World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
Art
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
1971, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 200 pages approx, 21 x 15.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sogo Tosho / Tokyo
$140.00 - In stock -
From the very rare six-volume collector's set of legendary SM Kinbaku anthology photo books edited by Japanese rope master, photographer, writer and editor, Ueda Seishiro, published by Sogo Tosho in 1970-71. Each volume features a striking cover by Ran Akiyoshi, one of the era’s most iconic artists and is filled with hundreds of photographs and nothing more. Released during the golden age of Japan’s kinbaku culture, this wonderful series documents the visual and subcultural evolution of SM photography in the 1960s through to 1970 with beautiful production and print quality, gloss colour and gravure b/w, these are some of the most important Japanese kinbaku photo works edited together by a modern master and young friend of the godfather of the movement, Seio Ito.
Alongside his associates Ito Seiu Ito, Dan Oniroku, Hiroshi Urado and Shigeru Kayama, Ueda Seishiro was at the forefront of SM publishing and modern kinbaku arts in Japan, as an editor and groundbreaking contributor who worked with magazines such as Kitan Club, Yomikiri Romance, Fuzoku Soushi, Fuzoku Kitan, SM PLAY, and True Stories and Secret Records, whilst serving as tight-binding advisor for Japanese Pink Films in the 1970s and 80s. Ueda was responsible for the rope-work in a special issue of Yomikiri Romance in the summer of 1952, regarded as ”the first commercial publication completely dedicated to shibari/kinbaku photography (…) a groundbreaking event in SM publishing”—The Beauty of Kinbaku.
Very Good copy, some buckling to block from storage, light age/wear. VG dust Jacket.
1971, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 200 pages approx, 21 x 15.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sogo Tosho / Tokyo
$140.00 - In stock -
From the very rare six-volume collector's set of legendary SM Kinbaku anthology photo books edited by Japanese rope master, photographer, writer and editor, Ueda Seishiro, published by Sogo Tosho in 1970-71. Each volume features a striking cover by Ran Akiyoshi, one of the era’s most iconic artists and is filled with hundreds of photographs and nothing more. Released during the golden age of Japan’s kinbaku culture, this wonderful series documents the visual and subcultural evolution of SM photography in the 1960s through to 1970 with beautiful production and print quality, gloss colour and gravure b/w, these are some of the most important Japanese kinbaku photo works edited together by a modern master and young friend of the godfather of the movement, Seio Ito.
Alongside his associates Ito Seiu Ito, Dan Oniroku, Hiroshi Urado and Shigeru Kayama, Ueda Seishiro was at the forefront of SM publishing and modern kinbaku arts in Japan, as an editor and groundbreaking contributor who worked with magazines such as Kitan Club, Yomikiri Romance, Fuzoku Soushi, Fuzoku Kitan, SM PLAY, and True Stories and Secret Records, whilst serving as tight-binding advisor for Japanese Pink Films in the 1970s and 80s. Ueda was responsible for the rope-work in a special issue of Yomikiri Romance in the summer of 1952, regarded as ”the first commercial publication completely dedicated to shibari/kinbaku photography (…) a groundbreaking event in SM publishing”—The Beauty of Kinbaku.
Very Good copy, some buckling to block from storage, light age/wear. VG dust Jacket.
1970, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 200 pages approx, 21 x 15.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sogo Tosho / Tokyo
$140.00 - In stock -
From the very rare six-volume collector's set of legendary SM Kinbaku anthology photo books edited by Japanese rope master, photographer, writer and editor, Ueda Seishiro, published by Sogo Tosho in 1970-71. Each volume features a striking cover by Ran Akiyoshi, one of the era’s most iconic artists and is filled with hundreds of photographs and nothing more. Released during the golden age of Japan’s kinbaku culture, this wonderful series documents the visual and subcultural evolution of SM photography in the 1960s through to 1970 with beautiful production and print quality, gloss colour and gravure b/w, these are some of the most important Japanese kinbaku photo works edited together by a modern master and young friend of the godfather of the movement, Seio Ito.
Ueda Seishiro was a (younger) friend of Itoh Seiu.
Alongside his associates Ito Seiu Ito, Dan Oniroku, Hiroshi Urado and Shigeru Kayama, Ueda Seishiro was at the forefront of SM publishing and modern kinbaku arts in Japan, as an editor and groundbreaking contributor who worked with magazines such as Kitan Club, Yomikiri Romance, Fuzoku Soushi, Fuzoku Kitan, SM PLAY, and True Stories and Secret Records, whilst serving as tight-binding advisor for Japanese Pink Films in the 1970s and 80s. Ueda was responsible for the rope-work in a special issue of Yomikiri Romance in the summer of 1952, regarded as ”the first commercial publication completely dedicated to shibari/kinbaku photography (…) a groundbreaking event in SM publishing”—The Beauty of Kinbaku.
Very Good copy, some buckling to block from storage, light age/wear. VG dust Jacket.
2013, Japanese
Softcover, 212 pages, 28.2 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Amana / Japan
$160.00 - In stock -
First edition of this wonderful collection of Japanese photographers that captured 1970s Tokyo, now out-of-print. In the world of fine art photography, post-war Japanese photography is continuing to gather attention. Many Japanese photographers were active specifically during the large cultural and political development of the 70s as the country experienced rapid economic growth. At the time, new styles of expression with a strong focus on the individual viewpoint were beginning to develop, which were distinct to the social documentary photography prior to that. This also coincided with the development of photography within the fashion and advertising field, reflecting a period where the works of many unique photographers and styles began to grow. A careful selection of 160 bodies of works by 9 prominent photographers of the time, each individually portraying the excitement and rapid growth which symbolised the era. Taiji Arita, Eikoh Hosie, Daido Moriyama, Masatoshi Naito, Hajime Sawatari, Issei Suda, Yoshihiro Tatsuki, Shuji Terayama, Katsumi Watanabe.
Very Good copy with good dust jacket.
1973, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 18 x 11 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Dell / New York
$65.00 - Out of stock
"Up from the underground! The most outrageous, erotic, and mind-boggling cartoon adventures you'll ever see!"
First edition of this paperback collection of comics featuring an assortment of Junkwaffel lizards and busty Bodé girls originally produced by Vaughn Bodē for Cavalier Magazine in the 60's and early 70's and published following his legendary "Cartoon Concert" tour. Beginning in 1972, Bodē toured with a show called the "Cartoon Concert," that featured him vocalizing his characters while their depictions were presented on a screen behind him via a slide projector. Touring comic book conventions and becoming very popular on the college lecture circuit, Bodē even performed it at The Louvre, in Paris.
Vaughn Bodē (1941 – 1975) was an American underground cartoonist and illustrator known for his character Cheech Wizard and his artwork depicting voluptuous women. In 1963, at age 21, and while living in Utica, New York, Bodē self-published Das Kämpf, considered one of the first underground comic books. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he illustrated covers and interior art for the science fiction digests Amazing Stories, Fantastic, Galaxy Science Fiction, Witzend and Worlds of If. Discovered by fellow cartoonist Trina Robbins, Bodē moved to Manhattan in 1969 and joined the staff of the underground newspaper the East Village Other. Beginning in 1968 and continuing until his untimely death from autoerotic asphyxiation in 1975, Bodē entered a prolific period of creativity, introducing a number of strips and ongoing series, most of which ran in underground newspapers or erotic magazines. Bodē described his sexuality as "auto-sexual, heterosexual, homosexual, mano-sexual, sado-sexual, trans-sexual, uni-sexual, omni-sexual." A contemporary of animator Ralph Bakshi, Bodē has been credited as an influence on Bakshi's animated films Wizards and The Lord of the Rings. He warned Bakshi against working with Robert Crumb on the animated film adaptation of Crumb's strip Fritz the Cat. Bodē has a huge following among graffiti artists, with his characters remaining a popular subject of the culture. Bodē was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame for comics artists in 2006.
Very Good copy, tightly bound.
1995, Japanese
Softcover, 224 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Data House / Tokyo
$25.00 - Out of stock
"Sniff out!! Our fuckin' rotten brain.... Dedicated to all the gay guys in Japan"
???
The very controversial, very vulgar and very popular inaugural 1995 issue of Tokyo's Danger (or Dangerous) magazine, edited by Masaaki Aoyama (1960-2001), a legendary cult writer, editor and pioneer in the genre of "Kichiku" (cruel) publishing who had a major influence on Japanese subculture in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1995, after a prolific career in underground publishing, Aoyama edited the first issue of the "brutal" subculture magazine "Dangerous No. 1," which quoted the words of cult guru Hassan I-Sabah: "There is no truth. Everything is permitted." Packed with an exhaustive range of deviant, perverted, and bad taste content, Dangerous No. 1, declaring "There are no taboos when it comes to fantasies!", became an immediate hit, selling over 250,000 copies and sparking a craze for "Kichiku" (cruel) and bad taste publishing in Japan in the late 19th century.
The peak of 1990's nihilism publishing from Tokyo's "apocalyptic" Data House to file alongside Too Negative and End of The Century, Dangerous, a "scientific" journal of lunatic subculture, launched onto newsstands with an in-depth international reportage on "Drugs". Editor Aoyama, who in 1992 wrote Japan's first practical drug manual, "Dangerous Medicine," a "bible for junkies", which sold over 100,000 copies, brings together articles on speed shooting, South American cartels, the world's rarest drugs, hallucinogenic plants from around the world from magic mushrooms to ayahuasca, how-tos/maintenance/cultivating knowledge, the history of ecstasy, sex on drugs, music on drugs, a drug slang dictionary, drug-related books and guides, world scene and dutch coffeeshop reports, xxx film director Fumiki Watanabe interview, an exploration of Japan's "dangerous documents", corpse museums, hitmen, sex criminals, "Your personality & cause of death", and genuinely horrible other tid-bits from the darker side of humanity.
Note: Aside from some photographs and violent and absurd cartoons, Dangerous is a "scientific" journal, filled with Japanese texts and info graphics.
"People often talk about humanity and humanism, but what makes humans decisively different from animals is that they betray, deceive, and destroy others. Humanity means being cruel."—Masaaki Aoyama
Masaaki Aoyama (1960-2001) was pioneer of the Japanese underground publishing scene. When he was in the third grade of elementary school, his father bought him a copy of Hiroshi Minamiyama's book "Supernatural Mysteries," which sparked his interest in the supernatural and the occult. Although he never studied, he displayed his prodigy qualities from an early age whilst simultaneously becoming addicted to masturbation. His intense quest for knowledge and perversion continued into his adult life. A self-proclaimed hedonist, Aoyama was hailed as a rare genius editor that had a profound, almost traumatic impact on people. Aoyama openly discussed and pursued a wide range of specialised topics, from drugs, lolicon, scat, and freaks to cult movies, progressive rock, punk, techno, the occult, heretical thought, and the spiritual world. He worked prolifically, editing and writing articles for mini-comics, books and magazines such as Hentai, Hey! Buddy, Billy, Witches' Sabbath, Philiac, Eccentric, amongst a seemingly endless list of fringe "pervert" publications that proliferated after the emergence of vending machine books in the 1970s. In 1992, Aoyama wrote Japan's first practical drug manual, "Dangerous Medicine," a "bible for junkies" which sold over 100,000 copies. In 1995, he edited the first issue of the "brutal" subculture magazine "Dangerous No. 1," which quoted the words of cult guru Hassan I-Sabah: "There is no truth. Everything is permitted." The magazine, which was packed with an exhaustive range of deviant, perverted, and bad taste content, became a huge hit, selling over 250,000 copies in total, sparking a craze for "Kichiku" (cruel) publishing in Japan in the late 19th century.
"No taboos in delusions"—Dangerous No. 1 introduction.
The trend of consuming things that are generally viewed as objects of loathing or pity from a mondo perspective was accelerated all over the world during the nihilist 1990's, but it was particularly popularised in Japan. From V-Zone video culture to comic books like Garo and the works of Kei (Takashi) Nemoto, Suehiro Maruo and Hideshi Hino, to subculture magazines that stimulated spectacle-based curiosity, crime and voyeurism, such as GON!, BUBKA, Sekimatsu Club, TOO NEGATIVE, End of the Century, Weekly Murder Casebook, Bessatsu Takarajima. Around the same time, Aoyama was diagnosed with multifocal posterior pigment epitheliopathy (MPPE), an extremely rare eye disease affecting around 50 people nationwide in Japan, which later became one of the factors that led him to become interested in spiritual matters. Aoyama, the mastermind behind this new genre of "Kichiku" (cruel), bad taste publishing, became disillusioned with the vulgar taste that was being mass-produced as a result of the boom. Aoyama felt the genre lost its substance as a counterculture or literary movement and had been absorbed into popular culture, the historical lineage of erotic underground publishing had become dissolved with the boom of extreme content on the internet. Without moralising, he had stared directly into the abyss. The dark truths he sought fed his own deviancy and addictions. Aoyama became depressed and reclusive. In 1997, Sakakibara Seito, an avid reader of Danger No. 1, committed the Kobe child murders. This led to bookstores removing all bad taste subculture books from their shelves. In 1999, "The Complete Works of Aoyama Masaaki” was published, marking the end of "Kichiku" publishing. Aoyama sought the light and pursued a new theory of happiness related to the spiritual world based on psychoneuroimmunology, molecular biology, and Buddhist resignation. In an interview with the magazine BURST, he declared, "the brutal genre is no longer fresh. From now on, I'll go for the soothing genre." He hanged himself at his home in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture on June 17, 2001, at the age of 40.
Very Good copy, light cover/edge wear. 1995 edition, 1996 printing.
1985, Japanese
Softcover, 290 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Sanwa / Tokyo
$450.00 - In stock -
"People often talk about humanity and humanism, but what makes humans decisively different from animals is that they betray, deceive, and destroy others. Humanity means being cruel."—Masaaki Aoyama
Super rare, first and only issue of cult magazine of erotic obscenity, Witches' Sabbath ("Super Pervert, End of the Century, Abuse History"), published in 1985 by Sanwa Publications as a special edition of SM Mania and edited by Masaaki Aoyama (1960-2001), a legendary cult writer, editor and pioneer in the genre of "Kichiku" (cruel) publishing who had a major influence on Japanese subculture in the 1980s and 1990s.
In 1995, after a prolific career in underground publishing, Aoyama edited the first issue of the "brutal" subculture magazine "Dangerous No. 1," which sparked a huge craze for bad taste culture in Japan, with the opening introduction declaring "There are no taboos when it comes to fantasies!". Ten years earlier, at 25 years old, he edited Witches' Sabbath, a call to "Destroy All Orders", a magazine devoted to "Decadence, Ultra-Abnormality, and Maltreatment"; Aoyama's unique, devilish manifestation of a particular convergence of subcultural 1980s Tokyo — punk and industrial music, splatter horror films, underground manga, SM publishing, and occultism. "The Worst Truth of the 20th Century".
Aoyama was deeply attracted to the culture of monsters, the world of the abnormal, the cruel and dark impulses of human-kind. His publishing ventures centred around his fascination with destructive and socially maladjusted people, perversions, social taboos, "freaks" and subjects turned against public order and morality. Profusely illustrated throughout with colour photo galleries, Aoyama, with contributors including Merzbow's Masami Akita, horror manga artists Suehiro Maruo and Hideshi (Guinea Pig) Hino, manga critic and activist Shinichiro Kurimoto, Hisao Nakano, Mongoose Nagayama, Dan Takasugi, Ken Hirukogami, and others, present features on all manner of heterodox culture, everything from an illustrated guide to corpse photography, splatter horror movies, scatology, how-to seppuku/harakiri (Japanese ritualistic suicide by disembowelment), horror manga (new artworks by Maruo, Hino, comic by Jimmie Morita, and others), infant mania, drugs, necrophilia, Industrial Records (Throbbing Gristle, Monte Cazazza, SPK, etc,), Zeitlich Vergelter, Ron Geesin, sadistic crime history, deformities, Georges Bataille, devil pregnancy kinbaku, sorcery, bestiality, witch hunting, SM readers confessions, the latest in fetish publishing, D-Cup extravaganza (big breast video and magazine publishing), and much more. A special Nazi issue was planned for the next issue, but the magazine was discontinued after this first issue.
An important publication in the history of Japan's "Kichiku" (cruel) publishing. Cover artwork by Ran Akiyoshi.
Not for the faint of heart. Strictly mature audiences only.
From the Editor's notes: "[...] That's because my original path was escapist fairy tales, and whether it was manga, photography, or bookmaking, what I wanted to depict was the world of children. There's no doubt that the purest things and madness are side by side... What is abnormal and what is normal? In this day and age when everything man has created is being torn down and all boundaries are being removed, humans are being led astray by the enormous concepts they have created. Is Witches' Sabbath just a pornographic book? Is Masaaki Aoyama just crazy? It has only just begun."
Masaaki Aoyama (1960-2001) was pioneer of the Japanese underground publishing scene. When he was in the third grade of elementary school, his father bought him a copy of Hiroshi Minamiyama's book "Supernatural Mysteries," which sparked his interest in the supernatural and the occult. Although he never studied, he displayed his prodigy qualities from an early age whilst simultaneously becoming addicted to masturbation. His intense quest for knowledge and perversion continued into his adult life. A self-proclaimed hedonist, Aoyama was hailed as a rare genius editor that had a profound, almost traumatic impact on people. Aoyama openly discussed and pursued a wide range of specialised topics, from drugs, lolicon, scat, and freaks to cult movies, progressive rock, punk, techno, the occult, heretical thought, and the spiritual world. He worked prolifically, editing and writing articles for mini-comics, books and magazines such as Hentai, Hey! Buddy, Billy, Witches' Sabbath, Philiac, Eccentric, amongst a seemingly endless list of fringe "pervert" publications that proliferated after the emergence of vending machine books in the 1970s. In 1992, Aoyama wrote Japan's first practical drug manual, "Dangerous Drugs," a "bible for junkies" which sold over 100,000 copies. In 1995, he edited the first issue of the "brutal" subculture magazine "Dangerous No. 1," which quoted the words of cult guru Hassan I-Sabah: "There is no truth. Everything is permitted." The magazine, which was packed with an exhaustive range of deviant, perverted, and bad taste content, became a huge hit, selling over 250,000 copies in total, sparking a craze for "Kichiku" (cruel) publishing in Japan in the late 19th century.
"No taboos in delusions"—Dangerous No. 1 introduction.
The trend of consuming things that are generally viewed as objects of loathing or pity from a mondo perspective was accelerated all over the world during the nihilist 1990's, but it was particularly popularised in Japan. From V-Zone video culture to comic books like Garo and the works of Kei (Takashi) Nemoto, Suehiro Maruo and Hideshi Hino, to subculture magazines that stimulated spectacle-based curiosity, crime and voyeurism, such as GON!, BUBKA, Sekimatsu Club, TOO NEGATIVE, End of the Century, Weekly Murder Casebook, Bessatsu Takarajima. Around the same time, Aoyama was diagnosed with multifocal posterior pigment epitheliopathy (MPPE), an extremely rare eye disease affecting around 50 people nationwide in Japan, which later became one of the factors that led him to become interested in spiritual matters. Aoyama, the mastermind behind this new genre of "Kichiku" (cruel), bad taste publishing, became disillusioned with the vulgar taste that was being mass-produced as a result of the boom. Aoyama felt the genre lost its substance as a counterculture or literary movement and had been absorbed into popular culture, the historical lineage of erotic underground publishing had become dissolved with the boom of extreme content on the internet. Without moralising, he had stared directly into the abyss. The dark truths he sought fed his own deviancy and addictions. Aoyama became depressed and reclusive. In 1997, Sakakibara Seito, an avid reader of Danger No. 1, committed the Kobe child murders. This led to bookstores removing all bad taste subculture books from their shelves. In 1999, "The Complete Works of Aoyama Masaaki” was published, marking the end of "Kichiku" publishing. Aoyama sought the light and pursued a new theory of happiness related to the spiritual world based on psychoneuroimmunology, molecular biology, and Buddhist resignation. In an interview with the magazine BURST, he declared, "the brutal genre is no longer fresh. From now on, I'll go for the soothing genre." He hanged himself at his home in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture on June 17, 2001, at the age of 40.
Near Fine collector's copy!
2025, English
Softcover, 640 pages, 24 x 16.99 cm
Published by
Intellect Ltd / US
$110.00 - In stock -
Industrial music has long been recognized for its sonic innovations, but the radical visual culture that accompanied this underground movement has remained largely unexplored. Shock Factory: The Visual Culture of Industrial Music presents the first comprehensive examination of how industrial artists created a coherent aesthetic language across multiple media—from xerox art and mail art to installation and performance—fundamentally challenging modernist utopias while prophetically anticipating contemporary discourse about media manipulation and technological control.
Emerging in mid-1970s Britain from the post-punk underground before expanding globally throughout the 1980s, artists like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, SPK, Test Dept, Laibach, Einstürzende Neubauten, Nurse With Wound, Current 93, Coil, Psychic TV, Boyd Rice, Whitehouse, Merzbow, Hijokaidan, Hunting Lodge, Controlled Bleeding, Hafler Trio, Z'EV, Nocturnal Emissions, 23 Skidoo, Clock DVA, Master/Slave Relationship, and Monte Cazazza developed sophisticated visual strategies that matched their abrasive soundscapes with equally confrontational imagery.
At 640 pages, this award-winning monograph reveals how industrial artists systematically appropriated reprographic techniques—particularly xerox art and photocollage—to create disturbing visual narratives investigating mind control, criminality, occultism, pornography, psychiatry, and totalitarianism. Through détournement strategies borrowed from Situationist theory, they exposed the coercive mechanisms of mass media and technological society, creating a visual vocabulary that challenged viewers to confront uncomfortable truths about modern power structures. What emerges is a movement that perceptively anticipated contemporary concerns about surveillance, media manipulation, and collective psychological control. Industrial artists' exploration of these themes through deliberately provocative imagery served not as mere provocation but as sophisticated critique of the very media systems they inhabited. Their radical aesthetic choices—degraded reproduction quality, found imagery manipulation, shock tactics—created hybrid forms that defied traditional categorization while establishing independent networks that bypassed conventional art world structures.
Shock Factory positions industrial music's visual culture within broader art historical narratives, revealing connections to Dada, Surrealism, and conceptual art while demonstrating the movement's unique contributions to contemporary visual culture. The book arrives at a moment when questions about technology, media manipulation, and social control have never been more urgent, demonstrating how these artists' radical visual strategies continue to offer valuable insights for our digital age.
For scholars of contemporary art, music history, and media studies, this book provides essential documentation of an overlooked movement that significantly influenced subsequent artistic developments. For readers interested in underground culture and avant-garde aesthetics, Shock Factory reveals the sophisticated visual thinking that accompanied one of the most innovative musical movements of the past half-century.
"A history of industrial music needed to be written. Nicolas Ballet has accomplished this. Thoroughly. This is the book's greatest strength. It explores the significance of noise as a reflection of a world in decay and screaming as a need. And doing it so it reveals a significant connection between industrial music and contemporary art. This is also what makes it an essential book: its contribution to dismantling categories and rethinking history from mixed creative territories."—David G. Torres
Nicolas Ballet is an art historian and assistant curator at the Centre Pompidou in the New Media Department. He is the author of books and articles exploring the visual and sonic contributions of countercultures and experimental artistic practices.
1988, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 250 pages, 19.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Seikyūsha / Tokyo
$140.00 - In stock -
Discipline/bondage/training, robondage, shoe fetish/heels/bizarre SM, rubber/latex/second skin/fetish fashion, shemale, transsexuality/produced androgony/bisexual syndrome, body decoration and piercing cult, tattoo, corset, chastity belt and genital bondage torture, armed phallus, torture goods, milk and pregnant, bondage purge, hyper pornography, sex devices/artificial sex, medical fetish, retro bondage/fetish merchants/John Willie/comics, cat fighting, "private" magazines and videos ...
First hardcover edition of "TThe Anagram of Perversion : Theatre of Pornography", written by Merzbow's Masami Akita and published only in Japan in 1988. Covering all the above subjects with b/w illustrations, "The Anagram of Perversion" is Akita's rare first book study on the current status of fetishism, exploring a plethora of sexual utopias and customs and their histories around the world. Merzbow is a noise project created in Tokyo, Japan in 1979 under the direction of noise technician Masami Akita. As well as a legendary underground noise artist, Akita is a prolific writer in Japan and frequently writes on the arts, music, erotica, esoterica, modern architecture, and animal rights, with articles on emerging subcultures and underground extreme cultures appearing in publications like SM Sniper, Studio Voice and Fool's Mate. His development of the Merzbow aesthetic ran parallel with a series of investigative books in which he catalogued and introduced a vast amount of hermetic types of music, sexual practices and autonomous creativity to a fairly conservative (but not close-minded) Japanese audience. "The Anagram of Perversion : Theatre of Pornography" is one, perhaps the first, of these very books.
First edition, Japanese text, VG in VG illustrated dust jacket.
1990, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 206 pages, 13.6 cm x 19.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Seikyūsha / Tokyo
$80.00 - In stock -
First hardcover edition of "Fetish Fashion", written by Merzbow's Masami Akita and published only in Japan in 1990, an in-depth exploration of the eroticisation and transformation of the body through fetish fashion that revolutionised the world of sexuality, from SM Bizarre, Transvestism, Rubber/latex, mistresses and dominatrixes, bondage clubs, male and female castration, restraints, piercing, the fascist artificial body, medical fetish/medical art (including Romain Slocombe), and much more, all subjects illustrated in b/w. Merzbow is a noise project created in Tokyo, Japan in 1979 under the direction of noise technician Masami Akita. As well as a legendary underground noise artist, Akita is a prolific writer in Japan and frequently writes on the arts, music, erotica, esoterica, modern architecture, and animal rights, with articles on emerging subcultures and underground extreme cultures appearing in publications like SM Sniper, Studio Voice and Fool's Mate. His development of the Merzbow aesthetic ran parallel with a series of investigative books in which he catalogued and introduced a vast amount of hermetic types of music, sexual practices and autonomous creativity to a fairly conservative (but not close-minded) Japanese audience. "Fetish Fashion" is one of these very books.
First edition, Japanese text, fine copy with fine illustrated dust jacket.
1994, Japanese
Softcover, 210 pages, 15 cm x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tom Shobo / Japan
$120.00 - Out of stock
The rare inaugural issue of Too Negative (No. 1 October 1994). Now rare and highly collectible, Too Negative, the "Forbidden Picture Book", was a visceral and visually explosive glossy cult arts magazine that reflected the gory-depraved-beyond salvation-bad taste expressions visible in international subculture at the height of 1990s underground publishing, a time when art was pushing the limits of taste and morality. Edited solely by legendary Japanese publisher and gallery owner Kotaro Kobayashi and published by Tom Publication Inc. between 1994—2000, each thick, glossy volume takes on the aesthetics of a vibrant fashion magazine in the great Japanese "mook" format (the magazine book) packed cover to cover with themes of Eros and Thanatos, such as fetishism, erotica, medical/autopsy photography, death journalism, Japanese bondage, grotesque and neo-surrealist art, crime scene photography, tattooing/irezumi, piercing, and all things of the mondo, macabre, bizarro realm. Frequent collaborators and featured artists were Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, Joel-Peter Witkin, Trevor Brown, Kiyoshi Ikejiri, to name a few. With a Japanese publishing lineage that may be found in earlier bounding-pushing periodicals such as the 1920s erotic grotesque magazine Hentai Shiriou (Pervert Documents), Tasuhiko Shibusawa’s incredible 1960s avant-garde journal Le Sang Et La Rose, or Fiction Inc’s SALE2 journal published from 1980—mid 1990s, Too Negative, and affiliated periodicals such as ORG, Spiral, Schizo, etc. took their subjects to another level of extremism, even by Japanese standards.
Not for the faint hearted.
This issue, Too Negative No. 1 October 1994, features the corpse/death photography of Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, fetish photography of Kiyoshi Ikejiri, Trevor Brown artwork, AIDS body theory by Keiji Nakayama, SM photography by David Pearson, Japanese big girl nude portraits by photographer Yurie Nagashima, Yasumasa Yonehara photography, hermaphrodite masterbation, antique Japanese hermaphrodite genital studies and various early medical drawings, erotic assemblage, medical/anatomy photography, you name it.
Very Good copy.
1994, Japanese
Softcover, 210 pages, 15 cm x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tom Shobo / Japan
$140.00 - Out of stock
Too Negative No. 2 December 1994, featuring the first publication of corpse photographer Kiyotaka Tsurisaki.
Now rare and highly collectible, Too Negative, the "Forbidden Picture Book", was a visceral and visually explosive glossy cult arts magazine that reflected the gory-depraved-beyond salvation-bad taste expressions visible in international subculture at the height of 1990s underground publishing, a time when art was pushing the limits of taste and morality. Edited solely by legendary Japanese publisher and gallery owner Kotaro Kobayashi and published by Tom Publication Inc. between 1994—2000, each thick, glossy volume takes on the aesthetics of a vibrant fashion magazine in the great Japanese "mook" format (the magazine book) packed cover to cover with themes of Eros and Thanatos, such as fetishism, erotica, medical/autopsy photography, death journalism, Japanese bondage, grotesque and neo-surrealist art, crime scene photography, tattooing/irezumi, piercing, and all things of the mondo, macabre, bizarro realm. Frequent collaborators and featured artists were Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, Joel-Peter Witkin, Trevor Brown, Kiyoshi Ikejiri, to name a few. With a Japanese publishing lineage that may be found in earlier bounding-pushing periodicals such as the 1920s erotic grotesque magazine Hentai Shiriou (Pervert Documents), Tasuhiko Shibusawa’s incredible 1960s avant-garde journal Le Sang Et La Rose, or Fiction Inc’s SALE2 journal published from 1980—mid 1990s, Too Negative, and affiliated periodicals such as ORG, Spiral, Schizo, etc. took their subjects to another level of extremism, even by Japanese standards.
Not for the faint hearted.
This issue, Too Negative No. 2 December 1994, features the corpse/death photography of Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, fetish photography of Kiyoshi Ikejiri, Kotaro Kobayashi, Setsuko Chiba, the artwork of Trevor Brown, photography of Nancy Burson, doll art by Katan Amano, loads of vintage medical, autopsy and death photography, tattoo and piercing fetish, freak postcards, sex dolls, and much more.
Very Good copy with some cover/extremities wear.
1990, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 54 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
MIMA / Melbourne
$25.00 - In stock -
Scarce catalogue edited by Adrian Martin and published in 1990 to accompany experimenta — A Major Survey of Film and Video Art, Melbourne, November 20—December 4, 1990, presented by Modern Image Makers Association Inc. (MIMA) and founded in 1988. Showcasing Australian video art, media art, installation and performance works, this iteration also included programs of Lettrist Cinema and French Avant-Garde film from the 1980s. Illustrated throughout with information on all of the works, accompanied by essays: Adrian Martin – "The Adventures of Form", John Conomos – "Video as Moonlighting", Christian Lebrat – "The Lettrist Cinema of the 1950s", Vikki Riley – "The Picture Can't Get Any Louder", John Flaus – "In the Eye's Mind - Paul Winkler Retrospective.
Includes the work of Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, Maria Kozic and Ian Haig, Peter Callas, Josko Petkovic, Edward Colless, Tona Keane, Arf Arf, Shelley Lasica, Peter Tyndall, Gerald Murnane, William Yang, John Nixon, Primary Source, Warren Burt, Chris Mann, Stelarc, Pete Spence, Philip Brophy, David Cox, Maurice Lemaitre, Frederique Devaux, Cyber Dada Manifesto, Dale Nason, Troy Innocent, Lydia Lunch, Foil, Swans, Einsturzende Neubauten, Butthole Surfers, Violinda, Steven Ball, and so many more...
VG copy light wear to extremities.
1987, Japanese
Softcover, 168 pages, 13 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fiction Inc. / Tokyo
$70.00 - In stock -
Issue No.30 of the great SALE2 periodical from Tokyo Japan, founded in 1984 by Makoto Orui, who later became art director for Purple magazine in France and Rockin’on magazine in Japan. SALE2 was active for about 14 years during the 1980s—1990s, published regularly as a sort-of fanzine/journal/catalogue/pocket-book by Fiction, Inc., a specialty shop and publisher of fetish and erotica in Tokyo in the 1980-90s. With Orui's distinct design SALE2 developed an exclusive curated editorial set on ‘erotisism and its spiritual philosophy’, with each issue exploring different themes and features, heavy on fetishism and erotic art.
Issue No.30, the "Special Issue" features Hans Bellmer, Leonor Fini, Richard Cerf, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Paul Wunderlich, Robert Maplethorpe, Andy Warhol, Man Ray, Lewis Carroll, John Willie, Bernard Montorgueil, Guido Crepax, Van Rod, Carlo, Betty Page, Tealdo, clippings from periodicals such as Amateur Bondage, Bondage Life, Bondage Fantasies, Bizarre Comix, Bizarre Classix, Bizarre Fotos, and much more...
Very heavily illustrated throughout with erotic photography and artwork, all texts in Japanese.
Very Good copy with tanning to pages.
1980, Japanese
Softcover (w. metallic dust jacket), 324 pages, 25.6 x 15.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Byakuya Shobo / Tokyo
$180.00 - In stock -
First 1980 edition of Nobuyoshi Araki's Pseudo-Reportage, over 300 pages of Araki's photographic reportage spanning 1977—1979, and one of more uncommon and best Araki books. Wrapped in silver and pink metallic dust jacket, Pseudo-Reportage is akin to his famed Tokyo Luckyhole, a visual record tracing Araki's movements through the Tokyo nightlife (mostly) of the late 1970's and a tour to the haunts of New York City in 1979 on the occasion of a group exhibition at the International Center of Photography — JAPAN: A SELF PORTRAIT, in which Daido Moriyama, Eikoh Hosoe, Tomatsu, Fukase also participated. Lots of sex clubs, bars, restaurants, and lots of women — the Japanese Empress, female kickboxers, girl glam rockers, hostesses, girls, girls, girls. Explicit, profound, charming, Araki.
"With an epigraph, Photos are jokes on society. The high ([Japan's] Empress) and the low (female kickboxers) are combined; Araki's great wit in full display."—Kōtarō Iizawa
Good copy in Good—VG dust jacket, with only very light general edge wear/spine sunning. Book block is cocked from storage, foxing to blank preliminaries.
2010, English
Softcover, unpaginated, 22.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
PowerHouse / New York
$30.00 - In stock -
With The Night Is Still Young, Los Angeles-based, Japanese photographer Tomoaki Hata returns to his roots—the underground club scene of Osaka's gay, nightlife district. Filled with intimate images of the radically—creative drag queens who performed at various venues in the city from the late 1990s through the present, this book is a peek into the underbelly of modern Japan.
Hata occupies a much-deserved place in the ranks of the great Japanese photographers—on par with the likes of Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki—yet he achieved this rank not by following the example of these greats, but via the presentation of his own unique view of a slice of Japanese culture that otherwise remains largely undocumented. Gay life and culture in Japan remains mostly secretive, and tends to take place within the safe confines of gay bars and gay districts that are many times hidden in plain view within the entertainment districts of major urban centers. A passionate and intimate portrayal of the gender-bending performers as they cavort, both on and off the stage, Hata exposes this elusive subculture for the entire world to see. The results are campy and combustible images of drag performers going full tilt. Glitter, glamour, sequins, and seediness are all on display, up-close and unrestrained.
Including an essay on Hata's photographs-and the world they examine—The Night Is Still Young captures and contextualizes drag culture in Japan at the turn of the century, and is the ultimate primary-source document of this otherwise obscure scene.
1996, Japanese
Softcover, 30 bound postcards, 15.5 x 11.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Little More / Tokyo
$480.00 - In stock -
Very rare early book of portraits of Tokyo teenagers by leading Japanese photographer Takashi Homma (b. 1962 in Tokyo, Japan). This special publication features around 30 selected photographs of Homma's iconic and very influential early 1990's photography bound into one volume in the form of thick perforated postcards. These images of Tokyo teens, along with images of their bedrooms and Shibuya / Harajuku street surrounds, are emblematic of Homma's work of the period, known in the West through Purple magazine, etc. Following in the spirit of Provoke photographers such as Araki, Moriyama, and Nakahira, Homma created a new photographic expression for Tokyo at the end of the century. Homma's photography would become a great influence on the fashionable 1990's girly photo boom of Hiromix and Yurie Nagashima, etc.
Fine—As New copy, all postcards still bound, vinyl cover sticker still attached as issued.
1993, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 188 pages, 24 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
St. Martin's Press / New York
$120.00 - In stock -
First 1993 edition in rare hardcover.
When the definitive history of the emergence of gay culture in the second half of the twentieth century is written, one individual artist is almost certain to be acknowledged for having singlehandedly shaped the erotic imagination of generations of gay men: the Scandinavian illustrator Tom of Finland.
Working alone and in secret in a far-off land, the remarkable drawings that sprang from this artist's hands—leathermen-bikers, cow-boys, cops, lumberjacks, hardhats, soldiers, and sailors—become archetypal images that delineated the shape of homoerotic desire.
With Tom's full cooperation in the years before his death, F. Valentine Hooven Ill has written a full biography of the man, while tracing the evolution and impact of his art on the world.
"Tom of Finland is one of the gay world's few authentic icons. For over thirty years his drawings have appeared in gay magazines and circulated in pirate editions. His men have entered the fantasy life of thousands, and his vision has influenced such artists as Robert Mapplethorpe, Bruce Weber, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder."—Out/Look
Fine copy in Fine DJ.
1981, Japanese
Softcover (w. vinyl dust jacket + pin-up), unpaginated, 28 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Byakuya Shobo / Tokyo
$300.00 - In stock -
"Bite me. Hate me. Bine me. Fuck me.
Please whip me more strong. One, sir. Two, sir. Three, sir. Hmm ah ha...."
—from the back cover.
Seldom seen, remarkable 1981 Japanese photo book by little known Japanese photographer Tetsuji Shimizu — an immersive exploration of the gay scene in San Francisco in 1980, brilliantly designed by Teruhiko Yumura (King Terri, Terrible Terri, etc.)! Rare even in Japan.
Published by Byakuya Shobo, this glossy, vinyl jacket-bound photo book is similar in format to Seiji Kurata's "Flash Up," published around the same time. While visiting New York, Shimizu was astounded by the sights of Christopher Street, the epicenter of LGBT culture. He traveled to the West Coast through word of mouth and immersed himself in the gay culture there, capturing the night-life of Castro and Folsom Streets with his camera — the leather daddies, the bondage dungeons, the bars, and back at the apartments. The impact of the images was so great that it inspired Shimizu to become a photographer. This is such a unique book that Nobuyoshi Araki said, "As I looked through this photobook, I wanted to become a subject myself."
The book also includes a fold-out pin-up, a chapter of intimate black and white close-up erotic scenes, polaroids and Kodachrome slide photo albums documenting the daily lives of friends in the SF scene — the boyfriends, the queens, the bears, fetish shops, sex toys, poppers and wardrobes, a chapter of reproductions of sex toy catalogues illustrated by the great San Francisco illustrator Rex, plus wild erotic artworks from Martin/Hottman/Teruhiko Yumura, master of the punk manga movement and the heta-uma illustration aesthetic.
Very Good copy in original publishers vinyl jacket. As common with old Japanese books preserved in these original plastic dust jackets, they shrink with age and here it has caused the back cover to partially crease.
2003, Japanese
Softcover, 160 pages, 24 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Atelier Peyotl / Tokyo
$60.00 - In stock -
"Gothic" Special Feature Issue of cult Japanese underground magazine Yaso, published in 2003, edited by Yuichi Konno and Atelier Peyotl (publishers of Night Vision/Yaso/Peyotl/Wave/Silvester Club...). Heavily illustrated with texts in Japanese with in-depth profiles, interviews with and essays on Trevor Brown, Gottfried Helnwein, Kuniyoshi Kaneko, ero-manga master Keizo Miyanishi, influential Gothic Lolita illustrator Mitsukazu Mihara, Floria Sigismondi, Marilyn Manson, Alice Auaa, loads of "Modern Primitive" material (piercing, body modification, body performance, etc.), and much more...
Near Fine copy.
1982/1992, Japanese
Softcover, 192 pages, 21 x 14.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Atelier Peyotl / Tokyo
$60.00 - In stock -
"Corpse" Special Feature Issue of cult Japanese underground magazine Yaso, first published in 1982, then re-printed in 1992, edited by Yuichi Konno and Atelier Peyotl (publishers of Night Vision/Yaso/Peyotl/Wave/Silvester Club...). Heavily illustrated with texts in Japanese that look at the theme of death and the dead in the arts, literature, occultism, ancient sciences, philosophy, mythology, poetry, film, crime, and much more. Features John Duncan, Tetsumi Kudo, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Masahisa Fukase, Franz Kafka, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Guillaume Apollinaire, Joe Potts (LAFMS), Takashi Ishii, Rudolf II — Holy Roman Emperor, Akinari Ueda, Marcel Duchamp, Chris Burden, Paul Celan, Alain Resnais, Gilyak Amagasaki, Shusaku Arakawa, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Shuji Terayama, Andy Warhol, Charles Manson, Brian Wilson, Kyoko Endoh, Princess Yongtai, Salvador Dalí, Ono no Komachi, Kiyoshi Kasai, Caravaggio, Throbbing Gristle, Takizawa Bakin, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, Manson Family, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Wu Zetian, Genesis P-Orridge, Yusuke Nakahara, Ranpo Lagrange, Mitsusada Fukasaku, Nakai Hideo, Richard Wagner, and many more.
Very Good copy.
1986, Japanese
Softcover, 160 pages, 13 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fiction Inc. / Tokyo
$70.00 - Out of stock
Issue No.28 of the great SALE2 periodical from Tokyo Japan, founded in 1984 by Makoto Orui, who later became art director for Purple magazine in France, published regularly as a sort-of fanzine/journal/catalogue/pocket-book by Fiction, Inc., a specialty bookshop and publisher of fetish and erotica in Tokyo in the 1980—90s. Each issue covers different themes and features, heavy on fetishism.
Issue No.28, the "Fetishism" issue features collected writings and images around the theme of fetish by John Willie, Bizarre Magazine, Pierre Molinier, Irina Ionesco, Bernard Faucon (his incredible Summer Camp series), Irwing Klaw, Centurians Publishing Inc. bondage catalogues, Andy Warhol and much more... What's more, this issue comes complete with a green synthetic feather to kickstart your own sensual adventures.
Very heavily illustrated throughout with erotic photography and artwork, all texts in Japanese.
1984, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 100 pages, 26 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Sanwa / Tokyo
$190.00 - Out of stock
Very rare special August 1984 issue of Flower Slave, with cover feature "Namio Harukawa's World". This gorgeous, over-sized gloss cult fetish magazine published by Sanwa, Tokyo, is devoted entirely to "The Queen", sadistic mistresses and dominatrix goddesses of femdom enlightenment — packed from cover to cover with saturated full-colour photographic Japanese femdom shoots of many varieties, including western reproductions, Japanese queen profiles, illustrated fetish stories, video features, and amazing pictorial instructional male torture articles. This special issue is also a major early publication celebrating the world of femdom master illustrator Namio Harukawa, including his original cover and dust jacket artwork and lavish colour fold-outs of his incredible illustrations. The whole magazine embodying Harukawa's erotic fantasy world, this title has become an important part of his published history.
Namio Harukawa (1947—2020), a pseudonymous Japanese fetish artist best known for his masterful pencil works depicting female domination ("femdom"), with erotic asphyxiation through facesitting appearing as a frequent subject of his art. Born 1947 in Osaka, Japan, Harukawa’s distinctive penname combines the name of film actress Harukawa Masumi with an anagram of Naomi, the sadistic heroine in Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s novel "Chijin no ai / A Fool’s Love". While in high school, Harukawa began contributing work to the readers’ column of leading postwar Japanese SM pulp magazine "Kitan Club". Since then, Harukawa’s drawings of male masochism have lovingly portrayed noble, voluptuously beautiful women and the men who serve them as human furniture. An extraordinary and prolific artist who remained committed to the regime of “absolute Ganmen Kijo Shugi (facesitting principle)” throughout his artistic life, Namio Harukawa passed away on April 2020, he was 72 years old.
Very Good copy in illustrated dust jacket.
1977, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 250 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sun Publishing / Japan
$40.00 - In stock -
SM Kitan September 1977 issue. A cult classic of vintage Japanese BDSM and Kinbaku (Japanese bondage), SM Kitan was the SM magazine published by the great Sun Publishing house, and was formerly known as S&M Abhunter (changing its name to SM Kitan from August 1975). Heavy with wonderful artwork galleries in colour and bw, glossy bondage photo-features, illustrated fetish fiction, manga, fold-outs, and much more. This issue features the work of some of the best names in Japanese SM art. Regular contributors included Ran Akiyoshi, Sotaro Aki, Tadao Chigusa, Namio Harukawa, Yoko Ozuma, Reiko Kita, Akiyoshi Akiyoshi, Hakuzan Shiraishi, Shoji Oki, Namio Harukawa, Akira Kasuga, and Gekko Hayashi (Gojin Ishihara).
Mature audiences (18+) only.
Very Good copy. Light cover wear/age.