Signed by Hosoe and Mishima. Barakei is Hosoe Eikoh's masterpiece, a collaboration with the novelist Mishima Yukio. Mishima saw and was impressed by Hosoe Eikoh's photographs of the Butoh dancer Hijkata Tatsumi and subsequently asked Hosoe to take a publicity portrait for him. The two men were pleased with the results, and for several months, from Autumn 1961 until Summer 1962, they worked together on the photographs that would form Barakei. These images display a provocative blend of Eastern and Western influences, featuring Mishima in a series of provocative poses exploring themes of birth, death, sex, entrapment, and isolation, with references to the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian.

First edition, number 1392 of 1500 copies, signed by Hosoe and Mishima in black ink on limitation; Folio (420 x 270 mm, 16½ x 10¾ in); preface by Mishima, black-and-white photographs by Hosoe printed in sheet-fed gravure, design by Sugiura Kohei, bookseller's ticket to front free endpaper; illustrated cloth-covered boards, original plastic dust-jacket, shrunken slightly as usual, a near-fine copy in the publisher's very good illustrated cardboard box with rubbing and wear to extremities; [102]pp (incl. two folding, limitation leaf, and four printed rice paper leaves).

The Open Book pp194-5; The Photobook A History I, pp 280-1, The Book of 101 Books pp164-7; The Japanese Photobook 1912-1990 pp368-9.