Supervised by Daido Moriyama and Shunji Dodo.
 
With a text by Murakami, "My Journey to Secluded Hot Springs".
 
"There was a time, in my twenties, when I wished to disappear from the realm of worldly affairs. Kumogakure has no direct English translation. It means hidden by clouds, enveloped, invisible. Unable to bear my world and the affairs surrounding it any longer, I spent two years wandering blindly through mist-shrouded Hokkaido and Tohoku.
 
The same volcanic activity that gave birth to Japan is the source of its hot springs, called onsen in Japanese. The onsen depicted in this book are only a tiny fraction of the 3,000 hot springs said to exist throughout the archipelago.
 
By chance, I became fascinated by the natural clouds of steam rising from these healing, restorative onsen. Japan's springs vary: there are naturally heated thermal springs, mineral springs, hidden springs, watering places and small, old spa towns. Whatever the type, any place will do as long as it has hot springs and a name. The banal and the extraordinary meet in these springs, as do life and death. They heal locals and travellers alike. These hot springs are filled with nostalgia and offer the pleasure of unique visual experiences. These are the places through which I wandered, taking photographs.
 
As I travelled through these places, I dreamed of a transcendent self beyond my own identity. Flooded with memories of experiences I had never had, surrounded by every emotion, I felt a tremendous longing for a self from an unknown time, without gender or age, born and raised in and among these unfamiliar mountain settlements and coastal villages.
 
The photographs in this book were completed in 2003. More than a decade later, they unquestionably reflect what I saw on my travels. Yet as time passes, I have gradually begun to feel as though they were taken by someone else, from another world.
 
Reviewing these photographs while making this book, I realised that deep within me there is a dark flashpoint with nowhere to go. I will probably return to my solitary journeys among the hot springs. I hope that perhaps this book will become as ephemeral as smoke, seeming to disappear upon publication, only to be found again decades later through chance and the reader's delight."