Specialising in art, design, photography and other visually oriented books, our publishing range extends to literature and criticism as well.

Seigensha Art Publishing was founded in 1995 in Kyoto. To illuminate human behavior through visually oriented books—with this as our guiding aim, we have published over 900 titles in fields ranging from contemporary art, painting, ukiyo-e and traditional Japanese art, photography, design, crafts and architecture.

Our first publication was Shō-gi – The Work of Master Carpenter Sotoji Nakamura. This deluxe edition, an in-depth compilation of the work of this great contemporary master of “Sukiya” teahouse architecture, received the Award for Excellence in Best Designed Books from All Over the World (Leipzig, Germany). It is the only book from Japan to have ever been granted this prestigious award. In 2005, Seigensha released a completely new, reprinted edition of Eikoh Hosoe’s Kamaitachi, the legendary photography book that was born out of a close collaboration between Hosoe and Butoh originator Tatsumi Hijikata. The following year, we published Hosoe’s The Butterfly Dream, another enthralling volume of photographs by Hosoe, this time featuring the work of the Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno and taken over a period of more than forty years.

We have produced many monographs and exhibition catalogues for Japanese and international artists, including Eikoh Hosoe, Naoya Hatakeyama, Rinko Kawauchi, Taiji Matsue, Tomoko Sawada, Masafumi Sanai, Issei Suda, Nobuyoshi Araki, Makoto Azuma, Shinro Ohtake, Kyoichi Tsuzuki, Akira Yamaguchi, Katsura Funakoshi, Izumi Kato, Saul Leiter and Gerhard Richter.

Our company name “Seigensha” is derived from three kanji characters: 青 (sei = “blue”), calling to mind the purity of a clear blue sky, 幻 (gen = visions or illusions), for the pursuit of dreams yet unseen, and 舎 (sha = a hut or house), signifying learning. We participate actively in art and book fairs all over the world, including Frankfurt Book Fair, Paris Photo, and many others.