HOSOE, Eikoh. Ordeal by Roses II. [BA.RA.KE.I].

(Tokyo): Shuei Sha, 1984. First edition. Folio. Unpaginated. Preface by Yukio Mishima who also serves as model for many of the images. A rare glimpse into the life of the great modern Japanese writer, Yukio Mishima, who ended his life in 1970 by ritual suicide. In 1961 Mishima asked Eikoh Hosoe to photograph him, giving him full artistic direction in making these surreal and alluring photographs. The props that surround the writer and the baroque interior of his home are antithetical to the pure Japanese sensibility of understatement and reveal Mishima’s dark, theatrical imagination. A very good copy in dust jacket with obi.