Human Figure Yutaka Takanashi Midnight Series Publishing Co/1979/Japanese/135*195*13 Yutaka Takanashi, one of Japan's leading post-war photographers, has made a name for himself in commercial fashion photography since the 1960s. In the 1970s, he published Towards the City, a book that has left its mark on Japanese photographic history, and continued to confront Tokyo and the city in his creative work, including Machi (1977) and Tokyoites (1983). He then broadened his focus to the sacred lands where the gods dwell, and in the 1990s published Hatsukuni (1993) as a compilation of his work. This book consists mainly of portraits of writers, artists and artists taken in the 1970s. They include Shuzo Takiguchi, Hiroyuki Itsuki, Jinichi Uekusa, Yoshiharu Tsuge, Arata Isozaki, Yukio Mishima, Tatsumi Hijikata, Akira Kasai and Akiyuki Nosaka.