Nobuyoshi Araki

A first edition, signed presentation copy of Sentimental Journey by Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki.

• Nobuyoshi Araki (Japanese).
• Tokyo: Privately published, 1971.
• 108 pages.
• Quarto.
• Includes black-and-white photographs printed in offset.
• Inscribed to Asahi Sonorama Chief Editor Tatsuo Shira with a drawing of a three-trunked elephant, which was Araki's preferred method of embellishment in the 1970s.
• Wire-stitched with white photo-illustrated card wrappers, printed in black, with the printed leaf of green paper added by Araki shortly after publication at a bookshop's request.

Sentimental Journey is Araki's signature work, comprising photographs made while on honeymoon with his wife Yoko in Yanagawa on Japan's Kyushu island. Araki's exposure of this most intimate of occasions attracted much criticism in a country which still valued a strict code of behavior, but ultimately, by putting his private life forward for public scrutiny, he paved the way for successive generations of Japanese photographers to work in a similar vein.

Initially, Araki had intended for Sentimental Journey to contain no text. However, after publication and at the request of the bookshop Kinokuniya, he wrote a short introduction that rejects the falseness and insincerity of much photography and compares his work to the popular post-war literary form of the "I" novel. This text was printed on a green leaf of paper and laid into the book.