper is used as a transition to represent the public's focus on this event, reflecting on the historical significance behind it, rather than just treating it as a curiosity.

05 Puzzles

The fifth image can be seen as a summary of the whole project. Different small grids were used to split up the different images. The large number of comic grids in the middle tells the story that around 2020, a blogger personally experienced deep-fried tempura in machine oil and uploaded it to the web. In the surrounding grids, we can see the interface with the loading of the web page, the image of holding the tempura in the hand and pouring the machine oil into the pan. The blogger mentioned that after eating it, it was like a ship sailing past his mouth, and I made it figuratively drawn. The fifth image also incorporates some elements from the earlier drawing. The octopus head, octopus tentacles, and so on that run throughout the project, as well as the skull and the fat Okinawan man, represent the historical legacy of being a deep-fried tempura in machine oil. In the lower part of the image, an old man can be seen holding up a sign. This is a manifestation of what more people embodied at that time after this incident broke out, after focusing on his historical significance. And the old man could be the victim. In a family photo next to the old man you can see that the grandmother is bone thin, but his children and grandchildren are more obese. The surrounding grid has a report from the anchorwoman about the event, and the chart next to it represents the increase in the rate of drinking in Okinawa. There is also a scene about Okinawans at a potluck, and the hands are all fatter. There is also a frame of swimmers with a black line behind them representing the small molecules of alkanes that can't be broken down and digested after eating motor oil leaving a black line on the surface of the ocean. I used these intersections of events and elements to show how the phenomenon of “oil-filled tempura”, a result of war, has had a terrible impact on innocent civilians, as a call for peace.