First published in 1964 by Zokeisha in Tokyo and Delpire in Paris, Tokyo is the final chapter in William Klein’s celebrated series of major city-portrait photobooks (following Life is Good & Good for You in New York [1956], Rome [1959], and Moscow [1964]). Klein spent three months in Tokyo in 1961 capturing the metropolis at a historical turning point, a time when post-war Japan was undergoing rapid economic transformation while preparing to host the 1964 Summer Olympic Games.
Klein arrived in Japan with official hosts and sponsors who initially steered him toward institutional centers of power. He took unconventional, highly intimate shots of places like the Tokyo Stock Exchange, sumo tournaments, and even an imperial couple portrait of Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako.
However, Klein soon broke away from his guides to wander the streets. Assisted by legendary Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe, he connected with Tokyo’s radical artistic avant-garde. He photographed Kazuo Ohno, co-founder of the avant-garde Butoh dance movement, performing outdoors in the city streets. and he captured Neo-Dada artist Ushio Shinohara during one of his famous "boxing-painting" performance pieces.
He also documented ordinary street life, crowds, pachinko parlors, nightlife, and political anti-American street demonstrations.
Reinventing the Photobook Layout: Klein scaled up the physical page size for Tokyo compared to his earlier books. Using wide double-page, full-bleed layouts, the images feel like massive, immersive murals filled with dense, graphic energy, urban signage, and harsh contrasts.
Influence on Japanese Photography: Tokyo broke radically from the softer, traditional style of 1950s Japanese photography. Its raw, chaotic, and aggressive aesthetic deeply influenced an entire generation of Japanese street photographers, most notably Daidō Moriyama, who famously referred to Klein’s city photography as his visual "bible".
Tokyo was published in 1964 simultaneously by Zokeisha in Tokyo and Delpire in Paris. It serves as the culmination of William Klein's quartet of iconic urban photobooks, following Life is Good & Good for You in New York (1956), Rome (1959), and Moscow (1964).
Shot primarily during a three-month stay in 1961, the book captures Tokyo at a pivotal historical threshold. The city was undergoing radical modernization and construction in preparation for the 1964 Summer Olympics while simultaneously navigating the tensions of post-WWII American influence and cultural transformation.
The book opens with a sequence of shots taken under the watch of official handlers: high-profile encounters with the political and institutional establishment, including close-ups of Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako, sumo wrestlers at the dohyo, and the chaos of the Tokyo Stock Exchange floor.
After ditching his official escorts, Klein's descends into street level to explore Tokyo's avant-garde subcultures, capturing performances by Butoh co-founder Kazuo Ohno and Ushio Shinohara's Neo-Dadaist "boxing painting" sessions. The book also provides portraits of everyday street life, featuring neon-lit nightlife, baseball grounds, crowded subway commuters, and anti-American political demonstrations.
Klein rejected traditional, harmonious composition in favor of wide-angle distortion, tight framing, grainy contrast, and motion blur. The layout heavily features Japanese typography, commercial signage, billboard imagery, and dense street graphics, treating the visual noise of the city as a core structural element.
Designed by Klein himself, the book utilizes oversized, full-bleed gravure double-page spreads that submerge the reader directly into the kinetic energy of the metropolis.
Tokyo bridged Western street photography with the post-war Japanese avant-garde. Its raw, claustrophobic aesthetic profoundly influenced the Provoke movement in Japan, leaving a direct mark on photographers like Daido Moriyama and Eikoh Hosoe.
It stands as a pivotal document of 20th-century photobook design, operating simultaneously as a historical snapshot and an artistic diary.