Publisher: Aperture
Year: 1985
Signed: Yes
Language: English
Pages: 100
Size: 26 x 36 cm
Binding: Hardback with dust jacket and protective sleeve 
Conditions: Excellent
ISBN: 0-89381-169-6

Eikoh Hosoe (born 18 March 1933 in Yonezawa, Japan) is a Japanese photographer and filmmaker who emerged in the experimental arts movement of post-World War II Japan. He is known for his psychologically charged images, often exploring subjects such as death, erotic obsession, and irrationality. Through his friendships and artistic collaborations he is linked with the writer Yukio Mishima and 1960s avant-garde artists such as the dancer Tatsumi Hijikata.

Ba-ra-kei: Ordeal by Roses is a rare glimpse into the life of the great modern Japanese writer, Yukio Mishima, who ended his life in 1970 by ritual suicide. In 1961 Mishima asked Eikoh Hosoe to photograph him, giving him full artistic direction in making these surreal and alluring photographs. The props that surround the writer and the baroque interior of his home are antithetical to the pure Japanese sensibility of understatement and reveal Mishima's dark, theatrical imagination.