Yoko

"'Yoko' records a man deeply in love, gazing affectionately at a woman through his lens for over a decade." —Shoji Yamagishi, Japanese photography critic, curator, and editor-in-chief of Mainichi Newspaper

Masahisa Fukase's "Yoko," published in 1978, is a representative classic by the late photography master. However, this photo book has been out of print for many years, just as Fukase eternally captured Yoko's youth with his images but couldn't prevent their eventual separation due to love, ending in divorce, leaving a deep and lasting regret in the hearts of countless photography enthusiasts.

The works collected in "Yoko" chronicle their journey from their first meeting in 1963, their marriage the following year and move into Matsubara Danchi, through their hometowns of Hokkaido and Kanazawa, and their wanderings in Izu and Kyoto. It also includes the "Untitled (Window)" series created in 1973, where Fukase photographed Yoko daily, dressed up and leaving their home, and the numerous brilliant moments captured when they traveled to New York in 1974, when Fukase's photographic work was selected for MoMA's "New Japanese Photography" exhibition.

As their love bloomed and faded, Fukase, who always dissected himself through his lens and viewed photography as an extension of life, inevitably led to their separation. "When private life permeated artistic creation and private images were made public, conflicts gradually arose between them," stated Tomo Kosuga, director of the Masahisa Fukase Archives, in his annotation regarding Fukase and Yoko's divorce in 1976. Their love was profound and their pain equally so. We all know the subsequent story—during the period when Fukase was bedridden due to an accident, Yoko visited him twice a month, accompanying him through a long coma for 20 years until Fukase passed away in 2012.

After nearly half a century, "Yoko" is finally being reissued. With the full assistance of Yoko, the protagonist of the book, and the supervision of Tomo Kosuga, director of the Masahisa Fukase Archives, "Yoko" not only completely includes all the photos and texts from the original edition, allowing this legendary work to be reborn after the passage of time; the new design, binding, and content further explore the profound significance of its reissue. It not only adds relevant reference texts from that era and a special contribution from photography historian Masako Toda but also includes Yoko's own profound reflections on this reissue.

Masahisa Fukase is one of the representative figures of post-war Japanese photography. Born in Hokkaido in 1934, he, along with Nobuyoshi Araki, Eikoh Hosoe, Shomei Tomatsu, and Daido Moriyama, expanded the international standing of modern Japanese photography. In 2010, the British Journal of Photography reviewed his famous photo book "Ravens" as the best photo book of the past twenty-five years, confirming its status as a masterpiece filled with obscurity and bitterness, establishing Masahisa Fukase's eternal legendary status.