Shigekazu Kawamura, Osaka, Self-published, Japan, 1978
Regular readers of this space will have noticed our special love for Japanese photobooks. But I have to confess that there is a slight problem: unlike my friend Amarillo, I don’t speak the language, and the little I know of Japanese culture comes from an unhealthy attachment to the yakuza films of Takeshi Kitano. If I don’t speak the language and don’t fully understand the culture, all that’s left for me when facing a Japanese photobook is to look at it the way I listen to a foreign language song, tapping my feet and bobbing my head to the rhythm hoping not to make too much of a fool of myself.