Rinko Kawauchi
If there is one thing I collect, it is art books.
It's a carry-forward from my art history student days.
We have piles of books of contemporary Japanese photography on our shelves in Princeton.
These come from living in Daikanyama, just a few minutes walk from the original Tsutaya T-Site.
There is one particular subset of these books that I like most.
They are small-format visual essays on mundane subjects, like breakfast foods, or people walking, or fireworks shows.
They observe and document carefully, to evoke appreciation from the viewer.
They are typically presented without written descriptions accompanying the images (no date, no location, etc).
Sometimes there are no words in the book at all, beyond a removable cover wrap that carries the artist name and title, and maybe a publisher's credits page.
A favorite example is 花火 (Hanabi) by Rinko Kawauchi.
Kawauchi's photographs of fireworks lighting up the summer sky play like contemporary memories.
People looking up, faces illuminated, enjoying the pyrotechnics. Sometimes dressed in yukata, sometimes dressed western.
The cover image on the book (above) shows a white ball - a burst pattern that brings different things to mind for different viewers.
Perhaps a full moon?
Or a white hydrangea flower?
Kawauchi’s images present a timeless Japanese summer tradition of fireworks displays and the social gatherings that go with them.
Since Hanabi was published in 2001, Kawauchi has produced a number of other publications which you can view along with her digital portfolio here.
END NOTE:
Here is a nice word to close with. Obigami.
In Japanese bookstores, books often have a fractional cover jacket wrapping, say the lower one-third, of the book.
This wrap is called an "obigami" and it comes from the words "obi" which is the belt of a kimono, and "kami" which is paper.
Obigami are useful.
Sometimes they obscure part of the cover and invite one to pick it up and look closer.
They carry the pricing, which can be removed without damaging the gift underneath.
And they can be printed in multiple languages so that a single volume can be offered across several markets only by re-printing the obigami.
