Tokyo is the fourth of Klein's four classic city books, following Life is Good & Good For You in New York: Trance Witness Revels (1956) and Rome (1959) and contemporaneous with Moscow (1964). Together, these four books arguably represent Klein's most significant contribution to the history of photography.

In 1961, Klein visited Japan, where his first book, Life is Good & Good for You in New York (1956), had a profound influence on a young generation of Japanese photographers, such as Daido Moriyama, who were attracted to its graphic boldness and its conflation of a documentary style with a Pop impulse. Over three months, Klein photographed the congestion, chaos, and strange coexistence of traditional and contemporary culture that characterized Tokyo at the dawn of the 1960s.

'I went because I thought that Japanese photography was something very far from me, Zen and cool, and then I found that the Japanese were sick of the image of Zen photography and they wanted real vulgar, brutal and dirty photography.'

First edition, French issue (there were also American, Italian, and Japanese issues, all were printed in Japan by Zokeisha; a German edition was issued the following year); folio (347 x 253 mm, 13¾ x 10 in ); black-and-white photographs printed in gravure, text by William Klein, minor toning to edges, print production holes to last leaf and rear endpapers; black endpapers, printed paper-covered boards, black, red, and grey, light shelfwear, rubbing to corners, an excellent copy; [16], 15-184pp.

The Open Book: A History of the photographic book from 1878 to the present 206–7; 802 Books from the Auer Collection 437.