“2046”, Original Japanese First‑Release Movie Poster 2004, Ultra‑Rare B1 Size (72.8 × 103 cm), Takuya Kimura / Faye Wong and Tony Leung Design – Excellent GA28
This is an original Japanese B1 theatrical poster produced for the first Japanese release of Wong Kar‑wai’s 2046, starring Tony Leung Chiu‑wai, Takuya Kimura, Gong Li, Faye Wong, Zhang Ziyi, Carina Lau and Chang Chen, with a special appearance by Maggie Cheung.
The film opened theatrically in Japan on 23 October 2004, following its selection for the main Competition at the 57th Cannes Film Festival. Its Japanese campaign was particularly significant because it united some of the foremost figures in Hong Kong and mainland Chinese cinema with Japanese superstar Takuya Kimura, whose name receives prominent second billing immediately after Tony Leung.
This is a distinct original first-release Japanese design, separate from the Cannes / “Autumn 2004” advance poster. It combines the film’s futuristic romance between Takuya Kimura and Faye Wong with the solitary figure of Tony Leung’s writer Chow Mo‑wan, distilling the film’s two interlocking timeframes into a single extraordinary composition.
The poster retains the original www.2046.jp address, complete 2004 production and distributor information, original Japanese cast billing and period Eirin mark. It is therefore entirely distinct from the newly created artwork used for the film’s later 2022 Japanese 4K restoration campaign.
This example is preserved in Excellent condition. It remains unfolded at its full original B1 dimensions, with exceptionally strong colour and only localized edge and corner imperfections, all shown clearly in the detailed photographs.
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Design
This is one of the most sophisticated Japanese poster designs created for 2046. Rather than presenting the film’s ensemble cast through a conventional series of separate portraits, the composition visually merges memory, fiction, the past and an imagined future.
Across the upper half, the faces of Takuya Kimura and Faye Wong draw close together beneath an intricate web of futuristic architecture, reflected light and mechanical lines. Kimura plays Tak, the Japanese lover of Wang Jing‑wen in 1960s Hong Kong and, within Chow Mo‑wan’s science-fiction manuscript, the lone traveller aboard a mysterious train bound for 2046. Faye Wong appears both as Wang Jing‑wen and as her futuristic android counterpart, WJW1967.
The characters’ faces are not presented as straightforward portraits. They are fractured and partially obscured by the repeated white ribs and dark structural forms of the train. The effect resembles a multiple exposure: human features, reflected light and mechanical architecture become inseparable, creating an image poised between a remembered romance and its fictional reconstruction.
At the upper right appears the Japanese tagline:
「その不思議な未来では
ミステリートレインが動き出し
アンドロイドが恋におちる。」
“In that mysterious future, a mystery train begins to move—and an android falls in love.”
A small vertical “2046” is incorporated beside the reference to the future, reinforcing the title’s multiple meanings as a time, place, room number and imagined destination.
Beneath the upper image appears the simple director credit:
「ウォン・カーウァイ監督作品」
“A film by Wong Kar‑wai.”
The monumental title “2046” occupies the centre of the sheet in rough, irregular white numerals. Their hand-painted appearance contrasts sharply with both the precision of the futuristic train imagery and the clean Japanese typography used elsewhere. The numerals resemble marks written directly across a dark photographic surface—part title, part destination code and part fragment from Chow’s unfinished manuscript.
The title also functions as a visual dividing point between the poster’s two narrative worlds. Above it is the imagined future of androids and perpetual train travel; below it is Tony Leung’s Chow Mo‑wan, seated alone in the intensely amber-lit interior of a restaurant or nightclub.
Chow rests one hand close to his face while writing at the table before him, surrounded by papers, glasses and the accumulated details of a late-night interior. His reflection appears at the far right, creating another visual double. The mirrored figure reinforces the film’s fascination with repetition: characters, names, gestures and relationships return in altered forms, just as the people Chow encounters reappear as fictional characters in his novel.
Near this lower image appears a second Japanese tagline:
「作家は、〔近未来小説〕を書き綴っていた。
ただ、もう一度あなたに逢うために・・・」
“The writer continued to write a near-future novel—simply so that he might meet you once more...”
Together, the two taglines describe both sides of the film. One introduces the mystery train and the android who falls in love; the other reveals that this future has been created by a writer attempting to recover someone already lost.
The composition is dominated by inky black, oxidised green, pale blue-green, burnished amber, tobacco gold and brilliant white. The upper half has the cold, unstable atmosphere of a technological dream, while the lower image glows with the dense reds and yellows of Wong Kar‑wai’s recreated 1960s Hong Kong. The two palettes meet within the dark central field, visually binding science fiction to memory.
The principal cast is listed across the lower border:
Tony Leung
Takuya Kimura
Gong Li
Faye Wong
Zhang Ziyi
Carina Lau
Chang Chen
Maggie Cheung is separately billed for a special appearance, her brief presence carrying enormous significance as the absent Su Li‑zhen whose memory continues to govern Chow’s emotional life.
The lower credit block also records Wong Kar‑wai as producer, director and screenwriter; William Chang Suk‑ping as art director and editor; Christopher Doyle, Kwan Pun‑leung and Lai Yiu‑fai as cinematographers; and Peer Raben and Shigeru Umebayashi as composers. These collaborators were fundamental to the film’s elaborate visual and musical identity.
The enlarged photographic imagery retains a deliberately prominent grain and fine printed screen pattern. This is particularly visible across the actors’ faces, the illuminated restaurant interior and the dark futuristic architecture. It is an inherent feature of the original image treatment and printing, not foxing, fading or surface deterioration.
The poster is printed single-sided on substantial white-backed Japanese theatrical stock. Its surface has a finely textured, lightly satin character that gives the black areas considerable density while allowing the white title and illuminated amber passages to retain strong contrast.
Unlike the separate Japanese advance design, which isolates a single figure within the train compartment, this version brings together the film’s writer, its fictional traveller and its android heroine. It therefore functions almost as a diagram of 2046 itself: Chow’s present appears below, while the past he cannot relinquish is transformed into the future above.
This conceptual sophistication, combined with the presence of Tony Leung, Takuya Kimura and Faye Wong, has made the design particularly desirable among collectors of Wong Kar‑wai, Hong Kong cinema, Japanese film advertising and contemporary Asian graphic design.
Rare B1 format: This is the large Japanese B1 theatrical format, measuring approximately 72.8 × 103 cm / 28.7 × 40.6 in. A B1 has twice the surface area of the standard Japanese B2 poster and was intended for prominent cinema-lobby, foyer and major promotional display.
The B2 was the principal single-panel theatrical format distributed to cinemas throughout Japan. Larger B1 sheets were employed more selectively and survive in substantially smaller numbers. Their considerable dimensions also made them more susceptible to folding, edge handling and damage during installation and removal.
Original B2 examples of the Japanese 2046 campaign are already difficult to secure in high grade. Original B1 examples are encountered far less frequently, particularly in unfolded condition and at their complete original dimensions.
At B1 scale, the poster has an imposing architectural presence. The repeated train structures across the actors’ faces, the rough white title and the intensely illuminated image of Tony Leung acquire a physical impact that is significantly diminished in smaller formats.
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Cult status / film notes
2046 is one of Wong Kar‑wai’s most ambitious and structurally complex films: at once a period romance, a work of speculative fiction and an extended meditation on memory, repetition, regret and emotional self-protection.
The film continues the story of Chow Mo‑wan following his unconsummated relationship with Su Li‑zhen in In the Mood for Love. Returning to Hong Kong, Chow has become a writer and emotionally detached womaniser. His outward sophistication conceals his inability to free himself from the memory of the one relationship he could not fulfil.
While staying in a hotel, Chow attempts to take room 2046—the number associated with his meetings with Su—but ultimately occupies the neighbouring room. He becomes involved with several women, including Bai Ling, played by Zhang Ziyi; another woman named Su Li‑zhen, played by Gong Li; and Wang Jing‑wen, played by Faye Wong.
Jing‑wen is in love with a Japanese man, Tak, played by Takuya Kimura. Their relationship is opposed by her father, and Tak eventually returns to Japan. Inspired by their separation, Chow begins writing a futuristic novel in which passengers board a train for 2046, a place where nothing supposedly changes and where lost memories might be recovered.
Within this fictional world, Tak becomes the train’s solitary traveller and Jing‑wen is transformed into an android attendant. He falls in love with her but must wait for a response delayed by the android’s malfunctioning emotional system. Their futuristic relationship becomes another expression of Wong’s recurring idea that love fails not necessarily through absence of feeling, but because two people experience that feeling at different times.
The poster’s upper image captures this strand of the film directly. The faces of Kimura and Faye Wong are close, yet divided by mechanical lines and reflections—a visual representation of lovers whose emotional connection is real but whose timing, language and circumstances prevent them from fully reaching one another.
The lower image of Chow writing makes clear that this future is not independent of the past. Its androids, trains and distant destination are products of his memory. Every fictional figure is drawn from someone he has known, and every imagined romance becomes another attempt to revise an emotional loss that cannot be changed.
In this respect, 2046 is frequently understood as the culminating work in the loose sequence that began with Days of Being Wild and continued through In the Mood for Love. Characters, performers, names and locations return across the films, although their precise relationships remain deliberately fluid.
The number 2046 also carries a broader historical resonance. It is often read as alluding to the final full year before 2047, when the fifty-year framework established after Hong Kong’s 1997 handover was originally due to reach its endpoint. Wong never reduces the film to a direct political allegory, but the suggestion of a place where “nothing ever changes” gives its nostalgia an unmistakable historical undertone.
The production united one of the most remarkable Pan-Asian casts assembled during the period. Tony Leung was joined by Gong Li, Faye Wong, Zhang Ziyi, Carina Lau, Chang Chen and Maggie Cheung, while Takuya Kimura’s participation gave the film exceptional visibility in Japan. His prominent billing and central position in the Japanese advertising campaign reflect both his narrative importance and his immense domestic profile.
The film’s visual world was created by cinematographers Christopher Doyle, Kwan Pun‑leung and Lai Yiu‑fai, with William Chang Suk‑ping serving as editor and, alongside Alfred Yau, art director. Chang also designed the costumes and make-up, while the score brought together the work of Peer Raben and Shigeru Umebayashi.
Mirrors, curved corridors, repeated architectural forms, saturated light and partially obscured figures turn the film’s interiors into psychological spaces. Even its future is tactile and melancholic rather than clinically technological: the train appears worn, enclosed and endlessly repetitive, as though it too has become trapped within somebody’s memory.
2046 premiered in Competition at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and subsequently received six Hong Kong Film Awards: Best Actor for Tony Leung, Best Actress for Zhang Ziyi, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Costume and Make-Up Design, and Best Original Film Score. It was also recognised as Best Foreign Language Film by the New York Film Critics Circle.
Its reputation has continued to grow. The film is now widely viewed as one of Wong Kar‑wai’s richest and most visually elaborate works—a summation of the romantic longing, temporal dislocation and urban melancholy that define his cinema.
A director-supervised restoration returned 2046 to Japanese cinemas in 2022 as part of the WKW4K retrospective. That revival introduced newly prepared poster artwork and campaign credits, making original posters such as the present example specifically identifiable with the film’s first Japanese theatrical release in 2004.
The enduring admiration for Wong Kar‑wai’s visual language has created sustained international demand for original paper connected with his films. Japanese first-release posters have particular appeal because their designs frequently depart from standard international advertising and treat the film image as an independent piece of graphic art.
Within the original Japanese 2046 campaign, this B1 design is especially compelling because it does not merely advertise the cast. It visually explains the architecture of the film itself: the writer below, his remembered lovers above and the number 2046 suspended between past and future.
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Condition
Excellent. Unfolded, with exceptionally strong colour and only localized corner and edge imperfections.
The poster retains its full original Japanese B1 dimensions and has no full-width horizontal fold or full-length vertical fold. The large photographic composition, central “2046” title and complete billing remain visually uninterrupted.
The colours are exceptionally well preserved. The blacks remain dense, the oxidised greens and blue-green tones retain their atmospheric depth, the amber and golden lower image remains luminous, and the irregular white title is crisp and strongly contrasted. There is no apparent sun fading or significant differential colour loss.
The fine granular and cross-hatched appearance visible in the enlarged photographic areas is part of the poster’s original image reproduction. It appears consistently across the faces, architecture and lower restaurant scene and should not be mistaken for abrasion or age-related spotting.
The most noticeable condition points are confined to the extreme corners and margins. At the upper-left corner, there is a localized diagonal crease with several associated fine stress lines. These extend only a short distance into the dark printed image and are considerably more evident in the close-up photograph than when the poster is viewed as a whole.
At the lower-right corner and adjoining right edge, there is a localized group of handling creases and slight edge compression. The creases cross the outer black margin near the concluding billing and Eirin area, but the printed information remains present and legible. There is no significant paper loss, and the principal imagery and central title are unaffected.
The circular objects visible around the perimeter in the photographs are temporary magnets used to hold the poster safely against a metal surface.
The localized upper-left and lower-right creasing has been fully reflected in the condition grade. It does not materially diminish the poster’s powerful overall presentation. At normal viewing distance—and particularly once professionally framed—the eye is drawn immediately to the extraordinary upper photomontage, monumental title and illuminated image of Tony Leung.
Considering the scarcity of original 2004 Japanese B1 posters, the absence of major folds, the complete dimensions and the exceptional strength of the printed colours, this remains a highly impressive collector-grade survivor.
Please review the photographs carefully. They show the exact original poster offered for sale, including all minor imperfections.
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This poster is an original Japanese theatrical B1 from the 2004 first-release campaign.
It is a separate original design from the Cannes / “Autumn 2004” advance poster.
It is not a reproduction, reprint, later 4K restoration poster or commercial art print.
It is single-sided and measures approximately 72.8 × 103 cm / 28.7 × 40.6 in.
It is approximately 22 years old.
Certificate of Authenticity included.
