Yato, Tamotsu (photograps); and Mishima, Yukio (introduction); Essays by Hagiwara, Tatsuo; Takahashi, Mutsuro and Yamaji, Kozo; and visual presentation by Hosoya, Gan — Naked Festival

Book Good Dust Jacket Included 1st Edition Walker/Weatherhill, New York & Tokyo English text.; Hardcover (with dust jacket); 23.5 x 31 cm.; 1.3 kg.;178 pages with black and white illustrations.; Used with signs of wear on the exterior and interior. The dust jacket shows edge wear, scuffs and scratches on the front cover, spine and back cover. The dust jacket is price clipped and has a tear at the bottom left of the back cover and is tapped from the rear (only seem if the dust jacket is removed). The laminated part of the left side of the back cover is slightly peeling off. All edges are slightly chipped, as well as the bottom of the front cover, the left side of the front cover shows also signs of wear. Interior in very good condition with minor signs of wear.; "Naked young men, their usually impassive faces contorted with wild fury, struggle in a seething mass of straining bodies to rid themselves of worldly impurities by touching a human scapegoat, a bewildered- looking villager barely able to stand in the human maelstrom that surrounds him. Then, the central act of the ritual accomplished, the celebrants turn to an orgy of drinking, their skins flush red with the alcohol, and in the torchlight their bodies stand out like living banners against the stark white of the snow that covers the holy precincts....". These words, written just this year, might seem to describe the rites of some primitive people remote from civilization, but in fact they apply to one of the hadaka matsuri, or naked festivals, that take place now, today, in modern Japan, one of the world's great industrial nations. They occur throughout each year, not only in remoter villages but even in such metropolises as Tokyo and Osaka and Kyoto. The paradox and the dynamism of these survivals of agricultural and fertility rites, as old as the remotest ancestors of this ancient race, are the themes of this book, a stunning photographic record of a year's cycle of Japan's naked festivals.The beauty and the power and the mystery of these festivals are here captured in photographs by Tamotsu Yato, whose recent book Young Samurai showed the pain and triumph involved in modern Japan's cult of the body. Now he turns to the remnants of an ancient Japan, and again proves to rank high in the younger generation of Japanese photographers who are expanding the horizons of the art. While the photographs are the heart of the book, they are well supported by a brilliant team of writers. Yukio Mishima, Japan's leading literary figure, many of whose books have been translated into English, provides an eloquent introduction in an essay entitled "On Nakedness and Shame." The highly regarded young poet Mutsuro Takahashi also writes evocatively in "The Japanese Loincloth," describing a prominent feature of Japanese festivals. To round out the picture with solid but pleasantly readable scholarship, there is a background introduction to Japanese festivals in general by a leading authority on the subject, Dr. Tatsuo Hagiwara, Professor of Japanese History at Tokyo's Meiji University, and a detailed description of the most important naked festivals by Kozo Yamaji, an editor of Minzoku Geino, the Japanese magazine of folk customs. There is also "A Short Guide to the Naked Festivals of Japan," including a calendar and a gazeteer, which will prove invaluable for those who want to see these elusive ceremonies for themselves. And the photographic layout and physical format by Gan Hosoya, a director of graphics in a well known Tokyo design and publicity studio, make the book an outstanding visual achievement.