Sasuke

Sasuke is the definitive collection of Masahisa Fukase's photographs of his cat Sasuke and Sasuke's little sister Momoe, combining unpublished and well-known images. Published by Akaaka Art Publishing in 2021 and reprinted in 2025 after selling out.

The story behind the book

Fukase loved cats all his life. Rather than a cat book, this edition places Sasuke at the core of his work, newly selected and edited from scratch. It also shows what he explored through the series: a pure experience where subject and photographer are not yet separate, and a way of seeing that mixes sight and touch.

In a 1979 book Fukase wrote that after a year of lying on his stomach at a cat's eye level, he had almost become a cat. He did not want to photograph a pretty cat, but his own affection reflected in the cat's eyes, so the book could be called a self-portrait borrowed from Sasuke and Momoe.

What is in the book

• Photographs of Sasuke and Momoe, including unpublished images
• An essay by Tomo Kosuga, director of the Masahisa Fukase Archives

About Masahisa Fukase

Born in 1934 in Hokkaido, Fukase was shown in New Japanese Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1974. His series Ravens is widely regarded as a high point of Japanese photography. He died in 2012.