Book: “HAPPY” Snapshot Diary Tokyo 1968-1973

(Volume 1 & Volume 2)

2002, Blues Interaction

463 photographs; text in Japanese.

A rare and precise documentary of Japanese pop culture in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As the title suggests, this is a collection of images from Mike Nogami’s photographic diary of his life in Tokyo during that era. The focus of the collection is Nogami’s friends’ rock band, the now-legendary Happy End. In addition to documenting the social milieu and Nogami’s personal life, the photographs trace the evolution of Happy End, from its first incarnation as Apryl Fool to the end of the band and the beginnings of the group members’ solo careers.

Book: New York – Holy City

1997, Bijitsu Shuppan Sha
90 photographs; text in English and Japanese

In his constant explorations from Harlem to the South Bronx and industrial Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan, Mike Nogami discovered a transcendent world and captured it on film. In these fringe parts of New York there is none of the city’s famous glamour, only an urban desert of industrial buildings. The photographs in New York – Holy City are powerful images of NYC landscapes that, while desolate, are also beautiful and spiritual.