Kissa by Kissa: A 1,000 KM Walk along the Nakasendō (5th Edition)

Limited printing of 1070 copies.

Imported from Japan, beautifully printed and bound, evocatively written and photographed, Kissa by Kissa traces author Craig Mod’s walks along the Nakasendo, a famed preindustrial route from Tokyo to Kyoto.

Walking, Mod says, “forces you to directly engage with the cultural and human geography of a place,” and in Kissa by Kissa he engages with kissaten, old-style cafes which are slowly vanishing as their owners and customers age. The aesthetics of kissa are captured in the late work of filmmaker Yasujior Ozu: ”modernist, warm, innocent, curvy, leather upholstered, and Western-inspired, all filtered through the Japanese sense of light and space.”

Mod’s photographs, as well as his writing, convey a sense of a particular world and how it does and does not endure. His account is not meant to be linear: it is revealing in stages, paying attention to one detail here, another there, never attempting to be definitive, always seeking connection.

These copies are from the 2023 fifth printing of the book, part of a series of increasingly fine editions in which Mod has raised his standards. Bound in cloth over flexible boards, the book’s cover is a two-color silk-screen of an illustration based on one of Mod’s photos. The lay-flat binding and high-resolution printing also represent part of the book’s evolution from printing to printing.

We’re honored to have established a relationship with this author and to be offering his work in the United States.

Cloth-covered flexibinding. Color photographs throughout.