Toyohiko Yasui - Young Love - 1972

"Young Love" (1972, Misaki Shobo) is a collaborative photobook by photographer Toyohiko Yasui—known for works like One Thousand Millimeter—and provocative reportage writer Takeshi Nakanaka, famed for his sharp, rebellious "Nakanaka style" across politics, culture, and erotica. Reprising content from Nakanaka's seminal 1965 study Loss of Innocence (later adapted into a Nikkatsu film), the book interweaves candid texts with Yasui's newly shot evocative images of young women. Structured around chapters like "Narcissism," "Purity Neurosis," "Solitary Resolve," "To the Men I Love," "Exiled Lovers," "No Dating Allowed," and "Liberated Sexuality," it blends raw erotic portraiture with introspective narratives to explore the tensions of female desire, innocence, and societal taboo in early 1970s Japan.