Ginza Kaiwai/ Ginza Haccho (Every Building on Ginza Street).

SHOHACHI, Kimura & Yoshikazu Suzuki.
Ginza Kaiwai/ Ginza Haccho (Every Building on Ginza Street).
First edition. Square 8vo. 2 unpaginated volumes. One photographic leporello and one volume with white boards housed in a slipcase. Numerous black & white plates. Text in Japanese. Tokyo: Toho Shuppan, 1954.
In the original publishers box. Some warping and yellowing inside the boards. An age worn, but well survived copy.

The first edition of Ginza Kaiwai/ Ginza Haccho, the book echoing Ed Ruscha's Every Building on the Sunset Strip, only this incredible object precedes it by over a decade. The little known photographer Yoshikazu Suzuki meticulously photographed the shopping district in Tokyo and the result is a two-meter-long elevational panorama of Ginza printed in accordion fold. One side of the street runs along the top, the other mirrors it at the bottom, along with descriptive captions. You can see the elegant Shiseido store nestled against a cinema, galleries and chic department stores. While the design of Ruscha's seminal artist book is conceived exactly like this one, it remains unclear whether the artist had seen the vernacular equivalent to his work.