It is bitter to leave your home
A true story depicted in typographic images
By Romano Hänni
Basel, Switzerland: Studio for Design, 2017. Deluxe Edition of 9. Standard edition of 87.

Each volume: 23.5 x 26.6 cm (9.25 x 10.8"); 64 pages. Text in German, English, and Japanese. Hand-composed and handprinted. Letterpress printed on paper towels. Materials used: lead characters, synthetics and wood, brass lines and geometrical signs. Printing forms composed from individual parts and printed on a hand proofing press. Japanese text cast and composed in the type foundry Sasaki Katsuji in Tokyo. Bound by hand with thread. In dust jacket. Numbered.

Standard edition: Dust jacket letterpress printed with titles and images on exterior, reverse side with additional text. Includes manufacturing process booklet: 12 pages, digital printing. Slipcased. Numbered.

The book concerns the disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that occurred on March 11, 2011, and the ongoing impact of radioactive contamination.

Text excerpts:

"In a nuclear disaster, time has no healing effect. The half-life of plutonium is 24,000 years, spent fuel rods radiate for 100,000 years."

"Two years later, the radioactive contamination of the Pacific Ocean has reached the western coast of North America"

"Fish and other marine organisms caught off the coast of Ibaraki were radioactive waste."

"The ground outside the restricted areas is also contaminated. Radiation does not spread in a circular manner. It is transported and redistributed by the weather. The catastrophe branches out like a sprouting tree."

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