Japan’s well-known for many curious and wonderful inventions, among them sampuru ???? (ah it didn’t like the characters), the fake food models that you see in restaurant windows, among other places. Sampuru have been around for more than a hundred years. Originally made from wax, they are now of course made from plastic.

It is a lesser-known fact that a sampuru master, Keiji Nakamore, emigrated to New York in the 1950s and took up a job designing sleeves for a small label, Jivebug Records. Keiji was in high demand in japan for his exquisite sampuru, but once he had perfected the deceptively simple onigiri rice ball, there was nothing but a kind of zennui for him. Fortunately for the art of album covers, Keiji had enough money to go to New York, and had not seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s to put any inaccurate ideas in his head about shopping, cats, and apartment living. He got the job with Jivebug on the strength of his sampuru portfolio, and a great deal of charisma.

Speaking of charisma, these were the days before musicians had to look anything like how they did in pictures, not like today. Sometimes, musicians were so unkempt, hungover, high, badly-dressed, drooling, or just plain dead that they made for terrible publicity shots. Keiji solved this issue for Jivebug records (moving to RCA in ’78 for five times the money), using his skills. All of these covers are sampuru.

It’s a bit of a shame this gallery is not chronological, following the development of the art Keiji playfully called “bandpuru”. We’ll jump around, as a result.

1) I’ve never been sorry, for the band “Helen” was Keiji’s first bandpuru. Helen were rude, if talented, Irish folk playing bastards who had never been in a field before, and had never been sorry for anything. They were not sorry for all getting into a bar fight and ruining their faces for the album shoot. This was well before that would have been acceptable to have on a cover. Jivebug knew this might happen, Helen got in a lot of bar fights, not just over their girly name, which they had on purpose to fight over. Keiji worked in 1:27 scale, in wax. Everything here is wax, down to the tiny sunglasses and the grass.

2 + 3) Fuchs – off (yeah we’re all thinking that). The scale of this one’s a bit off. A nod to wabi-sabi, a big nod. Likewise with JD Sumner, both made around the same week, both acts that were plain cheaper to sampuru than to co-ordinate into a studio shoot.

4) Heatwave – Happy Rennsday. Yes, Jeremy Renner had extensive plastic surgery to look the way he does, based on how much joy this album brought to him as a lad. He was delighted to discover recently this was a bandpuru and had not been melted down, though it was a little lint-covered and needed some TLD to bring up to original condition. This is in Renner’s living room in a glass case. Also yes it’s a bit obvious it’s not quite perfect to-scale, more wabi-sabi and a little of a coke habit creeping in for Keiji. He used fabric for the costumes, too, just the flares, and the tiny watch is from a christmas cracker, still, Heatwave were happy, no way were they going to get into those outfits, even if that’s what the disco boogie crowd of Renner’s ilk were screaming for. The Renner guy in the band looked nothing like this, by the way. Keiji modelled him on a pizza delivery guy named Steve who was a regular face at RCA New York.

5) Room to grow. This was right before a long stint for Keiji in rehab. The band liked the cover, seeings they were all really fourteen year old kids and used the proofs to make fake IDs that totally worked.

6) Majesty. Post rehab, reflecting how Keiji felt. This one’s made from plastic, not wax. The rocks may have been raw heroin, true, but the was well out of rehab for the unfortunate coke habit.

Keiji made dozens of bandpuru over the years, and retired in 2001. He was well-known in the early hip hop scene in New York, and was instrumental in those classic releases being called Dope on Plastic and the common term “scratching wax”. None of the artists he hung out with used his bandpuru services, but he had a lot of charisma and a certain way with the rock business.