{"title":"Sokyusha","description":"\u003ch2\u003eSokyusha books and Japanese photobooks\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSokyusha\u003c\/em\u003e books belong to a part of Japanese photography culture where the photobook is treated as a primary form rather than a secondary container for images. Founded in 1986 by Michitaka Ota, the publisher's catalogue moves between recognised postwar and contemporary photographers, while the shop and gallery environment extends that work into a broader culture of looking, collecting, and discovery.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat makes Sokyusha especially strong is the balance between established figures and new voices. The catalogue is associated with photographers such as Daido Moriyama, Michio Yamauchi, Masahisa Fukase, and Miyako Ishiuchi, but it also maintains a visible place for younger artists and newcomers. That gives the publisher a broader identity than a purely historical imprint.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe shop itself matters as much as the books. Sokyusha is not only a publisher but also a photobook bookstore and gallery, with a stock ranging from valuable out-of-print editions to self-published photobooks. For readers and collectors, that makes the name useful not just as a publisher credit, but as a marker of a specific photobook culture rooted in Japanese photography.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eEstablished photographers, new voices, and photobook culture\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003eStrong focus on Japanese photobooks\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003eWorks with both established and emerging photographers\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003eBookshop includes rare and self-published titles\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003eGallery activity extends the publisher's role beyond the book itself\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003eUseful for readers of Japanese photography, signed editions, and photobook culture\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"berg-werk-sincei-yamamoto","title":"Berg Werk - Sincei Yamamoto","description":"\u003cp\u003e“Berg Werk” by Sincei Yamamoto is a striking photobook about the traces of the vanished coal industry in Akabira, Hokkaidō. Returning 25 years after his youth, Yamamoto documents abandoned mine shafts, industrial architecture, and landscapes caught between decay and memory. Across 40 black-and-white photographs, the work becomes an attempt to stop time and fix a “skin of light” onto places filled with history and silence, blending documentary vision with deeply personal reflection.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sokyusha","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52032757956954,"sku":"SOK-YAMAMOTO-BERG-2016-HC","price":50.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0946\/3359\/1130\/files\/berg-werk-sincei-yamamoto-front-cover.jpg?v=1756309251"},{"product_id":"1980s-remnants-daido-moriyama","title":"1980s Remnants - Daido Moriyama","description":"\u003ch3\u003e1980s Remnants — a Daido Moriyama time capsule from the 1980s\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e1980s Remnants\u003c\/em\u003e begins with a box of photographs that Daido Moriyama handed to Michitaka Ota in 1987. Some of those images appeared elsewhere over the years, but the larger body remained dormant for decades. That long delay is part of what gives the book its charge. The photographs arrive not as a reconstructed project, but as a recovered field of images finally given form.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe book holds a side of Moriyama that feels both familiar and slightly displaced. Streets, surfaces, fragments of architecture, and the raw textures of urban space remain central, but the sequence also includes plants and floral wildlife, an unusual presence within his better-known image world. That shift is small, but significant. It opens the book outward without weakening its underlying tension.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat makes \u003cem\u003e1980s Remnants\u003c\/em\u003e especially strong is its compactness. Rather than building toward a heavy statement, it lets the photographs work through rhythm, contact, and residue. The result feels like a time capsule, but not a nostalgic one. These images still carry the pressure, abrasion, and visual instability that make Moriyama’s photography so durable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eStreets, textures, urban chaos, and unexpected plants\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDrawn from a box of more than one thousand photographs kept since 1987\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIncludes urban scenes, textures, and fragments of everyday space\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAlso features atypical plant and floral images\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWorks as a compact archive of unpublished Moriyama photographs\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStrong fit for readers of Japanese photobooks and black-and-white street photography\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eEdition details for 1980s Remnants\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eTitle:\u003c\/strong\u003e 1980s Remnants\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eArtist:\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/daido-moriyama\" title=\"Daido Moriyama\"\u003eDaido Moriyama\u003c\/a\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/sokyusha\" title=\"Sokyusha\"\u003eSokyusha\u003c\/a\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication year:\u003c\/strong\u003e 2022\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eFormat:\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/photography-photobooks\" title=\"photobook\"\u003ephotobook\u003c\/a\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eBinding:\u003c\/strong\u003e hardcover\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 227 × 255 mm\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eExtent:\u003c\/strong\u003e 78 pages \/ 71 images\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/strong\u003e English, Japanese\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eEdition:\u003c\/strong\u003e limited edition of 300 copies\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"Sokyusha","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52033787789658,"sku":"SOK-MORI-1980REM-2022-HC","price":65.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0946\/3359\/1130\/files\/daido-moriyama-1980s-remnants-front-cover.jpg?v=1756311124"},{"product_id":"im-treibhaus-takeshi-shinoda","title":"Im Treibhaus - Takeshi Shinoda","description":"\u003cp\u003eFollowing his 2022 exploration of Tokyo’s train stations in \u003cem data-start=\"686\" data-end=\"695\"\u003eStation\u003c\/em\u003e, Takeshi Shinoda turns his lens to the city’s greenhouses in \u003cem data-start=\"757\" data-end=\"771\"\u003eIm Treibhaus\u003c\/em\u003e (Sokyusha, 2025). His intensely dark black-and-white prints avoid architectural structures, instead immersing the viewer in oppressive humidity, sickly-sweet scents, and a surreal, otherworldly atmosphere. The tropical plants emerge almost unnatural yet eerily fascinating. Featuring 54 images across 58 pages in a 261 × 216 mm hardcover, this limited edition of 200 copies invites intimate reflection on nature’s uncanny side.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sokyusha","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52034004287834,"sku":"SOKY-2025-SHINODA-IMTREIBHAUS","price":55.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0946\/3359\/1130\/files\/front-cover-im-treibhaus-takeshi-shinoda-sokyusha.jpg?v=1756312783"},{"product_id":"tokyo-on-the-brink-of-sanity-yoshio-mizoguchi","title":"Tokyo on the Brink of Sanity - Yoshio Mizoguchi","description":"\u003ch2\u003eTokyo and Shinjuku across the post-bubble years\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eTokyo on the Brink of Sanity\u003c\/em\u003e moves through Tokyo at a moment when the bubble's fantasy had already begun to dissolve, but its emotional residue still shaped the city. Working across portraiture, snapshot, and street photography, \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/yoshio-mizoguchi\" title=\"Browse all Yoshio Mizoguchi titles at Lokator100\"\u003eYoshio Mizoguchi\u003c\/a\u003e stays close to the surface of daily life while allowing anxiety, erotic tension, drift, and urban fatigue to accumulate across the sequence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe book's particular strength is its refusal to turn Tokyo into spectacle. Rather than grand summary, Mizoguchi works through fragments: street encounters, women in transit, bodies under pressure, moments of waiting, the unstable rhythm of Shinjuku at night. That approach produces a tone that is neither nostalgic nor journalistic — suspended, instead, between immediacy and disorientation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe photographs move between eroticism and ordinariness, and that tension is central to the work. The city appears restless, overstimulated, and emotionally porous. What accumulates across the 188 images is not a document of Tokyo but a visual atmosphere specific to the years after the collapse of certainty — a condition Mizoguchi renders without explanation or resolution.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublished in 2022 by \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/sokyusha\" title=\"Browse all Sokyusha publications at Lokator100\"\u003eSokyusha\u003c\/a\u003e as a signed limited edition of 500 copies, this hardcover \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/photography-photobooks\" title=\"Browse the photobook catalogue at Lokator100\"\u003ePhotobooks\u003c\/a\u003e title is a considered contribution to the literature of Japanese street photography and post-bubble urban imagery.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sokyusha","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52686499447130,"sku":"SOKY-MIZOGUCHI-TOKYO-BRINK-2022","price":80.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0946\/3359\/1130\/files\/tokyo-on-the-brink-of-sanity-cover-portrait.jpg?v=1778162898"},{"product_id":"yoshiichi-hara-walk-while-ye-have-the-light-sokyusha","title":"Walk while ye have the light - Yoshiichi Hara","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished by \u003cstrong data-start=\"4896\" data-end=\"4916\"\u003eSokyusha in 2011\u003c\/strong\u003e, \u003cem data-start=\"4918\" data-end=\"4948\"\u003eWalk while ye have the light\u003c\/em\u003e is the long-awaited follow-up to Yoshiichi Hara’s seminal photobook \u003cem data-start=\"5017\" data-end=\"5031\"\u003eDark of True\u003c\/em\u003e (2008), extending his exploration of a bewitching world that constantly crosses the boundary between truth and falsehood. Taking its title from the Bible verse “Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you” (John 12:35), the book treats photography as a search for enlightenment – an act close to silent prayer with a camera. Across \u003cstrong data-start=\"5452\" data-end=\"5482\"\u003e63 photographs on 68 pages\u003c\/strong\u003e, Hara records night streets, rainy riverbanks, glistening pavements and fragmentary bodies; light shimmers in water, blurs outlines and turns everyday scenes into dream-like visions that seem to float between past, present and future. The 260 × 232 mm hardcover, printed in monochrome, has become scarce and is often listed as out of stock or “rare”, making it a coveted title for collectors of Japanese photobooks, nude and snapshot portraiture, and fans of Hara’s earlier works such as \u003cem data-start=\"6010\" data-end=\"6025\"\u003eMandala Zukan\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem data-start=\"6030\" data-end=\"6044\"\u003eDark of True\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003cspan class=\"\" data-state=\"closed\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"ms-1 inline-flex max-w-full items-center relative top-[-0.094rem] animate-[show_150ms_ease-in]\" data-testid=\"webpage-citation-pill\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sokyusha","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52687223521626,"sku":"SOKY-HARA-WALK-LIGHT-2011","price":42.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0946\/3359\/1130\/files\/walk-while-ye-have-the-light-yoshiichi-hara-photobook-cover.jpg?v=1762703778"},{"product_id":"obi-and-sand-kyoto-enoshima-yoshio-mizoguchi","title":"Obi and Sand: Kyoto\/Enoshima - Yoshio Mizoguchi","description":"\u003ch2\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eObi and Sand: Kyoto\/Enoshima\u003c\/em\u003e — Two Locations, One Sustained Gaze\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eObi and Sand: Kyoto\/Enoshima\u003c\/em\u003e is a 2024 hardcover \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/photography-photobooks\" title=\"Explore the photobook catalogue at Lokator100\"\u003ePhotobooks\u003c\/a\u003e publication by \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/yoshio-mizoguchi\" title=\"Browse all Yoshio Mizoguchi titles at Lokator100\"\u003eYoshio Mizoguchi\u003c\/a\u003e, signed and issued in a limited edition of 400 copies. Across 176 pages and 172 images, it moves between Kyoto and Enoshima — two locations that share little in atmosphere but are held together by the consistency of the photographer's attention.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe book's first section places Kyoto at its center: women and passersby absorbed into the city's particular stillness, its weight of accumulated history pressing against the ordinariness of daily movement. Mizoguchi does not aestheticize the setting. The photographs remain grounded in observation — a face caught mid-turn, cloth against skin, the quality of light in a narrow street. The second section opens outward. Enoshima arrives with heat, sand, exposed bodies, and the looser temporality of a coastal summer. The shift is structural and atmospheric at once.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat holds the two halves together is not a thesis but a method. Mizoguchi photographs with a gaze that is simultaneously documentary and intimate — close enough to register physical detail, detached enough to avoid sentimentality. The erotic charge in these images is real but never theatrical; it emerges from proximity and timing rather than staging. Faces, gestures, bathing suits, black sand, and summer fatigue are all treated with equal attentiveness. The result is a book in which contrast — city and shoreline, history and seasonality, cloth and skin — does the interpretive work without forcing resolution.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePhotographed across the 1990s and 2000s, the work carries a quality of suspended memory. Moments feel both immediate and already receding. The emotional register is one of heat, drift, and a slightly unstable atmospheric tension — qualities that persist across both locations and give the book its coherence. Published by \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/sokyusha\" title=\"Browse all Sokyusha publications at Lokator100\"\u003eSokyusha\u003c\/a\u003e in 2024, it is among the most formally considered of Mizoguchi's recent publications.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat this book is\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStreet photography and portrait work from Kyoto and Enoshima, 1990s–2000s\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStructural contrast between historical urban atmosphere and coastal exposure\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDocumentary directness combined with portrait-like intimacy\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eErotic charge that is observational rather than staged\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEmotional register of heat, memory, and suspended summer drift\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eContrast used as method — not as forced thematic unity\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"Sokyusha","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53895374635354,"sku":"YM-OBIANDSAND-SOK","price":60.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0946\/3359\/1130\/files\/obi-and-sand-kyoto-enoshima-front-cover.jpg?v=1778159611"},{"product_id":"naked-city-varanasi-takeshi-ishikawa","title":"Naked City Varanasi - Takeshi Ishikawa","description":"\u003ch3\u003eNaked City Varanasi — Takeshi Ishikawa’s photobook of life and death in Varanasi\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNaked City Varanasi\u003c\/em\u003e presents Varanasi not as a distant spiritual symbol, but as a city of radical coexistence. Ishikawa photographs the poor and the rich, the solitary and the crowded, the naked and the adorned, the living and the dead. The result is not an ethnographic summary, but a dense visual field in which sacred ritual and physical reality remain inseparable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne of the book’s strengths is duration. Ishikawa began visiting Varanasi in 1980 and returned almost every year for roughly four decades. That persistence gives the work a different kind of authority: not the shock of a single visit, but the accumulation of long attention. The city appears not as spectacle, but as something lived through repeated contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe photographs hold together intensity and clarity. Burning ghats, alleys, ascetics, bathers, crowds, and isolated figures all move through the sequence, but the book avoids reducing Varanasi to a single idea. Instead, it remains faithful to contradiction. Life and death, purity and impurity, devotion and exhaustion occupy the same space. That unstable overlap is the real subject of the work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003ePilgrims, ascetics, burning ghats, and the untamed crossing of worlds\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePhotographs Varanasi as a city of simultaneous opposites\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBuilt from decades of return visits beginning in 1980\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIncludes scenes of pilgrims, ascetics, crowds, and cremation spaces\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSupported by contextual texts by Kenin Ito\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStrong fit for readers of documentary photography and Japanese photobooks\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eEdition details for Naked City Varanasi\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eTitle:\u003c\/strong\u003e Naked City Varanasi\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eArtist:\u003c\/strong\u003e Takeshi Ishikawa\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/sokyusha\" title=\"Sokyusha\"\u003eSokyusha\u003c\/a\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eEdition note:\u003c\/strong\u003e signed edition\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication year:\u003c\/strong\u003e 2020\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eFormat:\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/photography-photobooks\" title=\"photobook\"\u003ephotobook\u003c\/a\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eBinding:\u003c\/strong\u003e hardcover\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 271 × 230 mm\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eExtent:\u003c\/strong\u003e 114 pages \/ 95 images\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/strong\u003e English, Japanese\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eTexts by:\u003c\/strong\u003e Kenin Ito\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"Sokyusha","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53897359163738,"sku":null,"price":80.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0946\/3359\/1130\/files\/naked-city-varanasi-takeshi-ishikawa-front-cover.jpg?v=1774711934"}],"url":"https:\/\/lokator100.store\/collections\/sokyusha.oembed","provider":"Lokator100","version":"1.0","type":"link"}