The Pencil of the Sun, Okinawa & S.E. Asia

Shomei Tomatsu
The Pencil of the Sun, Okinawa & S.E. Asia

Photographs: Shomei Tomatsu

Publisher: Mainichi Shimbun

244 pages

Year: 1975

Comments: Softcover, 25,7 x 24,3 cm. Cited in The Japanese Photobook 1912-1990 by Kaneko Ryuichi and Manfred Heiting. Some signs of age but generally in very good condition.

This book was released as a separate volume of Camera Mainichi in 1975, and is a documentary photograph that captures the appearance of Okinawa (sea, sky, islands, people) from the occupation of the United States in 1969 to the reversion to the mainland. And one of the masterpieces of Shomei Tomatsu, who won the Minister of Education Award for Art Encouragement. The first half consists of black-and-white photographs of the islands of Okinawa, and the second half consists of color photographs of Southeast Asian countries. Tomatsu thought that the black-and-white photographs he had captured contained glimpses of "America," and he moved from the pencil of the sun to color photography. A revised new edition was published in 2015, but this is the first edition.