Japanese Photobooks

• Akio Nagasawa 2024
• Softcover, 1st edition. 70p
  
• New

'While taking snapshots on the streets, I sometimes find myself drawn to flowers and click the shutter button. This book is a collection of my ongoing commitment for those photos.'

– by Daido Moriyama

Silkscreen canvas covered limited edition of 350 signed and numbered copies.

Due in stock approx 20 December, available for pre-order now.

• PCT 2024
• Softcover, 1st PCT edition, 250p.
  
• New

New edition of the classic body of work, which saw Keizo Kitajima photographing New York in the 1980's.

Drawn to the land in which had dramatically changed the Japanese way of life since the war, Keizo Kitajima spent a period of six months wandering the streets of New York City. Here he met with the people whom embodied the very decadence which symbolised 80s New York. From the night clubs, parks, beaches and side streets, Kitajima's New York brilliantly captures a portrait of a city defined through the experiences of the many individuals and events, encountered throughout his journey.   

Originally published by Byakuya Shobo in 1982, Keizo Kitajima's New York has long been a sought-after photobook, this new book adds a series of colour images from 1986-1989, some of which were feautured in his equally sought-after book A.D. 1991.

This new edition features an afterword by Keizo Kitajima and an essay by Shino Kuraishi, in both Japanese and English.

In stock now.

• the(M) éditions / Ibasho 2024
• Softcover, 1st edition, 104p
  
• New

Watanabe’s second artist book features entirely new images from his latest series ‘Beyond What You See'. Like Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, Watanabe depicts the subjects in his photographs in-between the mystical and the real world, creating a sense of confusion in the viewer. Watanabe’s work has also something similar to the Japanese concept of ‘ma’, a moment of silence or emptiness for awareness and contemplation. His work stimulates the viewer to pause, reflect and engage with the world around us.

Limited edition of 400 numbered copies.

• Thames & Hudson 2024
• Hardback, 1st edition. 352p
  
• New

The direct sequel to a classic photobook. An exceptional selection of photographs from Daido Moriyama's seminal magazine publication from 2017 to today.

Between June 1972 and July 1973, Daido Moriyama produced his own magazine publication, Kiroku, which was then referred to as Record. It became a diaristic journal of his work as it developed. In 2006, encouraged by the Japanese publisher Akio Nagasawa, Moriyama was able to resume publication of Record.

The first thirty issues of Record were edited by Mark Holborn into the now classic 2017 photobook of the same title. Daido Moriyama: Record 2, also edited by Mark Holborn, picks up from where the original left off, with a selection of images and texts by Moriyama from issues thirty-one to fifty of the magazine. With Moriyama now in his eighties, Record 2 will likely be the end of the story. But despite his advancing years, the work is unmistakably Moriyama's aesthetic—fiercely contrasted images with fragmentary, intensely composed frames that express the vision of one of the greatest photographers.

• Session Press 2017
• Softcover, 1st edition 216p
• NEW

One of the most influential photographers of our time, Nobuyoshi Araki is known for his diaristic style or “shi-shashin” (I-photographs) in the publication of over 500 books throughout his career. His work has become practically synonymous with Japanese photography; closely associated with bondage, sex, his late wife, Yoko, as well as still lifes and nudes. It is, however, less known that Araki had explored experimental film projects since the mid 1980s.

In 1986 at Cinema Rise in Tokyo, Araki staged a live performance entitled Tokyo Monogatari (Tokyo Story). Using two projectors, Araki and his assistants, Nobuhiko Ansai and Shiro Tamiya, selected and sequenced slides to create a succession of overlapping images fading into one another, accompanied by a musical soundtrack. Tokyo Monogatari became the first in a series of live performances entitled Arakinema, which he staged until the mid-2000s in museums and art institutions around the world.
Blue Period and Last Summer are made up primarily of nudes and portraits alternating with street scenes and images of flowers. The majority of the work is derived from Shashin Jidai, the important underground sub culture magazine of the 1980s in Japan. Our publication singles out these two projects as they are essential to an understanding of his film work. As Araki explained at his initial meeting with Session Press publisher Miwa Susuda in Shinjuku in 2016, “The two films should be seen as a set, since Blue Period is about the past and Last Summer is about the future. By removing color using a chemical solution, Blue Period is about an act of subtraction, whereas adding color to the images in Last Summer is about an act of addition. This project is just like life itself.”

Working directly from the 140 original slides used for both projections, the book successfully offers a fresh review of the photographer’s hidden oeuvre and regains the true spirit and atmosphere of the original Arakinema performances.

Sealed.

• Akio Nagasawa 2024
• Softcover, 1st edition. 104p
• New 

My daughter took me for a ride in her car the other day, and drove me to Yokohama. I hadn’t been there for quite a long time, so I was happy to roam the streets of Yokohama with my camera in my hand, always ready to shoot. We parked the car near Kannai Station, and after walking for a while, we arrived at Isezakicho. When I looked up, I noticed (the female singer) Mina Aoe smiling down at me from a giant billboard, and being happily reminded once again that I was in Yokohama, I took quite a few snapshots. That was when I caught sight of a group of cheerful girls parading on the other side of the street, which instantly had me clicking away to all sides. The streets were getting crowded, and seeing the skyscrapers of “Minatomirai” behind the buildings along the avenues, I couldn’t help but feel strongly impressed at how much Yokohama had changed.

Before – in fact quite a long time ago – I often made trips to Tokyo together with the photographer Takuma Nakahira, who was also living in Zushi back then. We would take a train on the Yokosuka Line, and then change to the Toyoko Line at Yokohama. But once we were at Yokohama, instead of jumping on the next train, it happened ever so often that we walked out of the station on a whim, down to the Sakuragicho area, and into a coffee shop where we would end up drinking coffee for hours. Even when I suggested walking around a bit more and taking photos in the neighborhood, Nakahira was only interested in the scenery around the port of Kawasaki at night, so over his coffee he just kept talking happily about things and people. like Godard, or the songs of Mina Mazzini, my favorite singer at the time.

When I think about it now, my only memories related to Yokohama are those of Nakahira shooting like crazy when the two of us eventually went to the port of Kawasaki at night, and then again at the time of his exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art.
The present cityscape of Yokohama has piqued my curiosity.

I guess I will continue going there every now and then, and take a bunch of photos."

– Daido Moriyama

Signed copy.

• Nazraeli Press 2024
  
• Hardback, 1st edition, 16p with print
  
• New
  

In 2015, Daido Moriyama stopped in Los Angeles to photograph the westside following a museum opening of his work in Houston. For two days, he photographed in Santa Monica, Venice and the Marina, in alleyways and private homes. The resulting photographs are presented in his newest contributions to our One Picture Book Series: Daido "Uno" (black and white) and Daido "Dos" (color).

Small format hardback 6" x 8 1/2", 16 pages. Limited to 500 numbered copies, each including a 5"x7" original print that has been signed by the artist.

• Roshin Books 2024
  
• Hardback, 1st edition, 80p
  
• New
  

Born in Aomori in 1924, Ichiro Kojima depicted the lives of people living in the harsh environment of Japan’s Tohoku region. Under the vast sky, he faced the landscapes spread before him with his camera in hand.
 
His career as a photographer lasted only about ten years. Kojima, who passed away suddenly at the age of 39, left behind a dramatic world that still resonates with us today. Despite his attempts to distance himself from the images of Tsugaru, Kojima could never escape the persistent imagery of the Tohoku region that followed him everywhere.
 
This book offers a new perspective on Kojima’s journey, appealing both to those already familiar with his work and those discovering it for the first time.

Text in English and Japanese.  Edition of 1000 copies.

• Benrido 2024
• Set of 6 collotype prints
• New

• Akio Nagasawa 2024
• Softcover, 1st edition. 104p
• New 

'Let’s assume there is some brainwave that suddenly prompts me to think about the present state of photography in Japan.

Fact of the matter is, I’m quite simply not really interested in such things in the first place, because no matter what I came up with as an answer, you would reply that photography and photographers in Japan, and just about everywhere else in the world, have long been living in their own respective bubble, seriously dedicated to their own thing in their own reality. That would make perfect sense to me, and as a result, I would once again get caught up in a state of mind unable to pursue – let alone answer – the question what exactly photography means to me now.

A photograph is something that fragmentarily reflects the sensibility and sensitivity of a photographer in the very moment he or she releases the shutter, and the things in it instantly become the photographer’s own. But once it is reproduced and printed or exhibited, it disperses into the multifariously shaded folds of the audience’s gaze, where it establishes itself as a unique and hard new reality, and as a manifestation of some kind of memory, which again works as a mighty, enigmatic tool that connects past, present and future.

It is nothing more and nothing less than a camera, and we photographers can only take our hats off to Monsieur Nicéphore Niépce and thank him for inventing it.
These are the things that I have on my mind as I look back on another day of wandering around and taking snapshots in the streets; another day of asking myself what photography is all about, and being reminded that it’s just the great thing that it is.'

- Daido Moriyama

Signed copy.

• Akio Nagasawa 2024
• Softcover, 1st edition. 34p
• New 

'One day in the early 1990s, I tried some makeup because I was too bored.

My appearance was so ridiculous that I took photos of it.

This is me on that day.'

- Daido Moriyama

Edition of 350 signed and numbered copies with a silkscreen printed canvas cover.

• Blue Lotus Editions / Photo Editions 2024
• Hardback, 2nd edition, 100p
• New

Yasuhiro Ogawa’s new photobook Into the Silence captures the rugged yet timeless beauty of Japan’s northern region as he follows in the footsteps of the 17th Century poet Matsuo Bashō.

The story of Matsuo Bashō's journey through the northern provinces of Japan in the 17th century, is recounted in his travelogue "The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” ("Oku no Hosomichi”). In the summer of 1689, Bashō set out on his journey with his traveling companion Sora. They traveled on foot, carrying only minimal provisions and staying in humble lodgings along the way. Bashō was seeking inspiration for his poetry, and he found it in the natural beauty and cultural richness of the places he visited.

Like Bashō before him, Ogawa set out on a journey through the Tōhoku region, unlike Bashō, who traveled on foot with pen in hand, Ogawa preferred to move by train with camera in hand.  His photographs capture the rugged beauty of the landscape, from snow-covered mountains to misty forests and along deserted roads with glimpses of wild oceans, often shot through foggy windows on a train in motion. Through his lens, Ogawa reveals a world that is both remote and timeless, a world in stillness and motion.

Despite the passage of centuries, the challenges faced by Bashō on his journey are still evident in Ogawa’s photographs. The loneliness and isolation of the road are palpable in the shots of empty trains, lone tracks or roads and desolate hotel interiors. So are the physical challenges of traversing rough terrain and inclement weather documented in his muted photographs.  There is a marked contrast between the beauty and tranquility of the landscape and the harsh realities of life in this remote region. From plain coastal towns to empty streets, Ogawa’s images reveal the toll that economic decline and depopulation have taken on the area. Yet there remains a sense of hope and resilience.

Hardback 2nd edition (1st was softcover)

Signed copy. 

Copies of Into The Silence, with a signed print are available here.

• Blue Lotus Editions / Photo Editions 2024
• Hardback, 2nd edition, 100p
• New

Yasuhiro Ogawa’s new photobook Into the Silence captures the rugged yet timeless beauty of Japan’s northern region as he follows in the footsteps of the 17th Century poet Matsuo Bashō.

The story of Matsuo Bashō's journey through the northern provinces of Japan in the 17th century, is recounted in his travelogue "The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” ("Oku no Hosomichi”). In the summer of 1689, Bashō set out on his journey with his traveling companion Sora. They traveled on foot, carrying only minimal provisions and staying in humble lodgings along the way. Bashō was seeking inspiration for his poetry, and he found it in the natural beauty and cultural richness of the places he visited.

Like Bashō before him, Ogawa set out on a journey through the Tōhoku region, unlike Bashō, who traveled on foot with pen in hand, Ogawa preferred to move by train with camera in hand.  His photographs capture the rugged beauty of the landscape, from snow-covered mountains to misty forests and along deserted roads with glimpses of wild oceans, often shot through foggy windows on a train in motion. Through his lens, Ogawa reveals a world that is both remote and timeless, a world in stillness and motion.

Despite the passage of centuries, the challenges faced by Bashō on his journey are still evident in Ogawa’s photographs. The loneliness and isolation of the road are palpable in the shots of empty trains, lone tracks or roads and desolate hotel interiors. So are the physical challenges of traversing rough terrain and inclement weather documented in his muted photographs.  There is a marked contrast between the beauty and tranquility of the landscape and the harsh realities of life in this remote region. From plain coastal towns to empty streets, Ogawa’s images reveal the toll that economic decline and depopulation have taken on the area. Yet there remains a sense of hope and resilience.

Hardback 2nd edition (1st edition was softcover)

Signed copy.

Supplied with a  7”x 5” signed and stamped archival pigment print (snow image) as shown.  Exclusive to Photobookstore.

• Blue Lotus Editions / Photo Editions 2024
• Hardback, 2nd edition, 100p
• New

Yasuhiro Ogawa’s new photobook Into the Silence captures the rugged yet timeless beauty of Japan’s northern region as he follows in the footsteps of the 17th Century poet Matsuo Bashō.

The story of Matsuo Bashō's journey through the northern provinces of Japan in the 17th century, is recounted in his travelogue "The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” ("Oku no Hosomichi”). In the summer of 1689, Bashō set out on his journey with his traveling companion Sora. They traveled on foot, carrying only minimal provisions and staying in humble lodgings along the way. Bashō was seeking inspiration for his poetry, and he found it in the natural beauty and cultural richness of the places he visited.

Like Bashō before him, Ogawa set out on a journey through the Tōhoku region, unlike Bashō, who traveled on foot with pen in hand, Ogawa preferred to move by train with camera in hand.  His photographs capture the rugged beauty of the landscape, from snow-covered mountains to misty forests and along deserted roads with glimpses of wild oceans, often shot through foggy windows on a train in motion. Through his lens, Ogawa reveals a world that is both remote and timeless, a world in stillness and motion.

Despite the passage of centuries, the challenges faced by Bashō on his journey are still evident in Ogawa’s photographs. The loneliness and isolation of the road are palpable in the shots of empty trains, lone tracks or roads and desolate hotel interiors. So are the physical challenges of traversing rough terrain and inclement weather documented in his muted photographs.  There is a marked contrast between the beauty and tranquility of the landscape and the harsh realities of life in this remote region. From plain coastal towns to empty streets, Ogawa’s images reveal the toll that economic decline and depopulation have taken on the area. Yet there remains a sense of hope and resilience.

Hardback 2nd edition (1st edition was softcover)

Signed copy.

Supplied with a  7”x 5” signed and stamped archival pigment print (birds image) as shown.  Exclusive to Photobookstore.

• Blue Lotus Editions / Photo Editions 2024
• Hardback, 2nd edition, 100p
• New

Yasuhiro Ogawa’s new photobook Into the Silence captures the rugged yet timeless beauty of Japan’s northern region as he follows in the footsteps of the 17th Century poet Matsuo Bashō.

The story of Matsuo Bashō's journey through the northern provinces of Japan in the 17th century, is recounted in his travelogue "The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” ("Oku no Hosomichi”). In the summer of 1689, Bashō set out on his journey with his traveling companion Sora. They traveled on foot, carrying only minimal provisions and staying in humble lodgings along the way. Bashō was seeking inspiration for his poetry, and he found it in the natural beauty and cultural richness of the places he visited.

Like Bashō before him, Ogawa set out on a journey through the Tōhoku region, unlike Bashō, who traveled on foot with pen in hand, Ogawa preferred to move by train with camera in hand.  His photographs capture the rugged beauty of the landscape, from snow-covered mountains to misty forests and along deserted roads with glimpses of wild oceans, often shot through foggy windows on a train in motion. Through his lens, Ogawa reveals a world that is both remote and timeless, a world in stillness and motion.

Despite the passage of centuries, the challenges faced by Bashō on his journey are still evident in Ogawa’s photographs. The loneliness and isolation of the road are palpable in the shots of empty trains, lone tracks or roads and desolate hotel interiors. So are the physical challenges of traversing rough terrain and inclement weather documented in his muted photographs.  There is a marked contrast between the beauty and tranquility of the landscape and the harsh realities of life in this remote region. From plain coastal towns to empty streets, Ogawa’s images reveal the toll that economic decline and depopulation have taken on the area. Yet there remains a sense of hope and resilience.

Hardback 2nd edition (1st edition was softcover)

Signed copy.

Supplied with a  7”x 5” signed and stamped archival pigment print (cat image) as shown.  Exclusive to Photobookstore.

• Blue Lotus Editions / Photo Editions 2024
• Hardback, 2nd edition, 100p
• New

Yasuhiro Ogawa’s new photobook Into the Silence captures the rugged yet timeless beauty of Japan’s northern region as he follows in the footsteps of the 17th Century poet Matsuo Bashō.

The story of Matsuo Bashō's journey through the northern provinces of Japan in the 17th century, is recounted in his travelogue "The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” ("Oku no Hosomichi”). In the summer of 1689, Bashō set out on his journey with his traveling companion Sora. They traveled on foot, carrying only minimal provisions and staying in humble lodgings along the way. Bashō was seeking inspiration for his poetry, and he found it in the natural beauty and cultural richness of the places he visited.

Like Bashō before him, Ogawa set out on a journey through the Tōhoku region, unlike Bashō, who traveled on foot with pen in hand, Ogawa preferred to move by train with camera in hand.  His photographs capture the rugged beauty of the landscape, from snow-covered mountains to misty forests and along deserted roads with glimpses of wild oceans, often shot through foggy windows on a train in motion. Through his lens, Ogawa reveals a world that is both remote and timeless, a world in stillness and motion.

Despite the passage of centuries, the challenges faced by Bashō on his journey are still evident in Ogawa’s photographs. The loneliness and isolation of the road are palpable in the shots of empty trains, lone tracks or roads and desolate hotel interiors. So are the physical challenges of traversing rough terrain and inclement weather documented in his muted photographs.  There is a marked contrast between the beauty and tranquility of the landscape and the harsh realities of life in this remote region. From plain coastal towns to empty streets, Ogawa’s images reveal the toll that economic decline and depopulation have taken on the area. Yet there remains a sense of hope and resilience.

Hardback 2nd edition (1st edition was softcover)

Signed copy.

Supplied with a  7”x 5” signed and stamped archival pigment print (rain image) as shown.  Exclusive to Photobookstore.

• Akio Nagasawa 2024
• Softcover, 1st edition 120p
• New

"Off the main street across from Yokosuka station on the Keihin Kyuko, there is an entertainment district known as “Wakamatsu Market,” that has retained much of the good old Showa flair. As I currently have some other business in the area, I’m walking the streets of Yokosuka quite frequently these days, and realized that visited Wakamatsu Market for the first time since walking around here several years ago to take photos for an earlier issue of Record. Once I slipped into the area’s back streets, there was a smell in the air that reminded me of Shinjuku’s “Golden-gai.” It’s a smell that I like, an environment that my body seems to feel comfortable in, so whenever I pass through it now, I can’t do so without repeatedly pressing my camera’s shutter. On the other hand, however, the Dobuita-dori shopping street that has been synonymous with Yokosuka more than any other place, and where I used to hang out to take pictures around the clock so to speak, has transformed into a place that I now find utterly boring. Not that the neighborhood has changed completely. Even the notorious “sukajan” jacket shops are still there. It is the atmosphere in the streets, the people that I meet here now, the way everything smells, that is so different now. I know that it’s useless to expect everything to be just as I remember it from roaming the streets that I identified with Yokosuka some 60 years ago. Nonetheless, I ask myself where in the world those unique nightly sceneries, those ladies swaggering through the dusky streets with the American soldiers, have all gone. As a matter of course, things change with the times, with age and through the generations, and this place makes no exception. But at the same time, there are those things that do remind me of the Yokosuka that I know so well: the area around the station on the Yokosuka Line, the sea you could see from Shiori station, the ships and cranes on the military base…

So I find myself scouring this neighborhood with a wry smile now. Could it be that Yokosuka is where my photographing career started, and where ends? No way! C’mon Daido, you’ve got work to do!

I like it though, Yokosuka."

– from the afterword by Daido Moriyama

Signed copy.

• Zen Foto 2017
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• Used: near fine to fine
  

Masaki Yamamoto’s highly anticipated first photobook presents one of the most daring family portraits in Japanese photography.

Shot entirely in his family’s tiny apartment, with walls yellowed from cigarette smoke, broken doors and trash covering the ground, Yamamoto’s unashamed, uncompromising black-and-white photos nonetheless depict a strong and rare sense of familial intimacy and affection. Not quite dysfunctional, but decidedly atypical.

“As we grew up, we had different experiences of being bullied, socially withdrawn, sick, badly behaved and so on. These experiences intertwined with the Yamamoto family’s history and are what makes up our lives as well as the family’s bonds today”

Fine condition, signed by the photographer.

• Dashwood/Session Press 2023
• Softcover, 1st edition,424p
  
• New

With the publication of his serialized photo-essay Hikari to Kage (Light and Shadow) in the first issues of the magazine, Shashin Jidai, Daido Moriyama announced his return to photography after nearly a decade. Moriyama had been mired in an acute creative slump from his mid thirties, since the publication of his seminal book, Shashin yo Sayonara (Farewell Photography) in 1972.  Unable to take nearly any photos for a prolonged period, he turned to illicit drugs, ultimately wasting away to little more than 40 kgs before he hit physical and emotional rock bottom.  Lured back by Akira Hasegawa, Shashin Jidai’s editor, he was invited to contribute photographs for each issue.  This began a long relationship between Moriyama and Shashin Jidai.  He would ultimately make a total of six serialized essays that appeared through sixty-three issues (in every issue but one) until its’ demise in April 1988.  During this period Moriyama worked almost exclusively for Shasin Jidai and was given a free hand to explore and experiment and in the process evolved a new aesthetic that still informs his photography today.  Tragically, more than eighty percent of his negatives were lost from this pivotal body of work.  In Daido Moriyama Shashin Jidai 1981–1988 the complete run of essays or chapters that appeared concurrently in Shashin Jidai are brought together for the first time, representing the only way to appreciate them without acquiring the original magazines themselves.  Each complete essay is reproduced alongside a selected portfolio of images and written essays by Moriyama from each chapter as they appeared in the original magazines.  Text appears in Japanese with English translation.

In over 400 pages it provides access to a pivotal period in the evolution of one of the most revered and influential photographers of the twentieth century, as yet undocumented in book-form. 

Accompanying there is a short essay “The Photo Age: Daido Moriyama and Shashin Jidai” by Kotaro Iizawa. Translation throughout by Daniel González, Essays by Daido Moriyama, Text by Kotaro Iizawa, Design by Geoff Han, Editing by David Strettell and Miwa Susuda.

Softcover with poster.

• Akio Nagasawa 2023
• Softcover, 1st edition, 72p
• New

A collection of works featuring stray cats that Daido Moriyama has encountered on the streets.

Signed and numbered edition of 350 copies with a silkscreen printed canvas cover.

• Nazraeli 2007
• Softcover, 1st edition, 400p
• New

"In Spring, I am going to go to Hawaii to photograph. I'm so excited, and a little anxious - I've never been there before. The idea of Hawaii has been stuck in my mind for many, many years, just as the idea of a place. I try to imagine what it's like, and I have a certain image of it - a nostalgic place, a place where time has stopped. When I get there, I'll probably find out it's nothing like that. . . ." - Daido Moriyama, 2004

Three years and five trips later, Daido Moriyama created a book of photographs of what he did find in Hawaii.

1st Nazraeli edition of 500 copies, unsigned.

• Reminders Photography / Self 2014
• Hardback, handmade edition
• As new
  

Silent Histories is a testimony to the tragedy of indiscriminate bombing by  US forces during the War in the Pacific, which killed 330,000 Japanese and in-jured 430,000 more. The figures are imposing: some 9.7 million left homeless and more than 2.23 million homes destroyed in more than 200 different cities. In the midst of this enormous destruction, many children were orphaned in an instant or suffered burning or mutilations that marked them for life.

Japan achieved its economic recovery in the wake of wartime devastation. This remarkable growth has been dubbed the “Japanese economic miracle.”  In spite of this unprecedented prosperity, however, children with war injuries have been forced to live harsh lives, unable to cure their wounds. They have lived in the shadows, concealing their pain, hiding their scars, and sparing others the discomfort of seeing them.

Silent Histories was originally published in 2014 in a special limited edition of forty-five handmade copies, this is the final handmade dummy for the 2014 original edition obtained direct from the artist.

Signed by Kazuma Obara.   Completely handmade dummy, with expected imperfections.  All texts in Japanese.

• Akio Nagasawa 2023
• Softcover, 1st edition, 132p
• New"Even now that it’s the end of August, it’s still quite hot outside.

• Nitesha 2023
  
• Softcover, reprinted edition
  
• New
  

Provoke was first published in November 1968 as a dojin-shi, or self-published magazine. It was originally conceived by art critic Koji Taki (1928-2011) and photographer Takuma Nakahira (1938-2015), with poet Takahiko Okada (1939-1997) and photographer Yutaka Takanashi as dojin members. The subtitle for the magazine was “Provocative Materials for Thought”, and each issue was composed of photographs, essays and poems. After releasing the second and third issue with Daido Moriyama as a subsequent member, the group broke up with their last publication First, Abandon the World of Pseudo-Certainty - an overview edition of the three issues. Provoke’s grainy, blurry, and out-of-focus photographs were initially ridiculed as are-bure-boke and stirred a great deal of controversy, yet it had created a strong impact inside and outside of the photography world during that time. However, today, Provoke has become an extremely rare book and very few people have seen the original.

Published as part of The Japanese Box: Facsimile Reprint of Six Rare Photographic Publications of the Provoke Era*, Provoke's facsimile reprint has its photographic images cropped approximately 3 mm from the edges for bookbinding purposes. The reprint also does not include texts by Takahiko Okada due to copyright reasons. Provoke Complete Reprint by NITESHA maintains the original size of the images and includes all original texts, along with the ones by Takahiko Okada. In addition, the volumes will be accompanied by complete English and Chinese translations of the original Japanese texts as a booklet.

2023 printing.

• Sokyusha 2023
  
• Hardback, 1st  edition
• New

A rare time capsule from the 1980s

The story of Daido Moriyama’s photobook “1980s Remnants” begins in 1987, when Moriyama handed Michitaka Ota (of photobook publisher Sokyusha) a box filled with one thousand of his photographs. Some photos from the box were published in “A Journey to Nakaji” later that year and, more than ten years later, in the 1999 photobook “Dreams of Water.” Moriyama insisted that Ota keep the box of photographs, and so they stayed in a corner of Ota’s apartment. A recent conversation brought the box back to mind, and finally, writes Ota, “I was pleased to find that I now can give them some shape.”

Even though the more than 30 years that have passed between the creation of these photographs and their eventual publication becomes part of their charm and magic, these 1980s Moriyama snapshots – of streets and textures and the beauty of urban chaos and, somewhat atypically, plants and floral wildlife – remain fascinating in their own right.

Edition of 300 copies.

• Benrido 2023
• Set of 6 colour collotype prints
• New

• Osiris 2023
  
• Hardback, 1st edition, 120p
• New

“Dawn in Spring” brings back the earliest works of Japanese photographer Asako Narahashi.　Originally shot in 1989, a decisive period not only for the then-unknown artist, Narahashi exhibited the images from her “Dawn in Spring” series four separate times throughout the year. Including previously unshown images, this book represents the first time her series is made available in print.

After taking part in Daido Moriyama’s “FotoSession” workshop in the mid-80s, 1989 was the year her time as a university student would end. With an undecided future ahead of her, Narahashi travelled through Japan – Kumamoto, Miyakejima, Hakata, Yokohama, Hachinohe, Yuzawa, Tokyo… – and inadvertently laid the foundation for her photographic career. Despite the long time between these photographs and her breakthrough in the latter half of the 90s, the black-and-white images in “Dawn of Spring” already reveal the acute sensibilities of this exceptional artist.

“Dawn in Spring. I can’t for the life of me remember how I arrived at this title. Perhaps because it happened to be spring; maybe the words were already resting at the tip of my tongue and just felt right to me. I had no real idea where to travel or what to photograph. I think I simply let the flow, the momentum, my encounters and my desire to escape decide it all … Having come face to face with my contact prints, negatives and 8x10s after all these years, I realized once again that this is where it all began for me.”
― from Asako Narahashi’s artist statement

• RM 2020
• Hardback, 2nd edition
• NEW
  

Born in 1957 in Gamagori, in the Japanese prefecture of Aichi, Yamamoto Masao is a photographer who began his art studies as an oil painter under the supervision of Goro Saito in his hometown. Yamamoto subsequently discovered that photography was the ideal medium for the theme that most interested him: images with the ability to evoke memories.

“Small Things in Silence” offers a perspective on twenty years of the career of one of Japan’s most important photographers. In the words of Yamamoto himself: “I try to capture moments that no one sees and make a photo from them. When I see them in print, a new story begins.”

• IKKI Books 2023
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New

• Osiris 2019
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New

In his photobook “Holy Onion”, Japanese photographer Motoyuki Daifu concentrates on his mother, photographed while she peels an onion in the family’s kitchen (both mother and kitchen are familiar to us from Daifu’s previous works portraying his family’s life).

In 35 continuous photographs, Daifu captures his mother peeling onions, frame by frame. The photographs are taken only moments apart, as Daifu’s mother cuts into the onion in her hand, scratches her nose, look at the camera, back at the onion, wipe her eyes. The book’s accordion design, with some images separated by white pages, others grouped together, adds to the continuous nature of the sequence. As the images progress, small details in the setting change, and by the end of the book, the plate with onion peels is again empty, the process ready to start all over again. With “Holy Onion”, Daifu pays close attention to the intricacies of mundane tasks and accentuates the beauty within (almost automatic) everyday routines.

The book also features an essay by Chris Fujiwara (in English).

• Akio Nagasawa 2023
• Softcover, 1st edition
• New
  

Yesterday, my daughter drove me and my wife to Kami-Ooka, a town south of Yokohama. We had already been there two weeks earlier, and as I had no business accompanying the ladies on their shopping spree, I spent a little over an hour walking around with my camera, in the area around the station that is crowded with people and tall buildings. Quite naturally, the tour also led me to a place that I always visit, and that I have decided to refer to as my “oasis number three.” On one side of a 50-meter stretch of a narrow alley between the back of a store and the Keihin Kyuko line, there are several juice stands, and sandwiched between them, a number of ashtrays are admirably standing and waiting for smokers like myself. There’s always a bunch of folks, guys and ladies alike, puffing away on their cigarettes as if there was no tomorrow. One of the bars has some concrete steps in front of it that are just right for sitting on, and in that “oasis,” I like to spend some quality time smoking while observing the neighborhood through my pocket camera, and taking the occasional snapshot. There are quite a lot of ladies, and also many blue-collar type guys, and they all come together here for a chat and a puff.

Back home, I found myself alone in the kitchen at night, and while having another cigarette or two, I reviewed the results of my own shooting spree in the alleys of Kami-Ooka. “I guess two or three of them will be alright for Record,” I concluded while thinking about the next issue. I remembered also photographing a long line of people and wondered what they were queueing up for, while lighting another cigarette. Another day in the life of the photographer that I am was casually drawing to an end. And tomorrow, I thought, I’m going to take a stroll around Ofuna.

(Number one and two of my own private oases are places that I carry in my heart, and I won’t tell anyone about them, unless they’re heavy smokers just like me!)

– from the afterword by Daido Moriyama

Signed copy.

• Roshin 2015
• Hardback, 1st edition
• Near fine

Masahisa Fukase and his wife, Yoko, began their new married life moving in to Matsubara-danchi residential complex of Soka, Saitama in 1964. they were soon joined by a Siamese cat named Kabo. A few years later Fukase brought home a black cat that he had picked up on the way home from fishing- a cat which he named Hebo. From then on the couple lived their day-to-day life with these two cats.

This photo collection was made from the the few remaining vintage prints from that the time. The work is joined by another series of photos of a cat named Sasuke which Fukase had special affection for.

Long out of print.  Edition of 800 copies.

Final copy, with some faint rubbing to edges.  Inside very fine.

• Roshin 2022
• Hardback, 3rd edition
• Fine

Yukichi Watabe’s “Stakeout Diary” is a close-up documentation of two Japanese police detectives investigating a grisly murder in Mito, the capital of Ibaraki Prefecture, in 1958. With the mutilated body of the victim confirmed as a Tokyo resident (and a hand towel of a Tokyo-based hotel was found with the corpse), the investigation led the two detectives—one from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, the other a Mito local—to hold stakeouts in various downtown areas of Tokyo.

Watabe’s photographs of the detectives slowly solving the case and finding the murderer ooze with so atmosphere and character that the series almost seems unreal. In photographs that would not seem out of place in an early Kurosawa film, we see the detectives interview witnesses, ride around the city in busses and trains, think things over in cafes and offices, and converse over cigarettes and food.

While some of Watabe’s photographs were published in a magazine at the time, the series itself was not published until 2011, five years after the photographs were rediscovered by chance in a Tokyo bookshop. The version by Japanese publisher roshin books features prints especially made for this book using negatives borrowed from Yukichi Watabe’s son.

3rd edition in fine condition.

• Match & Co 2016
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New

After Dazai and Daido Moriyama: Terayama, the third entry in Match & Company’s literary collaboration series with Daido Moriyama. Photographs by Daido Moriyama are paired with Oda Sakunosuke’s 1946 short-story “At the Horse Races” to pay tribute to one of Japan’s literary treasures.

“For this project, I paired photos of Osaka, taken by Daido Moriyama, with the short story “At the Horse Races”, written by Sakunosuke Oda in 1946, and edited them into this book. […]
I told Moriyama I wanted to create a book that, by pairing them together, would give an entirely new layer of expression to both his photographs of Osaka and the words of Sakunosuke Oda.

My trick to let two artists, each with a strong personality, meet within the space of a book to stimulate each other, has worked.”

• Sokyusha / Blue Lotus Editions 2022
• Softcover, 3rd edition
  
• New
  

"The Dreaming contains 86 black and white images selected from my 27 years’ career in photography and traveling. When I turned 50, I decided to go through all the black & white negatives I had taken so far. Every moment of the journeys may have been vision of dreams – that’s what I thought when I tracked down my archive and such a thought gave me a hint to make this book."

- Yasuhiro Ogawa

Signed copy.  Final copies of the 3rd edition.

Comes with a 6'x4' postcard sized print (signed and stamped to the reverse), please choose from the dropdown.

• Aperture 2021
  
• Hardback, 1st anniversary edition
• As new

Ten years after publishing Illuminance in 2011, Aperture is delighted to bring this beloved book back into print, retaining Rinko Kawauchi’s original sequence and signature melding of keenly observed gestures, quotidian detail, and a finely honed palette.

On the book’s original release, Alec Soth declared Illuminance “an exquisitely produced monograph [that] should make Rinko a household name.” An expanded edition with additional texts by curator David Chandler; philosopher Masatake Shinohara; and Aperture’s creative director, Lesley A. Martin, this reissue contributes new context to and perspective on Kawauchi’s influential work. Extraordinarily poetic, brimming with imagination and sensibility, and following international acclaim, this exquisite ten-year anniversary edition will entice lovers of photography once again.

Signed copy.

• AKIO NAGASAWA 2022
• Softcover, 1st edition, 72p
• New

"When I arrived in Sapporo in June, it was so cold that the light purple clusters of lilac in the alleys and under the eaves were trembling in the cold air. While other parts of Japan had entered the rainy season, here the wind just kept blowing for days on end, and the streets and avenues were tinted white instead. Keeping the promise that I had firmly made to myself, I grabbed my camera every morning and took to the streets, with the regularity of an office worker, and no intention to meet any friend or acquaintance. I spent most of these three months on my own. Other than the very basic daily conversations – buying a ticket at the station, ordering a coffee, or making the occasional phone call – I was just keeping my mouth shut. I soon ran out of sleeping pills, and as I didn’t drink, all I could do was spend the long nights reading books. The daily photo shootings weren’t really fruitful, and there I was, sitting in my freezing apartment, at my wit’s end with my progressing mix of depersonalization, aphasia and insomnia. So as, in other words, my lifestyle was from the very onset based on that fawning, illusional idea of escape and isolation, my only justification that was taking photographs, was easily reversed from the true intention that it used to be, to mere pretense. Those days of feeling guilty went by one after another, and before the summer ended, I decided to go back to Tokyo. At the end of the day, I haven’t made any progress whatsoever, but what I do have, as a proof of my endless walks to miscellaneous places, are 250 used rolls of film."

– from the afterword by Daido Moriyama

Signed and numbered edition of 600 copies, with a silkscreen canvas cover.

• Iikki 2022
  
• Hardback, 2nd edition
  
• New
  

Sasanami is the result of a dialog between the photographer Masao Yamamoto and the musician and composer Akira Uchida initiated by IIKKI between October 2019 and August 2020. 

''Sasanami: Sound becomes waves and creates space, where a story is spun that transcends time and space, just like Noh. Something gentle in that space. Its presence is not definite, it simply exists there. I want to share with you the scene of how the individual and the space are connected.''

Hand-numbered 2nd edition of 1000 copies, with a digital download code for the music.  

• Session Press 2022
  
• Softcover, 1st edition, 2nd printing
  
• NEW
  

Session Press’ Red Flower, The Women of Okinawa, published in 2017, was the first US monograph by Okinawan photographer Mao Ishikawa, a highly revered figure in Japan. The release of the second printing in October of this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972 since its’ occupation by the US after World War II.

Red Flower celebrates the courageous and honest lives of women she met and befriended while working at bars in Koza and Kin that were hang-outs for black soldiers from the local US military bases in Okinawa. The book features several unpublished photographs from artist's first book, ”Hot Days in Camp Hansen" published in 1982. Red Flower is the seminal work of Ishikawa, marking the starting point of her subsequently long career as a photographer. Designed with full-bleed images reproduced in a large format with intense b/w printing which successfully conveys the original lively spirit and tension of Ishikawa’s Camp Hansen work, available once again for wider public appreciation with an essay by the artist.

2nd printing.

• Benrido 2017
• Set of 6 collotype prints
• New

Shoji Ueda (1913-2000) was one of Japan’s most prominent modernist photographers and continues to be one of the nation’s most highly regarded. Working mostly in his home prefecture of Tottori, he frequently incorporated surrealist imagery into his photographs. He often used his wife and three children as subjects, with the local landscape of sand dunes as a backdrop. Six works have been selected from  his series SAND DUNE for inclusion in this collotype portfolio.

Set of 6  collotype prints printed by Benrido, Inc.

Print Size: 25.4 x 20.3cm. Case Size: 20.6 x 25.8 x 0.8cm


In the 1880s, the collotype printing process was introduced to Kyoto and in 1905 Benrido began producing collotypes. Collotype is one of the earliest forms of printing techniques and was invented in France in 1855 by Alphonse Poitevin as a method for photographic fine art printing.  Due to the high level of print and archival quality, it has since been used primarily as a way to reproduce and preserve Japan’s National Treasures and cultural properties. Today Benrido Collotype Atelier remains as one of only a few studios left in the world capable of producing fine colour collotype prints.

• Akio Nagasawa 2022
• Softcover, reprinted edition, 352p
• New

A complete reproduction of the photobook Daido hysteric no.4 published by Harajuku fashion brand 'HYSTERIC GLAMOUR' in 1993

Signed and numbered edition of 900 copies. 365 x 315 mm, 352p.

• IBASHO & the(M) éditions 2022
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New
  

Right after the accident, I found a blog about peacocks that were left in the evacuation zone, within the 20km limit. I then started imagining  those peacocks, walking around the empty town with their beautiful wings spread.'

This text is from my previous book "And, where did the peacocks go?". My newest book is the new version of the series about what I have experienced and digested from the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident in 2011. That incident pushed me to return to art, which I had stopped for more than 10 years. In this book, I also used the text above but I added this line in the end:

'I still wonder where they went...'

- Miho Kajioka 

We are happy to announce that the artist Miho Kajioka has asked the (M)éditions & IBASHO to publish a book based on her self-published and handmade book  'And, can you still hear the peacocks?'. 

Edition of 500 numbered copies.    Signed copy.

• Benrido, Inc 2020
• Set of 6 multi colour collotype prints
  
• New

'The aesthetic power of the pictures of Yamamoto Masao (Japan, b. 1957) is unique. Refined, subtle and powerful at the same time. He succeeds to unfold the photographic medium into his own world, far off leading standards. The photo prints are small, sometimes even minuscule, and require a profound observation. The manual modifications by the artist provide an experimental look, with frayed edges and colour additions. His photographs seem to be marked by time, but that impression is the result of a balanced and accurate intervention by the artist. The technique of mixed media and the exceptional prints generate a close connection with the object. Yamamoto narrates no prefabricated story. He offers a glimpse into a harmonious world that is visible for everyone, but not perceived by everybody. For Yamamoto, harmony is the constant interaction between man and nature. Yamamoto’s work is anchored in that direct relationship with his environment.'
- Galley Fifty One

As part of Benrido’s mini-portfolio series, Yamamoto Masao mini-portfolio brings together a selection of well-known works focusing on his imagery of birds. Within a selection of six previously published images have been selected by the artist and printed in colour by the collotype printers at Benrido studio.

Set of 6 multi colour collotype prints printed by Benrido, Inc.

Print Size: 25.4 x 20.3cm. Case Size: 20.6 x 25.8 x 0.8cm


In the 1880s, the collotype printing process was introduced to Kyoto and in 1905 Benrido began producing collotypes. Collotype is one of the earliest forms of printing techniques and was invented in France in 1855 by Alphonse Poitevin as a method for photographic fine art printing.  Due to the high level of print and archival quality, it has since been used primarily as a way to reproduce and preserve Japan’s National Treasures and cultural properties. Today Benrido Collotype Atelier remains as one of only a few studios left in the world capable of producing fine colour collotype prints.

• IBASHO & the (M)éditions 2021
• Softcover, 1st edition
• New

Yoshinori Saito lives in the most northern part of Japan, Hokkaido. Winter there is long and the snow falls intermittently for about four months. The long stretches of snow are tedious, however after the snowstorm when all the snow has settled, there is this endless expanse of white: pure, calm and silent.

 “When I walk on the fluffy virgin snow, in the distance I notice unusual forms. On closer examination they are only some weeds, with their stalks broken and leaves fallen, leaving only a skeletal form. Against the white snow these forms appear black and form sharp markings, as if drawn. This moment also gives me a deep connection to the indigenous Ainu people of Hokkaido. They believe that when their time on earth is over, they return to God’s world, and in due course will reappear. To reflect this sentiment, each work is titled to reflect their world. It is as if the forms are whispering to me, through the tranquility, giving me hope and gently supporting me through to spring.” - Yoshinori Saito

Elegant softcover with Japanese folds. Limited edition of 500 numbered copies.

Text by Yoshinori Saito in Japanese and English

• Akio Nagasawa 2021
• Softcover, 1st edition
• New

"She called herself Shinobu in Shinjuku, Hiroko in Minami, Naomi in Nishiki, Yukari in Nakasu. Rumor has it that she is now living quietly in Ishikari where she was born, under the name she was given by her parents. Momoe. I still think of her every once in a while.

This is a profile of her that lives on in my memory."

- Daido Moriyama

Momoe is the extra issue of a four books new series by Daido Moriyama 'Woman in the Night'.

Edition of 350 signed and numbered copies with a silkscreen printed canvas cover.

• Mack 2021
• Set of 2 Hardbacks, 1st Mack edition
• New

Kawada’s The Map / Chizu is the most famous and sought after book in the history of Japanese photography. Designed with the noted graphic designer Kohei Sugiura, Chizu has seen numerous editions since its original publication in August 1965. In November 2001, New York Public Library acquired the rarest version of the book, Kikuji Kawada’s unique, handmade maquette. The maquette presents a notably different physicality than that of the published edition—many of the pictures are the same but with variant croppings, tonalities, orientations, and a markedly dissimilar configuration with a pair of jacketed volumes—each nearly twice as large in format as the published version—separated by a black-and-white divider. With its pages made of thin, silvery darkroom prints, folded in half and pasted back-to-back, there are no folios to unfurl, only a progression of intense, full-bleed images. This MACK version is an exquisite facsimile of the two-volume maquette, and includes an accompanying bilingual booklet featuring new scholarship by Joshua Chuang and Miyuki Hinton, together with an extended interview with the artist, detailing the evolution of one of the greatest photobooks ever made.  

Two hardback books, each with a jacket, plus one paperback booklet with leporello fold. Housed in a buckram bound hardback slipcase, protected in a printed cardboard mailer.  Text in English and Japanese.

The signed edition includes a slip signed by the artist and bound into the inside back cover.

• T&M 2021
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New

Yamamoto Masao lives in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan, in a house surrounded by forests over three thousand feet above sea level. His lifestyle matches his art, entirely devoted to capturing the “small things in silence” that life and nature offer his gaze.

When in 2013 we took Masao and his wife Reiko for the first time to the Ardèche, on the invitation of Annie and Bernard Mirabel, affinities became evident immediately.

The same love for nature and the ties with the mountain, not that far different from their life in Yamanashi: the same wooded hills on the horizon, the same lights in space in the evening garden. Since then there have been various visits, simply for the pleasure of it, but also to fill up this silent contract between the hosts and the guest: bringing a stone to the edifice that the Fabrique du pont d’Aleyrac has been building for years, inviting artists to work on the Ardèche.

Yamamoto wanted to meet people here and photograph them. Using small settings he depicted imaginatively what seemed important in their lives: the animals they raise, the countryside they live in.

ーー Didier Brouse

This book includes an unpublished text by Marie-Hélène Lafon, who was awarded the Renaudot Prize in 2020.

Text in English with a booklet in Japanese.

Beautifully signed copy.

• Akio Nagasawa 2021
• Softcover, 1st edition
• New

'There was a woman called Naomi in the Nishiki area in Nagoya.
She was a person who loved cars. I often took her for a drive.
It’s already three years since she disappeared from Nishiki.
Even now, I still think of her sometimes.
This is a profile of her as she appears in my memory.'

Naomi is the third volume of a four books new series by Daido Moriyama 'Woman in the Night'.

Silkscreen canvas covered signed and numbered edition of 350 copies only.