Yoko

Yoko is Masahisa Fukase's photobook about his wife, Yoko, photographed from their marriage in 1964 until their divorce in 1976. First published in 1978 by Asahi Sonorama and out of print for decades, it was reissued by Akaaka Art Publishing in 2025, nearly fifty years later.

Please note: this book contains artistic nudity.

The story behind the book

Fukase and Yoko met in 1963 and married the next year. He photographed her at the housing estate in Soka where they lived as newlyweds, then in his hometown in Hokkaido, her hometown of Kanazawa, and on trips to Izu and Kyoto. In 1973 he began a series from the window of their fourth-floor apartment, using a telephoto lens to catch her each morning as she left for work. The pictures appeared on and off in Camera Mainichi magazine between 1964 and 1976.

As their private life became his subject, living it grew harder. Tomo Kosuga, director of the Masahisa Fukase Archives, describes it as a paradox: they came to be together in order to take photographs. The couple divorced in 1976, and the book was finished two years later.

What is in this edition

• Every photograph and text from the 1978 original
• A larger format, so each photograph can be looked at on its own
• Photographs of ravens placed quietly through the pages, hinting at the couple's future and at Fukase's later masterpiece, Ravens
• New texts: an essay by Masako Toda and a message from Yoko Miyoshi (formerly Fukase), who fully supported the reissue
• Supervised by Tomo Kosuga, with book design by Chikako Suzuki

About Masahisa Fukase

Born in 1934 in Hokkaido, Fukase was shown in the landmark exhibition 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.