A mountain village and its farmers

Peasants in a Rural Village, a photobook by Japanese photographer Yoshikazu Minami. This is Minami's representative work, a compilation of 16 years of research and photography, which won him the 4th Taiyo Award in 1967 for "Life in a Mountain Village - Chichibu," a work that captured the reality of a mountain village in Chichibu.

Minami did not immediately bring his camera to the village that was to be his subject. He visited many times, became close to relatives and neighbors, helped with farm work, and sometimes even acted as a handyman, building trust with the entire family. The deep intimacy and説得力 of the photographs in this book are supported by his stance of not blindly pressing the shutter until human connections had matured.

The themes included are "Bride and Mother-in-Law," "Rice Farming," "Labor, Children, and Sericulture," and "Youth and Wedding Ceremonies." It meticulously records the details of life that thrived in Japanese mountain communities before the wave of postwar modernization arrived. It is also a valuable record that conveys the reality of rural culture, including the family system, labor customs, intergenerational relationships, and festival and wedding traditions, which are already disappearing.

Before Kazuo Kitai later published Mura e, a photobook that looked at rural society from the inside out to this extent was rare in Japan at the time. With commentary by Teisuke Shibuya and Hideko Maruoka, and composition by Kiyoshi Awazu, this book is a cross-section of photographic expression, ethnographic record, and social perspective.

[Title] ある山村・農民　Peasants in a Rural Village　
Bride and Mother-in-Law, Rice Farming, Labor, Children, Sericulture, Youth, Wedding Ceremony, Changes, Slash-and-Burn and Roasted Ears, Spring, Field Send-off, Festival
[Publisher] Shinsensha
[Publication Date] May 15, 1972 (First Edition)
[Number of Pages] Unpaginated
[Size] Approx. 218*250*22mm / 
[Format] Hardcover
[Language] 
[Title Reading] 
[Author/Editor] Yoshikazu Minami/Author, Teisuke Shibuya/Commentary, Hideko Maruoka/Commentary, Kiyoshi Awazu/Composition
[Printing] Jonan Gravure/Printing, Imaizumi Seibunsha/Binding
[ISBN] -
[Condition] Used　【5】Good (Cover: slight tear and slight tanning on top, stain on back, Main text: stain on flyleaf back page)
[Accessories] -
[Featured In] The Japanese Photobook 1912–1990 (P.416)
[Related Exhibition] 1968 "A Mountain Village"

Yoshikazu Minami (born October 8, 1935)

Born in Chichibu City, Saitama Prefecture, in 1935. Photographer.
Graduated from Tokyo College of Photography. Suffered from asthma as a child, and started photography in junior high school after his father gave him a camera. From the mid-1950s, he continuously photographed the children, youth, mountain village scenery, festivals, and rural life of his hometown, Chichibu.

After studying photography in Tokyo, he returned to Chichibu and continued to create works rooted in the region. He meticulously documented the customs and beliefs, family systems, labor practices, and the changing landscape of farming and mountain villages over a long period. His works, taken from the perspective of someone immersed in the local community rather than an external reporter, are highly regarded as important achievements in post-war Japanese documentary photography.

In 1967, he received the 4th Taiyo Award for "Life in a Mountain Village - Chichibu," which focused on the farming villages of Chichibu. Since then, he has received numerous awards, including the 28th Photographic Society of Japan Annual Award, the 13th Ken Domon Award, the 7th Agricultural Journalists' Award, the 21st Shigeo Ina Award, and the Photographic Culture Association of Japan Special Achievement Award. He is a member of the Japan Professional Photographers Society and the Photographic Society of Japan.

His major photobooks include A Mountain Village and Peasants (1972), Chichibu (1978), Japan and Peasants (1979), Chichibu: Passes, Villages, Houses (1984), Walking in the Fields (1992), and Hodosan Shrine: Nagatoro (2013). He is known as a photographer who continued to record the changes in Japanese folklore and life culture through the single region of Chichibu.

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