Yokosuka Story.

Presentation copy. Presentation copy, inscribed: 'To Mr. Ikeda Shinichi / Ishiuchi Miyako / 1981.5.16 / 2nd Yokosuka 1:2'. 'Ishiuchi Miyako grew up in Yokosuka, near the US Navy base, and left for Tokyo at nineteen... For her debut series, Yokosuka Story (1977), Ishiuchi documented her hometown in an unsentimental but not impersonal style, combining observation and bittersweet memory.'

Ishiuchi Miyako is one of Japan's leading photographers. She grew up in Yokosuka, the port town near one of the largest US Naval bases in the Pacific during the 1950s and '60s, and left for Tokyo at age nineteen. For this, her debut series, she returned some nine years after leaving and photographed her hometown, lured by 'Yokosuka Story,' a popular song by Momoe Yamaguchi, to revisit memories from her childhood. Yokosuka was transformed in the post-war period into one of the largest American naval bases in the Pacific. This military occupation led to a proliferation of American culture in Yokosuka, and Ishiuchi's photographs hint at the tension between local and foreign interests.

First edition, presentation copy inscribed on the half-title; oblong 4to (235 x 288 mm, 9¼ x 11¼ in); black-and-white photographs printed in offset, text by Araki Nobuyoshi in Japanese, and by Ken Bloom and Ishiuchi Miyako in Japanese and English, light foxing to preliminary and end pages, light toning to edges; photo-illustrated wrappers, without the printed wraparound band, near-fine; [120]pp.

The Photobook A History I, p304; For a New World to Come 77; What They Saw Photobooks by Women pp250-1.