Taro Okamoto's Okinawa

"Taro Okamoto's Okinawa"
Taro Okamoto / Akio Hirano
Price: ¥3,080 (¥2,800 excluding tax)
Shogakukan Creative (Released 2016/04)

2024, 4th printing (latest printing), a beautiful, unused copy.

[Publisher's Introduction]
Okinawa under occupation, as witnessed by Taro Okamoto.
In 1959, Taro Okamoto visited Okinawa, which was under American occupation. What was intended as a brief respite quickly drew him in with Okinawa's charm. Before he knew it, he was drawn to the subject, getting closer and closer, trembling with emotion as he frantically snapped photos.
Okamoto was so moved because he saw the "forgotten Japan" in Okinawa. There, the Japan that modern Japanese people had pushed aside, the lost Japan, was alive and well.
"This is us, this is Japan itself." Okamoto discovered Japan in Okinawa, and discovered himself. He saw the roots of the Japanese people, and of himself, in the people of Okinawa who lived with such purity. This experience later crystallized into his "Okinawa Culture Theory."
Obsessed with Okinawa, Okamoto returned in 1966 to witness the Izaiho, a Shinto ritual performed only by women once every twelve years. He captured the diverse faces of Okinawa on film, including this now-unseen, ritualistic ceremony.
The "Okinawa" that Okamoto photographed is etched with the origins of Japan and the Japanese people. It is a valuable historical document and a unique cultural heritage. The "Japan" that everyone, and especially now, should confront is here.

[Authors' Introduction]
Taro Okamoto
Artist. Born in 1911. He went to France in 1929 and participated in the avant-garde art movement in Paris in the 1930s, including joining the "Abstraction-Création" association. He studied ethnology under Marcel Mauss at the University of Paris and worked with Georges Bataille and others. He returned to Japan in 1940. After the war, he developed an avant-garde art movement in Japan, sending out controversial works one after another. In 1951, he encountered Jomon pottery and published his "Jomon Pottery Theory" the following year. In the late 1950s, he visited various parts of Japan, leaving behind numerous photographs and essays. He became the theme producer for the Osaka Expo in 1970.

Akio Hirano
Space Media Producer / Director of the Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum. Born in 1959. He presides over the Contemporary Art Institute founded by Taro Okamoto and engages in diverse production activities in the field of space media. He became the director of the Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum in 2005."