The Little Mermaid Thinking of the Prince

Whether for picture-story shows, story collections or picture books, Chihiro made illustrations for Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales almost every year. Attracted by their never-fading charm, Chihiro is said to have learned a great deal from the beauty, the sadness, the dreams and the reality of the world portrayed in Andersen’s stories. One of the tales that Chihiro frequently created illustrations for was The Little Mermaid, the story of a mermaid who falls in love with a human prince and, in the end, dissolves into the foam of the sea. These illustrations, featuring characters and foreign landscapes and brimming with imagination, represent another facet of Chihiro’s work, distinct from her illustrations depicting children.