Tokyo Cat Town

Name: Tokyo Cat Town
Brand: 荒木経惟 / ARAKI Nobuyoshi
Price: 1400 JPY
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Tokyo Nekomachi is a photography book by Nobuyoshi Araki. Published by Heibonsha in 1993, this volume compiles photographs of cats living in the streets of Tokyo, originally serialized in the zoology magazine Anima. It captures the cats Araki encountered in city corners—alleys, fences, gaps between buildings, and roadsides—depicted in monochrome alongside the surrounding landscape and human presence.

Rather than isolating the cats, the images incorporate the urban environment of wooden houses, alleys, shops, and roads, illustrating how cats existed as a part of everyday life in Tokyo. The book also features cats from Gotokuji, where Araki was living at the time, and can be viewed as a photographic record of the Tokyo cityscape in the early 1990s.

In the book design by Seiichi Suzuki, photographs shot on medium-format cameras and 35mm photos with dates are arranged using different paper stocks and layouts. The end of the book includes a handwritten note by Araki himself.

"If cats disappeared, Tokyo would just become a ruin, meow." (Afterword)

[Title] Tokyo Nekomachi　Living Cats in Tokyo
[Publisher] Heibonsha
[Publication Date] July 12, 1993 (First edition, first printing)
[Number of Pages] 152 pages
[Dimensions] Approx. 190＊257＊10mm / 533g
[Format] Softcover
[Language] Japanese
[Title Reading] TOKYO NEKOMACHI
[Author/Editor] Photography: Nobuyoshi Araki / Design: Seiichi Suzuki
[Printing/Binding] Toppan Printing / Printing and Binding
[ISBN] 9784582277296
[Condition] Used [7] Very Good (Obi/sleeve missing)
[Included Items] -
[Featured In] -
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Nobuyoshi Araki (1940– )

Born in Tokyo in 1940. Photographer.

After graduating from the Department of Photography and Printing at Chiba University's Faculty of Engineering, he worked at Dentsu. In 1964, he received the first Taiyo Award for "Satchin." By closely intertwining his personal life with his photography, he has released numerous works focusing on subjects such as Tokyo, people, flowers, the sky, and cats.

He has published many photography books, starting with Sentimental Journey, which documented his honeymoon with his wife Yoko, as well as Tokyo Story, Love on the Left Eye (Chiro), Sky Scene / Close Scene, and Tokyo Life. Cats are an important, recurring motif in Araki's work, and he is also well-known for his photographs of his beloved cat, Chiro.