Born from his fascination with ancient architecture and a personal rediscovery of its beauty through materials such as wood, stone, earth and thatch, the aspiring architecture student Yukio Futagawa set out in the mid-1950s to photograph ‘minka’, the traditional rural houses of Japan. This experience would be instrumental in shifting his life’s work toward photographing rather than creating architecture.

Born from his fascination with ancient architecture and a personal rediscovery of its beauty through materials such as wood, stone, earth and thatch, the aspiring architecture student Yukio Futagawa set out in the mid-1950s to photograph ‘minka’, the traditional rural houses of Japan. This experience would be instrumental in shifting his life’s work toward photographing rather than creating architecture.

This large-format compendium of Futagawa’s images of villages and homes captures not only the sequence of history but also the essence of Japanese culture at a time when much of the country remained agrarian, not yet subjected to more recent, rapid modernisation.