Yasuhiro Ishimoto was born in San Francisco in 1921 and moved to Japan at age three with his family. After graduating high school, he returned to San Francisco to study. A year later, as a result of the war, he was sent to an internment camp in Colorado for Japanese citizens and those of Japanese descent. It was here that his interest in photography began. After the war, Ishimoto went to Chicago and studied at the Institute of Design under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. He graduated in 1952 and returned to Japan the following year, where he began to take these pictures during endless walks around Tokyo and the Shonan coast where he was living. 'For Ishimoto, Chicago is the point of departure,' writes Shoji Yamagashi in the afterword. 'When he fixed upon Tokyo as his theme, there can be no doubt that the streets, buildings and people of Chicago were there in the background as reference.' Tokyo was published as number 8 in the important Eizo no gendai 10-volume series of monographs by contemporary Japanese photographers