TOKYO CANDY BOX: THE 2001 FIRST EDITION

Tokyo, Japan: Okada Hiroshi/Wides Shuppan Company Limited, 2001. First Edition. First Printing.. Softcover. As New/As New Dust Jacket.. Tokyo, Japan: Okada Hiroshi/Wides Shuppan Company Limited, 2001. Softcover. As New/As New. First Edition/First Printing. Unpaginated. Landmark collection of cityscape-photographs. One of the most beautiful and valuable Japanese art photography books of our time. The true First Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with the Reissued Edition, which is a facsimile edition. Published in a small and limited first print run as a softcover original only. An Import title, none of the copies was commercially sold outside Japan. The First Edition is now rare. A brilliant production by Koji Onaka and Ota Michitaka: Regular-sized volume format. Khaki softcovers with black titles on cover and spine, as issued. Photographs and brief text by Koji Onaka. The text is in the Japanese original and felicitous English translation. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper in Tokyo, Japan to the highest standards. The reproduction quality is exemplary in every respect. In pictorial DJ, with a heart-design candy box and titles in English and Japanese on the cover and spine, as issued. Presents Koji Onaka's "Tokyo Candy Box". Color-saturated images of everlasting yet ever-changing Tokyo. The photographs were taken between 1999 and 2001, during which time her urban landscape underwent tremendous and radical change - yet again. Unlike the more "stable" mega-cities of Paris, London, and New York, where one will still find emblems of The Past amid the chaos of the present, the durable Tokyo cosmopolis has paradoxically experienced only constant metamorphosis, leaving hardly any landmarks at all. In effect, these photographs ARE - or represent - Tokyo circa early-21st century: Images of new constructions and people on the move characterize Tokyo in a way that we do not see in images of Chicago, for example, enduring architecture being the point of Chicago photographic imagery. The one landmark we identify with Tokyo is not a building or man-made structure, but a mountain looming on the horizon: Mount Fuji, iconic, sacred, and unchanging. An absolute "must-have" title for Koji Onaka collectors. This copy is very boldly and beautifully signed in black pen-marker on the title page by Koji Onaka. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. He also drew a heart that he then linked to his signature, evoking the heart design of the cover. This title is a contemporary art photography classic. As far as we know, this is the only such signed (with Heart Drawing) copy of the First Edition/First Printing available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Precedes and should NOT be confused with the Reissued Edition. Copies available online have serious flaws. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. One of the most brilliant Japanese photographers of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO CHRIS STEELE-PERKINS' "FUJI: IMAGES OF CONTEMPORARY JAPAN" TITLE IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 4898301150.