Europe’s view of Japan is shaped by clichés: the Japan of temples, cherry blossoms, samurai and geisha, of Zen. This idealised picture has less to do with present-day Japan than with the West’s projection of this seemingly so different culture. The photographer Andri Pol has travelled the island chain for years and collected pictures that withdraw the mitigating circumstances from the familiar views of Japan. Fascinated and irritated, Pol searches with a sceptically sharp eye for Japanese reality behind the Western projection. The book is an incorruptible document of Japanese everyday aesthetics and a quietly ironic showpiece of reportage photography.