100 Flower Landscapes of Japan

Working as a physician on weekdays, I spent my days off walking Japan's flower destinations with a camera. This book collects 100 photographs chosen from those years.

All twelve months are here — cherry blossoms and autumn maples most of all, along with winter narcissus and snow, hydrangeas in the rainy season, sunflowers at the height of summer. Season and place change with every page, so you can open the book anywhere.

Six photographs from the book — one year in miniature. Every image carries the place it was taken and the month it was taken in.

From a lone cherry tree above the tea fields, to blossoms standing in a sea of rapeseed, to dawn over the cherry-covered slopes of Mt. Yoshino. A record of chasing the blossom front north, one weekend at a time.

Lotus flowers backlit by the morning sun. Red spider lilies flooding a cedar grove. Then the maples turn, framing Mt. Fuji like a painting.

Hitachi Seaside Park, Yoshinoyama, Tofuku-ji, Korankei, Hanamiyama in Fukushima, Hana no Miyako Park below Mt. Fuji, Mother Farm and many more — alongside quiet paths with no name at all.

Every photograph is captioned in both Japanese and English with its location and the month it was taken — so you can see at a glance when and where each flower can be found, and plan a trip around it.

Fixed-layout design, one photograph per spread. Best enjoyed in landscape orientation on a tablet or Kindle Scribe, close to the size of a printed photobook; pinch to zoom on a phone.

If you would rather hold it in your hands, the paperback is printed 21.6cm square, 110 pages, full color — each landscape filling the page edge to edge.