"Yoko" by Masahisa Fukase Photo Collection

About the productJapanese

Fukase Masahisa's timeless masterpiece "Yoko" - miraculously reprinted!

"Yoko" by Fukase Masahisa, published in 1978 as part of Asahi Sonorama Photo Selection 8, is considered to be the defining series of Fukase's work, but it has been out of print for a long time. This book, which is being published for the first time in about half a century, contains all the original photographs and texts, supervised by Tomo Kosuga, the director of the Fukase Masahisa Archives, with the full cooperation of Yoko Miyoshi, the model. In addition, it contains the referenced texts from that time, a contribution by Masako Toda, and a message from Yoko Miyoshi on the republication, and explores the significance of a classic photo book being revived after time, from the perspective of its composition and binding.

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Fukase and Yoko met in 1963 and married in 1964. In the 1960s, they photographed each other at the Soka Matsubara housing complex where the newlyweds lived, and in the 1970s, they photographed each other in various locations, including Fukase's hometown of Hokkaido, Yoko's birthplace of Kanazawa, Izu, and Kyoto. In 1973, they produced a series of photographs titled Untitled (From the Window), in which they used a telephoto lens to capture Yoko in various poses as she made her way to work each morning, dressed stylishly. These photographs were published intermittently in the magazine Camera Mainichi between 1964 and 1976. In 1974, Fukase's work was included in the New Japanese Photography exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, and the couple's travels to these locations were also captured in the photographs.

Fukase pursued the self thoroughly, and continued to turn his camera on himself and those close to him. "As his private life was brought into his work and his private life became public, a paradox gradually emerged, as if they were together to take a photograph" (Tomo Kosuga). The couple divorced in 1976, and two years later, the photo book Yoko (Asahi Sonorama) was completed. The cover of the book shows Yoko in a kimono, looking back at the viewer, beneath a pane of glass that has been broken in a radial pattern.

For this reprint, the book has been enlarged to enhance the viewer's appreciation of each photograph, and pages featuring photographs of crows, which fly in here and there as if to hint at the couple's future, have been arranged more quietly.

What did Fukase photograph in "Yoko"? This timeless masterpiece, which examines the relationship between two people, a fundamental question and possibility of photography, has been miraculously republished against the backdrop of the zeitgeist carried by the postwar generation.
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Product Information

release date 2025 / 03 / 28

Part numberKPHT10221W-9784865411966

Specification 168 pages / H245mm x H245mm / 920g / Hardcover / Japanese and English

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