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This book is a faithful reproduction of Kiyoshi Koishi’s 1933 classic “Early Summer Nerves” (“Shoka Shinkei”), one of the most important works of the Japanese New Photography movement. In reaction to the dominant pictorialism at the time, Koishi employed techniques developed by Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy to create a form of photographic expression entirely his own. Playful, energetic and powerful, Koishi’s images experiment with thematic juxtapositions (movement / stillness, fluidity / stiffness, violence / longing) and harsh contrasts. Through experimental techniques, Koishi incorporated blurring and high contrast as stylistic devices decades before the Japanese are-bure-boke revolution of the 1960s.

The book – Koishi’s only substantial photographic publication – includes an additional booklet featuring in-depth commentary essays (in Japanese and English translation) by Kotaro Iizawa and the late Ryuichi Kaneko, two of the most prominent scholars of Japanese photography, as well as English translations of Koishi’s poems that accompany his photographs.