Death Book by Toshio Saeki

Death Book by Toshio Saeki – The fourth edition of The Death Book is dedicated to the archive of rarely published illustration work by Japanese artist Toshio Saeki (1945- 2019), exploring scenes of violence, brutality, horror and what lies beneath the surface of Japanese culture.

Saeki’s work is distinguished by the combination of traditional Shunga and Yōkai styles with elements of Western art, and is characterized by eroticism, death and gore, questioning Japanese ideology and expansionism. Historians often describe Saeki’s work as being closely linked to the Japanese cultural phenomenon of “erotic, grotesque and absurd” (ero, guro, nansensu).

The book also contains an introduction by historian Euphemia Franklin.

Born in 1945 in Miyazaki Prefecture, Japan. Saeki’s drawings are produced using an original method known as “chinto printing”. This technique emphasizes the “flatness” of “lines” and “colored surfaces”, giving the work a unique character.