Pathography is a term from medicine for the study of the influence and significance of the medical or psychiatric history on the character, achievements, criminal offences and so on of an individual, which Rokuzo Waku understands as an examination of environmental and circumstantial contexts as well as a search for medical correlatives. The book is a photographic exploration of the human psyche, capturing everyday banalities of contemporary Japanese society in a narrative in two parts, the first in black and white and the second in colour, questioning and examining human behaviour from births to deaths to social spectacles. The Japanese subtitle, Dabi no natsu, means summer of cremation. The afterword is in Japanese and English.