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Reviews (2)
Jul 02, 2019
An amazing documentary of the booming 1980's Tokyo sex industry
1 of 1 found this helpful Nobuyoshi Araki is a unique and prolific Japanese photographer well known for a wide latitude of work ranging from a sentimental book of photos with his wife who died at an early age to fine art nudes to outright pornographic material. In this book he documented the Tokyo sex industry in the early 80's and absolutely nothing is held back or censored (unlike domestic Japanese releases of books which censor photos of genitalia.)
This book is not fine-art models but rather black and white photographs of the places, people and acts happening inside of Tokyo's sex establishments. At the time it was done this book might have been interpreted as pornographic material, but now decades later it stands as an amazing documentary of time and place only known in detail to the natives of Tokyo from that era. This is especially true because the Japanese sex industry is to this day closed off to foreigners.
The 80's was a boom time in Japan where the economy was growing dramatically and people had plenty of money to spend on lavish pleasures. Japan's high stress and rigid society infused with this newfound wealth drove the sex industry into creative overdrive and produced something unique documented here that might not ever be seen again. If you're interested in history, the 80's, social evolution, or just having your erotic senses tickled this book is a great choice.
The paper and printing quality is of the book is good. Unlike Araki's contemporaries such as Moriyama Daido who had a very loose "wabisabi" style, Araki's photos are focused and well exposed. There are a few pages of text in English and German in the beginning with the vast majority of the book being solid pages of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of photographs.
This book is a great addition to any collector of Araki's works or a collector of important and unique Japanese photographer works.
Jul 16, 2019
Staged PG-13 photos and limited of analysis & commentary, not good documentary
Having lived in Japan I thought this book would be a fascinating look into a world which is closed off to foreigners and provide some good research information for some online content I am working on. However I was disappointed.
The book focuses on some of the more unique and fetish oriented establishments in Japan's sex industry and is not a thorough overview nor does it contain much in the way of deep or insightful commentary or analysis. The author Joan Sinclair herself only spent a few years in Japan before returning to do this book and her understanding of the culture, language, and other aspects of Japan is limited. As a result I found this book to be done on a somewhat superficial level and likely to give someone completely unfamiliar with the subject matter a bit of a distorted perspective based on the limited number of more exotic urban establishments that she documented.
The photos are very posed and staged and mostly PG-13 level. It wasn't the more raw, documentary, complete look into the Japanese sex industry that I had hoped it would be.
The layout and typography of the book itself is really poor, resembling something that a home user would do themselves with an on-line photo book publisher.
The author makes a claim in the book that I find to be inaccurate too. She says it is the first look into the closed world of the Japanese sex industry. But in the early 1980's prolific Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki produced a huge book of hundreds and hundreds of images from all around Tokyo's sex establishments called "Tokyo Lucky Hole" which is an absolutely raw, uncensored, full access look at what goes on behind the closed doors.
If you're interested in this topic there isn't a lot out there, so this book is worth picking up if you can find a used copy for cheap like I did. I would be disappointed if I paid more than $15 for it. But then again, owning Nobuyoshi Araki's book my expectations were higher.