青幻舎 SEIGENSHA Art Publishing

In the 2000s, editor and photographer Kyoichi Tsuzuki embarked on a mission to capture the beauty of a rapidly fading icon of Japanese sexuality: the so-called “love hotels” offering guests spaces for intimate encounters. In this collection, Tsuzuki chooses seventy-three love hotel rooms to profile for their retro decor in all its erotic glory and quirkiness—decor that, for the most part, has since disappeared amid changing times and aesthetics. Also included are photographs of love hotel interiors as they have evolved now in the 2020s.

Kyoichi Tsuzuki was born in Tokyo in 1956. From 1976 to 1986, he was a freelance editor for the influential men’s fashion and lifestyle magazines Popeye and Brutus, where he wrote on contemporary art, design, urban living, and related topics. From 1989 to 1992, he published Art Random (Kyoto Shoin), a 102-volume series covering 1980s trends in global contemporary art. He continues to write and edit works on contemporary art, architecture, photography, design, and more. In 1993, he released the photobook Tokyo Style (Kyoto Shoin), which depicts the living spaces of Tokyoites in a raw, unfiltered context; in 1997, he received the Kimura Ihei Award for his photobook Roadside Japan (Aspect, 1997), which marked the start of a still-ongoing project to document roadside subjects both in Japan and abroad.