Shu-chin Shashinshu Micrographic [A Pocket Photograph Collection].

Despite the apparent limitation, this remains one of the great rarities in Japanese photobook collecting. Graphic Shudan was an association of art directors, artists, and photographers established in 1953. They gave the present work away to existing and prospective clients. The advertising industry in Japan at this time was flourishing, as it grew in tandem with the period of rapid economic growth and industrialisation that followed World War II. The photographs are by Takashi Kijima and Shozo Kitadai, with creative direction credited to Kitadai, who also worked as an art director. The nudes, cityscapes, close-ups, and abstract compositions demonstrate the influence of Western advertising photography, particularly that featured in contemporary American fashion magazines, and also prefigure much of the work that became popular elsewhere in the 1960s.

First edition, no. 84 of 1000 copies; 4 vols. (75 x 75 mm, 3 x 3 in); black & white photographs printed in gravure; plain endpapers, adhesive-bound photo-illustrated wrappers, each with a different coloured spine, touch of rubbing to spine-ends, publisher's card slipcase with a cut-out window, numbered in pencil on one edge, card insert to aid removal, each volume is numbered in ink on last page, near-fine; [48]pp each.

Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and '70s pp46-49.