ARAKI - TOKYO LUCKY HOLE

Nabuyoshi Araki

[Erotica - Photography]

Nobuyoshi Araki, Japan's most famous and audacious contemporary photographer, was a frequent visitor to the sex clubs of Tokyo's Shinjuku neighborhood during their heyday. The clubs offered an increasingly bizarre range of services, catering for everyone from commuter-train fetishists to those who liked to role-play young virgins, and even clients who enjoyed lying naked in coffins, playing dead, while being fondled through holes in the wood. Araki took many photographs of these establishments until the golden age of Japan's sex industry came to a screeching halt in February 1985, with the enactment of the New Amusement Business Control and Improvement Act. In over 800 photos, Tokyo Lucky Hole documents the free-for-all spirit of the Shinjuku sex clubs via Araki's lens.

Taschen (2021) 704 p. 14 x 20 cm – Trilingual English, French, German