More Information
Author Hiromi Tsuchida
Pages 232
Signed No
Publisher Ottos Books Company
Publishing date 1976
Publishing place Yokohama
Language English, Japanese
Edition First edition
Binding Hardcover including dustjacket
Book condition Collectible; Very Good
Condition description Clean covers and very good dustjacket with one closed tears; light bump to one corner of back cover; hint of foxing on the first empty endpapers the inside is very bright and clean; very collectible copy
Cover condition Fine
Dimensions (cm hxb) 25x26.5
See for reference, Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and '70s. (New York: Aperture, 2009) / This is a rare first edition, first printing of Hiromi Tsuchida’s first photobook “Zokushin (Gods of the Earth)” published by Ottos Books, Tokyo in 1976. In the late sixties, not too long after he was married, Tsuchida went wandering through the villages, mountains, and towns of Japan, searching for the identity of his nation and his place within it. Artist have always been drawn to the subjects of identity, god, and the identity of god, Tsuchida’s title, Zokushin – gods of the common people, suggest that the gods are everywhere, even (or maybe especially) in the humble rural villages of Japan. His wanderings are aptly timed as the Japan he depicts was quickly fading in lieu of the increasingly pervasive influence of western culture. His simple, black & white (yet very unusual) images are in defiance of the homogenized world of color television. Tsuchida’s Japan, absent of cars, radio, and other technologies, seems very strange to modern eyes, perhaps because it is the rise of the companies that produced those techno knick-knacks that has defined Japan since the late twentieth-century. From the essay "Gods of the Earth," by Goichi Matsunaga: "The gods of the earth are alive today. They are doing their best, unabashedly, to expand their lives and [whether] eating, drinking or sleeping, to get more pleasure out of it than the next one. Making up their faces and defecating, visiting the shrine now and then on the way home from counting their money, buying cucumbers, scolding their children, buttering up the boss, going to the races, masturbating in broad daylight, picking off their fleas in the lockup.they are, you see, very busy. But these busy gods, unlike that handful of sacred people who live off other people's taxes, have to earn money to live. If it will earn them a living, there is nothing they will not do. They will do whatever humans are capable of, and all of that -- is human. Whether it is close to the animals' mode of life or far removed -- it is human. So here we have, for better or worse, a mass of human beings squirming, comically, tragically, in the last stage of capitalism (which does not show much promise of turning into socialism) on the islands of the easternmost part of Asia. The diverse expressions of the gods of the earth can still be seen today in Japan with all their tradition, and full of the vitality of their mixed origins. I cannot but wish them well.”

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Zokushin gods of the earth

€290.00
This fascinating investigation documents the folk culture and deeply nature-based indigenous religious practices of rural Japan. An important book in both artistic and sociological terms. First Edition. Hardcovered book with an original dustjacket. With an essay entitled "Gods of the Earth" by Goichi Matsunaga and translated into English. 103 black and white images. Text in Japanese and English.
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