What's this? Book review of Iwanami Shoten Japan's Photographers photo books.

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Impressions: This is a series of forty books which attempts to convey the history of Japanese photography from the late 19th century to the present day. Volume 1 covers UENO Hikoma and other pioneering Japanese photographers in the late 19th century. Each subsequent volume features a different Japanese photographer who supposed to represent a period in Japanese photographic history.

Rather than publishing all forty books at the same time, they are being issued in monthly installments. When the series started on September 1997, five volumes were published. Two volumes have been published each month since then. At this rate, all forty books will be out by March 1999. Although the books are numbered from 1 to 40, they are not being published in this order. This means you cannot read about Japanese photography history in chronological order as the books come out.

I believe all the books contain only black-and-white photographs. The printing quality is high but the books are too thin. The total thickness of the book's front and back hard covers is about the same as the thickness of the pages in-between. A soft cover would have sufficed. I would like to have seen more pages and more photos in each book. It really does not do the photographer justice to show so few photos. The book's price is not high, but I can't say that the book is worth the money. Nevertheless, the books are an excellent basic introduction to some of the most famous photographers and images in Japanese photography. Unfortunately, there is no English.

Pictured above is Book 32 which features Eikoh Hosoe. A photo of Yukio Mishima holding a rose is pictured on the cover. Besides photos, there is a preface introducing Hosoe, and the back of the book gives the titles of the photographs. There is also a written interview on Hosoe.

This series of books was the brainchild of Kohtaro Iizawa who is also one of the editors of the series. His original proposal was to have a series of 50 to 60 books. However, the publisher deemed that some of the books would not sell well enough. Iizawa's proposal was reduced to 40 books.

The series feature the following photographers (in the order of the book No.): UENO Hikoma (No. 1), TAMOTO Kenzo (No. 2), FUKUHARA Shinzo (no. 3), NOJIMA Yasuzo (No. 4), TAKAYAMA Masataka (No. 5), Manchuria Photographers (No. 6), NAKAYAMA Iwata (No. 7), KIMURA Ihee (No. 8), YASUI Nakaji (No. 9), IRIE Taikichi (No. 10), TABUCHI Yukio (No. 11), HORINO Masao (No. 12), WATANABE Yoshio (No. 13), KAGEYAMA Koyo (No. 14), KOISHI Kiyoshi (No. 15), DOMON Ken (No. 16), KUMAYA Gen'ichi (No. 17), NATORI Yonosuke (No. 18), KUWABARA Kineo (No. 19), UEDA Shoji (No. 20), HAMAYA Hiroshi (No. 21), MIDORIKAWA Yoichi (No. 22), YAMAHATA Yosuke (No. 23), CHIBA (No. 24), HAYASHI Tadahiko (No. 25), ISHIMOTO Yasuhiro (No. 26), HAGA Hideo (No. 27), NAGANO Shigeichi (No. 28), TANUMA Takeyoshi (No. 29), TOMATSU Shomei (No. 30), NARAHARA Ikko (No. 31), HOSOE Eikoh (No. 32), KAWATA Kikuji (No. 33), FUKASE Masahisa (No. 34), TAKANASHI Yutaka (No. 35), NAKAHIRA (No. 36), MORIYAMA Daido (No. 37), NAITO Masatoshi (No. 38), YAMADA (No. 39), SUDA Issei (No. 40).

(Reviewed by Philbert Ono)

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