The point of making Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s & 70s was not to fetishize the photobook as a collectible object and in the process authenticate the valuation of rare items. Rather this publication was a means to explore why the photobook became such an important mode for photography in Japan and how the particularities of this form helped to shape the core ideas that were at play in photography at this time. Understanding photography from Japan requires understanding the photobook's role in Japan's larger and unique photography culture. Before the idea of selling an original print or creating editions of a print were introduced to Japan in the late 1970s, photography in Japan was in a veritable vacuum of galleries. During the 1960s and '70s in Japan, the photobook — through a combination of excellence in design, printing, and materials — was one of the primary modes a photographer could use.