Yokainoshima - Charles Fréger

Probably the best and the most successful book among the folk portraiture works by French photographer Charles Fréger.
 
Please note this book is the Japanese language edition. 
Contributor's text is written in Japanese, with English captions on each photo images.
 
From the publisher's description:
Images of otherworldly beings (Yokai) in Japan as seen through the eyes of a French photographer.
 
Powerful, grotesque, and beautiful, the masked ritual figures of Japan represent the denizens of the supernatural that haunt the fields, mountains, forests, and seashores of the archipelago.
 
Deliberately divorced by the photographer from their festival contexts, the beings—deities, otherworldly visitors, oni demons, and more—reach eloquently out toward us from where they stand in the interstices between the real and unreal.
 
This collection presents costumes from festivals in fifty-eight locales, from Akita in the north to the remote islands of Okinawa in the southwest. Also included are text contributions by critic Toshiharu Ito, writer and editor Akihiro Hatanaka, and poet/translator Ryoko Sekiguchi.
 
Seigensha Art Publishing
Published in 2016
Language ‏ : ‎ Japanese
Pages: 256
230 × 180 × 30 mm / 1030 g
Binding: hardcover