Nobuyoshi Araki

Nobuyoshi Araki
Shashin gekijo: Tokyo ereji (A Photo Theater: Tokyo Elegy), 1981
1774

7 3/8 x 9 3/8 in. (19 x 24 cm)

Tokyo: Tojusha.



Illustrated with 1045 photographs taken between 1967 and 1972, in both color and black-and-white. Text by Shunji Ito and Kazuo Nishii. Original wrappers with photo-illustrated dust jacket and bellyband.



Originally scheduled for publication in 1972, but not published until almost a decade later, this work is a visual compendium of extreme images of sex and violence (the book was never published outside of Japan). The variety of edited scenarios include many of Araki's most famous images, including those of his wife Yoko and also Yukio Mishima (Kimitake Hiraoka, an author). The themes of violent sexual practice, and in particular of bondage, so often present in the artist's work are captured through a combination of black-and-white and color imagery, with the use of both numerous close-ups and wide-angle shots, and ranging from staged interiors to landscape views.

Price Upon Request

Nobuyoshi Araki
Tokyo: Araki Nobuyoshi Shashinshu 3 (Tokyo: Araki Nobuyoshi Photobook 3), 1973
1761

5 x 10 in. (13 x 25.7 cm)

Tokyo: Fukusha Shudan Geribara 5.



56 black-and-white photographs printed in offset. Design by Katsumi Yutani. Pink endpapers. Original wrappers, with a text by Köji Taki, printed in olive green in the form of a page from a newspaper; side-stapled.

This copy signed by Araki.



Tokyo is the last in the series of three volumes which examine different aspects of everyday life; it was preceded by Sentimental Journey (1971) and Okinawa: Araki Nobuyoshi Photobook 2 [Sentimental Journey Continued] (1971). Here, Araki juxtaposes two photographs, one flush above the other in a vertical layout instead of the horizontal layout of Okinawa. Most of the images show commuters crossing the streets of Tokyo, paired with pictures of women posing nude or in compromising positions.

“When these (three) volumes are viewed collectively, it becomes clear that Araki is working out a series of related ideas across a number of different publications: the public versus the private, the role of the photographer as a reporter, the contrast of the specific and the general, ideas of locale and narrative, and the very function of a photobook” (Kaneko & Vartanian, p. 110).

[Ref. Ryuichi Kaneko & Ivan Vartanian, Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and '70s, p. 115]

Price Upon Request

Nobuyoshi Araki
Oh Nippon! (Oh Japan !), 1971
1754

10 5/8 x 8 in. (27 x 20.6 cm)

Tokyo: Miki Shuppan.



Illustrated with 225 black-and-white heliogravure-printed photographs. Design by Mikuo Nakamura. Textured endpapers. Original photo-illustrated French-style wrappers with elongated flaps.



First edition of Araki's initial conventionally published book following his early series of photocopy books. Despite the eroticism being more playful and non-threatening than is evident in his later bondage-obsessed books, Araki still to combat problems with the Japanese censors. Many of his proposed images were rejected. A compromise, at least in terms of Araki's original vision and imagery, was found with the development by Nakamura of a layout that split the rejected images into sections which could be reassembled by folding opposing pages together across multiple spreads. With the censors appeased, Araki was able to publish something close to the book he had originally intended.

Price Upon Request

Nobuyoshi Araki
Oo Nippon (Oh Japan!), 1971
1902

10 5/8 x 8 1/8 in. (27 x 20.5 cm)

Tokyo: Mikishuppan. 255 black and white photographs printed using the heliogravure method. Original color photo-illustrated self-wraps. Paperback with printed cover. Text by Uchida Eiichi. The strong erotic element of this work would become a characteristic of Araki's style. Female models are photographed nude in front of a plain background. Pubic hair is, in conformity with Japan’s censorship laws, covered with dark marker pen.

Price Upon Request

Nobuyoshi Araki
Senchimentaru na Tabi (Sentimental Journey), 1971
1755

9 1/4 x 9 1/4 in. (23.8 x 23.8 cm)

Tokyo: Self-published by the artist.



With 108 black and white photographs printed in offset

Original black-and-white photo-illustrated wrappers, with the handwritten title in Japanese printed in black on the front cover, together with the book’s noted edition of 1,000 copies



This is Araki’s most influential book, and one of the most important photobooks of the twentieth century. Araki made these intensely personal photographs whilst on his honeymoon with his bride Yoko, whose name appears alongside her husband’s as co-author. The cover photograph is of their wedding. The photographing of this most intimate of occasions attracted much criticism in a country which still valued a strict code of behavior. In Japan, the “sentimental” had a most negative image, with connotations of obsessive self-absorption and a disregard for social and political issues; ultimately, by putting his private life forward for public scrutiny, Araki paved the way for successive generations of Japanese photographers to work in a similar vein.



[Ref. Andrew Roth, The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century, pp. 206-7; Martin Parr & Gerry Badger, The Photobook: A History, vol.I, p. 295; Andrew Roth, The Open Book: A History of the Photographic Book from 1878 to the Present, pp. 268-9; M. Auer, 802 photo books from the M. + M. Auer collection, p. 527; Ryuichi Kaneko & Ivan Vartanian, Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ‘70s, pp. 108-115]

Price Upon Request

Nobuyoshi Araki
Senchimentaru no Tabi. (Sentimental Journey), 1971
1882

9 1/4 x 9 1/4 in. (23.5 x 23.5 cm)

Tokyo: Privately printed, 1971. Araki is a major celebrity, but when this book was self-published in 1971, he was unknown. It is a photo diary of Araki's honeymoon, including an image of a gravestone that provides an eerie foreshadowing of a later book chronicling his wife's death. All the elements that make Araki a world-class photographer are on full display here: the juxtaposition of the erotic and the banal, the expressionless beauty of modern Japanese life, the unadorned image, reduced to its bare necessity. Sentimental Journey is one of the most important Japanese photobooks published. After hundreds of books and significant fame, it remains Araki's best and most influential work.

Price Upon Request