Masahisa Fukase 1961–1991: Eight Series in One Volume
Published by Akaaka Art Publishing to accompany the 2023 retrospective exhibition at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, this volume gathers Masahisa Fukase's work across three decades — from the early 1960s through the early 1990s — into a single, coherent publication rather than a sequence of isolated projects.
Eight series, one volume
Fukase is most often encountered through a single title. This retrospective resists that reduction. The book brings together eight major series: Yōko, Family, Sasuke, Walking Eye, Private Scenes, Bukubuku, Yūgi / Homo Ludence, and Karasu / Ravens. Returning that last series to the larger structure from which it emerged, the retrospective framing offers considerably more context than any single-series reprint. For readers of Japanese Photobooks and retrospective catalogues, the wider scope makes this a more useful reference point.
Among the most significant inclusions is Yōko, which had not appeared in photobook form since its 1978 publication. Its presence reinforces the autobiographical logic running through Fukase's practice: wife, family, daily life, and self-projection form the persistent subject matter, pushed toward something formally inventive and psychologically charged.
Fukase beyond Ravens
Fukase's practice was private, autobiographical, and often relentless in its focus on the people and spaces immediately around him. The retrospective format — spanning thirty years and eight distinct bodies of work — makes visible a continuity that individual series publications could not sustain alone. Text contributions by Tomo Kosuga provide critical framing for the exhibition context and the work's longer arc. Sasuke and Homo Ludens are among the series that gain new legibility when read against the full 1961–1991 span. For readers approaching Fukase through Photobooks and postwar Japanese photography more broadly, this volume offers a more complete picture than any single title alone.
About Masahisa Fukase
Masahisa Fukase (1934–2012) is regarded as one of the most radical and experimental photographers of postwar Japan. He became internationally known above all for Karasu / Ravens, but his wider body of work extends across family, marriage, self-representation, travel, animals, and psychologically charged views of private life. Much of that oeuvre remained difficult to access for years. This retrospective volume repositions him not simply as the maker of Ravens, but as a photographer whose projects around Yōko, family, walking, private scenes, and late self-imaging form a larger and more complex body of work — one that the 1961–1991 timeframe makes newly legible.
