Sadao Hasegawa

The first posthumous book by Japanese artist Sadao Hasegawa (Jan 1945- Nov 1999), dedicated to Hasegawa’s rarely-published archive. Hasegawa work is notable for incorporating Japanese, Indian, South-East Asian and African mythology, combined with homo-erotic depictions of hyper-masculine men, in acts of BDSM. Beauty, eroticism and death are recurring themes in Hasegawa’s work; he was inspired by Nobel Prize nominee Yukio Mishima. After Hasegawa’s suicide in 1999, his family was going to dispose of the artists archive but discovered a portrait of Mishima painted on a stone, accompanied by a note requesting that the works be managed by Gallery Naruyama, Tokyo, where the artist’s estate is today.