Shenmue Dojo

Does anyone here own the shenmue art book? I'm curious about the maps that appear on this page:
http://i.imgur.com/M8eMILw.jpg
Could they be early map-designs for Dobuita, Hong Kong, Kowloon etc?

The map in the upper-right on the left page is Aberdeen and Wan Chai.

I don't know about the other two since all the text is in Japanese.

wow, this is first time i've ever actually seen a image of whats inside that book. do you own it?

more photo of the other pages would be super interesting.

i love the Akira hand with sweatband reaching out for the telephone.

I own these Shenmue japanese guides

Is any of these the one of the page in your photo?



The most interesting thing in these guides is the text from the Shenmue Passport sections, in the white book. Shenmue Passport Disc has extra info about characters, locations and combat techniques. The character data has been preserved in the Shenmue guides in english, techniques data was preserved in gameFAQs. But the locations data in english have been lost. If someone can translate from japanese i can make scans or photos of the location data to recover that part of shenmue that have been lost

I posted pictures of each page from mine when I got it. Give me half hour to get home from work and I will post the links from my photo bucket

I'm lucky enough to own two copies of the art book.

Here is another tread where Peter posted images from his:
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=41557&start=350

It's beautiful. It's so cool seeing production images from the voice actors, location sketches, the maps, etc.

^ I went to that link and it turns out the pic in the OP is from Peter's photobucket

Ah yea. Thanks Mitz for linking the old topic!

Ah i see, It's originally from Peter. I just found it from a random Google search. Do you read japanese Peter? Can you make out where those locations are from (other than the ones Mitsuzuki helpfully identified)?

Sure thing, Peter!

Colacube, I'll take a couple of pics or do a scan of the other two maps you asked about in case someone here can help identify them. Just gimme a few hours.

Thanks so much Mitsuzuki! It's highly unlikely, but i'm hoping one of the maps could be set in Guilin and give us an idea of what Yu Suzuki has in mind for III.

No probs, dude. Here are the pics. They're a touch distorted from holding the book a bit awkwardly and snapping with the other free hand.

http://imgur.com/FvSP2mD
http://imgur.com/7YyHy1U
http://imgur.com/9lRY3to

Would be great if someone here could help translate/identify.

Very interesting! I think these could well be maps relating to the future Shenmue story. Here's what I have picked up from looking over the maps.

1. http://imgur.com/FvSP2mD
The small labels on the map are pointing to these various stores:
- Drugstore
- General store
- Pawn store
- Bicycle shop
- Shoe shop
- Florist
- Art supplies store
- Butcher
- Restaurant
- Fruit shop
- Rice gruel restaurant
- Greengrocer
- Noodle stand
- Fresh fish stand

These two labels are larger than the others:
- Water drainage channel (the dashed parallel lines)
- Garden Hotel (in the center between the two mountains)

Unfortunately I couldn't find anything definite about the location, but it can be seen from the topography lines on the map that three tall mountain peaks stand in its center, around where the Garden Hotel is located.

2. http://imgur.com/9lRY3to
This map also has a number of small shops, many similar to the ones in the first map:
- Florist
- Butcher
- Fresh fish stand
- Rice gruel restaurant
- Fruit shop
- Greengrocer
- Drugstore
- Tea shop
- Restaurant
- Noodle stand
- Portrait shop
- Candy store

These are the larger, underlined labels:
- Seimindou - Buddhist items shop
- Buddhist Items Street
- Bukkoudou - Buddhist items shop
- Taa Chai Tan - Buddhist items shop
- 胡浩's house {Somebody's name, but I can't guess the pronunciation}
- Part-time job area
- Pao Shiin Guu - Chinese herbal medicine shop
- Byakuju - Chinese herbal medicine shop
- Manzendou - Chinese herbal medicine shop
- Peach Garden Restaurant

Also there is a potential clue about the location of this map! At the top you can see a large rectangular area labelled 盤門. According to Wikipedia, this is the name of a gate (called Pan Gate in English) that is part of an ancient city wall located in Suzhou, eastern China.

Fantastic Switch. Thank you!

Since Shenmue 2 was originally meant to be incorporated into the first main game, i assume these are places in Hong Kong that became to be the areas we know in Shenmue 2.

Thanks so much Switch and Mitsuzuki!

We know that Suzuki visited Suzhou while researching locations for Virtual Fighter, so that explains the Pan Gate I guess.

I find the first map particularly intriguing, as there seems to be a gap between the village and the mountain. If peter is correct and this area is within Hong Kong it could potentially be a fishing village like Tai O, which largely exists on stilts above the sea:
http://i.imgur.com/hPhXSX9.jpg