1970s Nippon (SIGNED)

Kitai, Kazuo

Published by Tokyo: Toseisha, 2001

About this Item

Signed by Kitai (in kanji) to the front free endpaper. Black and white card wrappers, with the title to the upper side and spine, in a photographically illustrated dust jacket. Photographs and afterword (in Japanese and English) by Kazuo Kitai. Diaristic entries scattered through the book are in Japanese only. Small 4to (24.5cm x 18.5cm), pp.288, 237 black and white photographs. Taken between 1973 and 1981, these images focus on rural life in Japan, presenting a picture of day-to-day life in the country during that period. Kitai moved from his early student protest photography to these images, documenting the changes that were brought about in daily life during the 1970's, as new technologies began to displace traditional facets of Japanese life and concrete structures slowly became the norm. This is a rare and hard to find title, particularly outside of Japan. From the author s postscript: "I had no place that I can call a hometown as I had repeated moving many times since my childhood. All the same I longed for my hometown and I projected my hometown many times on pictures appeared in a developing solution under a red light in a darkroom. However, while I was taking these photographs, populations in farming villages were being absorbed into big cities continuously as a labor force and the decrease in population in farming villages was advancing. 1970s were the age in which a village community and human relation centering the agriculture had been collapsed and Japan in old and good age had finished.".

Seller Inventory # 138

Bibliographic Details

• Title: 1970s Nippon (SIGNED)
• Publisher: Tokyo: Toseisha
• Publication Date: 2001
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)