A 344-page photobook made entirely of portraits of Japanese high school students, the result of more than ten years of labour-intensive shooting. Since 2002 Kei Ono has travelled all over the country photographing them, an activity he considers his duty. He holds himself to two rules: the students must answer one of his notices placed online or in a newspaper, and he will not publish a photograph in which they are smiling. The first rule makes the students select themselves, since, as he says, they are all hoping that someone will discover their existence; that hope creates the desire for a serious portrait, which is why nobody smiles. Sometimes the students seem to glare back at the camera, sometimes they are more contemplative, and the portraits vividly capture the trials of adolescence. The book was published together with the New Text Project, which aims to distribute copies to libraries across Japan.