“THIS BAFFLING, HYPNOTIC BOOK”

SHINOYAMA, Kishin. A Fine Day. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1975. Quarto, original black morocco-patterned cloth, original acetate dust jacket, original cardboard slipcase. Housed in custom clamshell box. $1400.

First edition of this book of color photographs depicting notable events in Japan in 1974.

"A fascinating early book by Kishin Shinoyama, who has become one of Japan's best-known commercial photographers… Shinoyama's book consists of 23 photographic sequences of around 10 photographs each… They range from studio portraits of Japanese women to landscapes in which the weather features prominently, to images of such figures as Richard Nixon. The element linking the images turns out to be the fact that each sequence comments on a different event that took place in 1974… There seems to be no real link between the events depicted here except that they were chosen. The same may be said of the photographs themselves. The primary link between them was not that Shinoyama took them, but that he included them in this baffling, hypnotic book" (Parr & Badger, 303). Text in English and Japanese.

Very minor spotting to first and last leaves only. Text and photographs clean and bright. An about-fine copy of a scarce and important volume.