Maggs Bros.

A fine copy of Hosoe Eikoh’s masterful photobook.

Photographs of the butoh dancer Hijikata Tatsumi (1928-1886) returning to his hometown in Akita Prefecture. “It will be almost impossible to define Tatsumi Hijikata, between the terrestrial or the aerial as one of his own attributions, but, before speaking of that, the significant fact is that our dancer has rushed like a gust of wind to the farm village, especially to the district of rice crops, where the most contradictory and irrational facts of social reality in Japan today still remain. He appears there abruptly, just like an eagle flying down to earth, or a sudden kidnapper from heaven.” (Introduction). Each of the plates has a blue coating on verso and folds out from the gutter. The images are full of an intense, even demonic drama and capture nothing less than the meeting of Japanese tradition and modernity. The book was given the Art-Award by the Ministry of Education in April 1970. Superb book-design by Tanaka Ikko.