Seiji Kurata, born in 1945 in Chuo-ku, Tokyo, graduated from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1968. He taught at the high school level and worked in oil painting, printmaking, and experimental film. He trained with Daido Moriyama at an independent photography workshop, the Shashin Photography Workshop Group, in 1976. Kurata won the fifth Kimura Ihei-Asahi Award in 1980 for his first book, Flash Up. For the black-and-white photographs in this book, Kurata used flash and a medium-format camera, resulting in a detailed portrait of a world of bosozoku, gangsters, right-wingers, strippers, transvestites, and so on. These are familiar themes; but in his highly polished, detailed work, Kurata has an unerring instinct for images that suggest stories. Photo Cabaret and 80's Family continued in this direction. This Japanese work by Kurata is anthologized in his latest volume published in Japan. Kurata won the PSJ Award in 1992. An extended stay in Mongolia in 1994 led to the book Toransu Ajia, which continued the color work on the Asian continent that he began with Dai-Ajia. In 1999, Kurata's book Japan won the Kodansha Publication Culture Award for photography.