Landscapes of Japan Hiroshi Hamaya

This is a photobook by Japanese photographer Hiroshi Hamaya, who in 1987 became the first Japanese recipient of the Hasselblad International Award in Photography.
Hamaya’s fascination with photography began at the age of fifteen, when he was given a medium-format camera by a friend of his father. At twenty-four, he took on his first freelance assignment, traveling to Niigata in winter. There, he was struck by the harsh living conditions, so different from the Tokyo life he knew.

Through his encounter with folklorist Shinji Ichikawa, Hamaya developed a cultural and anthropological perspective, turning his lens to the landscapes and everyday lives of communities in Japan’s snow country along the Sea of Japan coast. His seminal photobooks "Yukiguni (Snow Country, 1956) " and "Ura-Nihon (Japan’s Back Coast, 1957) " presented these worlds with a sharp and penetrating gaze, leaving a profound impact on the Japanese photography scene of the time.

This book, published in 1964—the year of the Tokyo Olympics—was the result of over three years of work. It brings together aerial photographs of Japan’s distinctive landforms, starting with the karst plateau of Akiyoshidai in Yamaguchi, moving on to Senjojiki in Wakayama, Shōwa-shinzan in Hokkaido, and many more symbolic landscapes across the country. Unusually for Hamaya, the images are in color, offering a vivid record of Japan’s once-abundant natural scenery—much of which has since been lost to development and climate change.

The book’s design was created by Hiroshi Hara.