[Kiken Na Dokubana (Sometimes Transliterated As Kiken Na Adabana)]. Tokiwa Toyoko.

Tokyo, Mikasa Shobo 1957. 19x13cm publisher's boards and dustwrapper with sensationalist wrap around (obi) and original cellophane; photo illustrations throughout. An excellent copy with much less than the usual browning. A reprint, ten days after the first, of this photographic study of women at the sharp edge of Americanised Japan: Yokohama. It is captivating - from front cover to back - without being in the slightest bit charming. Tokiwa is unequivocal from the start. The front cover declares what this book is: a Japanese woman photographing Japanese women being degraded. Tokiwa had good reason to be unimpressed with Americans - her father was killed in the fire bombing of Tokyo - but the soldiers and sailors who appear here are no more despicable than the Japanese men swarming around nude photographic sessions in part three and in the last photo - also the first, on the front cover - the woman is being dragged by a man, any man. Degradation is a system. The title of this can be translated as 'dangerous poisonous flower' - a prostitute - but it's the women here who have been poisoned.