Photo Age, founded in 1981 by Byakuya-shobo, features mainly Araki's work. In this magazine, erotica and art were naturally intermixed. The first is commonly viewed as base and vulgar, the other as noble and refined; however, Photo Age show us clearly that both of them are equally and unquestionably products of the endless human quest for pleasure, with whatever 'perversions' it may encompass.

The sexual trends of the times exuded an intense "power", that influenced the editors of Photo Age. New sex businesses were constantly cropping up, and late-night television programs would regularly run features on them. The most popular programme was hosted by a prominent reporter, who was also a film director, a fact that is worth noting. The sex, industry was constantly coming up with ingenious ideas which no longer focused on the mere satisfaction of the sexual urge or on profit. Those involved in it poured an amazing amount of enthusiasm and energy into their work. Surely, some of those who witnessed the sex scene in those days must have responded to that ingenuity, enthusiasm, and energy in the same way that they would to the work and spirit of an artist. Araki and Suei, hailed as the pre-eminent "tag team" in the world of Japanese publishing in the 1980's, were also attracted by the vigor of the human lust and ostentatious hedonism they encountered, which sometimes bordered on the nonsensical, going far beyond the "normal" sex act, i.e. the union of sex organs culminating in ejaculation. In addition to photographs that appeared in Photo Age, this collection contains photographs taken for a series "The Shinjuku Sex Scene", which was published in the magazine The Truth behind the Gossip. Kawabata Mikito, a member of the editorial staff, who also assisted the photographer on location, can be seen in some of the photographs.

As Suei has pointed out, the women working in the sex industry at the time differed from their predecessors in that they were amateurs. They were ordinary young women, unencumbered by the unfortunate past or the poverty that characterized the prostitutes of days gone by. These amateurs looked as if they had absolutely no sense of shame or guilt about what they were doing. On the contrary, and their attitude toward their work was cheerful and carefree, an attitude shared by the clients who thronged to them. The women and their male clients collaborated in fantasy games in an open, festive atmosphere, and truly seemed to be enjoying themselves. Perhaps some of the women had pasts they were attempting to hide, but Araki's photographs make no attempt to ferret them out. What Araki did was make photography a part of the game by entering into the world of performance, he himself sometimes appearing as the subject.

At that time, Araki was already in the spotlight, having been discovered by the media. He didn't sneak onto the sex scene as photographer without a name, and his subjects were very well aware that they were in the presence of the familiar face of the famous Nobuyoshi Araki. Their awareness prompted more performances and games. At this point, Araki proceeded to capture the performances and his relationship with the subjects on film.

In a certain sense, this collection of Araki's photographs is nothing less than a historical record of sex and morals 'in the early 198os. At the same time, it differs minutely but definitively from usual photographic accounts. Within Araki's oeuvre, which is quite eclectic, this collection can certainly be categorized as reportage of contemporary urban morals. However, Araki is constantly aware of the fiction inherent in the supposed "objectivity" of standard documentary photographs: as long as subjects are aware that they are being photographed, they are not being photographed in their natural state. Furthermore, the photographer, involuntarily or otherwise, is imposing his own ideas and, thus, artificiality.

Nobuyoshi Araki's Pseudo-Diary (a collection of photographs published in 1980 by Byakuya-shobo) is a parody of photography that purports to be reportage. For instance, at first Araki will introduce an event that he seems to be following photographically, and he makes us believe that the event has actually occurred, and that he has stumbled upon it. But somewhere along the way it becomes clear that the entire event is a contrivance, a fiction. Araki explodes the widely-held belief that photographs depict reality. He shows us that the images in photographs are not and cannot be neutral or transparent. He exposes the "lies" told by conventional photographic reportage in its supposed neutrality, as well as the obscenity of the act of photography.

Despite this, Araki's photographs do capture a higher sort of truth: the truth that is in the self-awareness of those involved in the performances, and the truth that surfaces in the relationship between the photographer and the subject. In converting fiction into documentary, and documentary into fiction, he exposes the lies in documentary and extracts the truth in fiction. To Araki, reportage is nothing but one form of fiction. All photographs are documentaries of the relationships between the photographer, the subject, and the person looking at the photograph. Then, when Araki himself appears in the photograph, and we see his familiar sunglasses with the round lenses and his scrupulously trimmed moustache, the relationship between the viewer and the viewed is further confused. The photographer, the voyeur whom we would expect to be hiding behind the camera, materializes in his own photographs, his own work, and is transported to a fictional place as one of the characters in a performance space that he has created. Thus, Araki is always coming and going between fact and fiction, the inside and the outside, is both the viewer and the subject of his photographs. When he photographs the sex scenes, too, there is a delicate sense of distance with respect to the subjects. When you look at his photographs, you don't see an overzealous, aggressive attempt to expose the dark underbelly of society. Nor do you find any hostility on the part of the subject toward being photographed. You may even detect a bizarre complicity between the photographer and his subjects. Although the photographer isn't necessarily demonstrating sympathy for or approval of his subjects, his view of them is neither cynical nor condescending. While Araki ingeniously includes himself in the game, forging a private relationship with his subjects, he is also a cool observer who views the entire scene as fiction. What Araki does, though, is express his genuine surprise and bewilderment at the strangeness of the scene he is photographing and in which he is a participant - again, from a delicate distance.

Araki sometimes linkens photography to the sex act, and his camera to a penis, but he never looks or gestures at the women, his subjects, in a phallocentric manner. if the look in a man's eye is an attempt to understand the woman to project his own lust and to extract the hidden truth, then Araki becomes a woman when he takes photographs. He absorbs the incomprehensible scenes that he witnesses as well as the superficial relationships formed there without altering them. He copies with a refined eye. One might refer to Araki's camera as a device that resembles a vagina pretending to be a penis. In Araki's own eloquent words, "There is a camera between a man and a woman" (the title of the first collection of Araki's essays on photography, published in 1978). By this he means that the distance between the photographer and his subject cannot ever become transparent, due to the existence of the camera. Furthermore, Araki's camera comes and goes between the eyes of the man and woman, while diffusing the autonomy of the photographer.

The golden age of the sex industry, captured by the photographs in this collection, came to an end in February 1985, with the enactment of the New Amusement Business Control and Improvement Act, intended to control the industry (or, more accurately, to protect the traditional sex businesses). Three years later, the April 1988 issue of Photo Age, edited by Akira Suei, was deemed obscene. The publisher was ordered to recall all the copies, and the publication has been discontinued. Nonetheless, its editors never engaged in a battle with the authorities over the regulation of pornography, nor did they register claims for freedom of expression or the artistic nature of photographs. They enjoyed playing games with human lust and the authorities involving obscenity, and simply transferred them to the printed page. For instance, when they were banned from showing pubic hair, they shaved it out. Then, when they were ordered to cover the pubic area with ink, they obeyed - they used the ink to paint pubic hair. When they were required to put underwear on their subjects, they made sure that the underwear was so filmy that pubic hair could be seen through it. Thus, the playfulness of Araki and Suei, like that of children making mischief and enjoying it, is perfectly apparent in this collection, and they manage to avoid the pornographic loom that often characterizes chronicles of this type.