The Ruined Map is a book written in 1967 by the Japanese writer Kobo Abe.
Based in Kyoto, it is the story of a detective who is hired by a woman in need of
clues surrounding the disappearance of her husband. The detective is given a fragmented map, has an impossible time finding any clues, and finds himself in an existential crisis.
He finds that the map is more of a metaphor for life’s guidelines, and the lines of his own identity begin to become obscured. The book was transformed into film at one time, and this is a storyboard idea for its title sequence. The storyboard was inspired by the concept of small clues, Japanese culture, and the1960s mixed media art of Johns and Rauschenberg.