Homo Ludens Masahisa Fukase

This is the newly designed facsimile edition of Masahisa Fukase’s debut monograph, Yugi, originally published in 1971 by Chuokoron-sha. Following the 2025 release of RAVENS—a film by British writer and director Mark Gill that blends fact and fiction to depict the lives of Fukase and his wife, Yoko—this masterpiece returns to print after more than half a century, supervised by Tomo Kosuga of the Masahisa Fukase Archives.

The photobook is famously structured into six self-contained, episodic chapters: Slaughter, Congratulatory Ties, Play, Dark, Mother, and Genealogy. It brings together over a decade of Fukase's work, including his earliest series, Dark, featuring his former lover Sachiyo Kawakami during her pregnancy; Congratulatory Ties, an "I-novel" style record of his newlywed life with Yoko based on his own psychological experiences; and Play, which captures his communal living in Shinjuku after leaving home. Together, these chapters unveil the intimate and complex entanglement between Fukase’s life and his photography.

The original work was edited by Shoji Yamagishi, a pivotal figure who led Japanese photography into a new dawn. As the editor-in-chief of Camera Mainichi, Yamagishi not only discovered emerging talents like Daido Moriyama, Kishin Shinoyama, and Nobuyoshi Araki but also curated the landmark exhibition New Japanese Photography at MoMA, introducing Japanese photographers to the world stage.

While this new edition faithfully preserves all the photographs and texts from the original, the design has been completely reimagined by Bunpei Yorifuji and Haru Kakiuchi of Bunpei Ginza. This evolution in book design further draws out the multi-layered and intricate worldview of Masahisa Fukase, making it a definitive volume for a new era.