Tokyo Biyori (Tokyo Daylight) (1993)

This edition is the first printing from 1993, published by Chikuma Shobō. It retains the original book band and features Araki’s rare signature—a highly collectible item for admirers of Japanese photography, photobook history, and Araki’s deeply autobiographical body of work.

This is not merely a photobook—it is a farewell letter, a diary of grief, and one of the most emotionally resonant works in postwar Japanese photography.

Tokyo Biyori began as a joint creative project between Nobuyoshi Araki and his wife, Yoko Araki. First serialised in 1989 in the journal Shisō Kagaku (Thought Science), the original format followed their long-established pattern: Yoko writing the text, Araki providing the images. However, after just three issues, Yoko was diagnosed with uterine cancer and hospitalised. On January 27, 1990, she passed away.

Overcome with grief, Araki spent the following year in deep mourning, unable to create. Eventually, he chose to complete Tokyo Biyori on his own. The latter half of the book, in contrast to its gentle beginnings, becomes a tender yet melancholic tribute. Through quiet photographs and sparse, aching words, Araki expresses his enduring love and loss in a way only he could: intimate, raw, and deeply personal.

The book has also become the source material and spiritual predecessor to the 1997 film Tokyo Biyori, directed by Naoto Takenaka and starring Miho Nakayama.