LOST IN TRANSLATION Japanese B2 poster authentication

Several years ago I purchased a Lost in Translation B2 Japanese poster in a well-bid-on auction on eBay.  There were two sold within a couple weeks of each other by the same seller.  Well, it was quite obvious to me and to the other dealer that purchased the subsequent poster that it was a FAKE.  However, at that time I did not have an original to compare it to — now I do, and that is what you see here. Witness the exposure of an obvious fake in this authentication:

First, a picture of the FAKE LOST IN TRANSLATION B2:

Looks pretty good, especially in a typically tiny eBay advertisement. However, as soon as you put it next to a real poster:

It’s obvious it’s fake.  First, notice the color discrepancy — the real Lost in Translation poster is on the top.  Night and day different. Also, notice that I’ve aligned the top borders of the posters.  Now look at the bottom — the fake is substantially shorter, probably by a full centimeter.  It is also substantially narrower as you can see here:

Here are some more detail photos:

Part of the challenge on this poster is that the original poster has a grainy photo as the main image.  However, as you can see the letters are easily distinguishable as authentic on the real poster.  On the real poster the characters are crisp, sharp, and black.  On the fake they are fuzzy and dull, and barely even gray.

At the bottom, the credits area has a deep dark color on the original. On the fake it is much lighter and grainy.  The credits lettering is also fuzzy, although that may be difficult to distinguish in this picture:

Moving back to the right side, we use the old authentication trick of checking the art at the border.   Sure enough, an easy difference to spot is right above Scarlett Johannson’s head.   There is a dark piece from the umbrella at about 2 o’clock above her hair that is completely missing on the fake:

And moving to the left side, just above and to the left of the red arrow you can see a semi-circle.  There is much more of that semi-circle present on the real poster:

Lastly, there’s just much more color depth and a completely different color balance on the real vs the fake (real is on the left):

This is an easy authentication.  As I stated above, it was clear to me that this was a fake even before I had the real one next to it for comparison.  That said, I have going on a decade of experience collecting Japanese posters so it might not be so obvious to a casual buyer.  There ARE fakes and repros of Japanese posters out there being sold by unscrupulous sellers.  Anyone who is at the point of selling posters should know better — claiming ignorance is a non-starter if you ask me.

I hope this is helpful.  We must remain careful and vigilant about exposing fakes and I hope this article achieves that purpose.

(Erich can be found on the NSFGE poster forum.)