Asahi Camera
Among Fukase's earliest bodies of artistic work is "Kill the Pigs" of 1961, consisting of dark and often gruesome photographs made over the course of repeated visits to the Shibaura slaughterhouse in Tokyo mixed with photographs of two intertwined naked bodies (the photographer and his wife) Subsequently he experimented with various journalistic and artistic styles, contributing dozens of photo essays to such magazines as "Camera Mainichi", "Asahi Camera", and "Asahi Journal". His first photobook, "Yūgi", was published in 1971 and includes numerous photographs of his first wife, Yukiyo Kawakami, and his second wife, Yōko Wanibe. Although the book was described at the time as a work of "self-representation", it contains no discernible photographs of Fukase himself. Accordingly, it can be considered the photographer's first attempt to describe his own passionate, self-indulgent, and sometimes violent life by indirect means. Fukase's next book, "Yōko" (1978), is a successor to the first in that it is another attempt to "show" his life through representations of a female 'other'.