FOUR VOLUME SET of Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura (or Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees) - a Japanese play, one of the three most popular and famous in the Kabuki repertoire, originally written in 1747 for Bunraku (traditional Japanese puppet theater), and adapted to kabuki the following year. The Japanese photographer Takashi Kijima (1920-2011), known mainly for his photographs of nudes and flowers, is the winner of the prestigious advertising award from Life for his 1960 advertisements for Yawata Iron & Steel. Since 1945, Kijima had also been following his own, noncommercial interest in photographing b&w nudes outdoors: his photographing of nude women directly in front of Sakurada gate of the imperial palace in Tokyo very early one morning in 1958 caused a great uproar; his 1958 exhibition, titled "Ra", of nude photographs was the second held in Japan (the first was by Kira Sugiyama), visited by more than thirty thousand people. Kijima also specialized in kimono and until very late in his life was photographing models for the magazine Kimono Salon. The four beautifully designed volumes are presented in their original cloth bound case with Japanese-style bone clasps. The colors for the covers of the four volumes in this set are taken from the yellow-green, orange and black stripes of the traditional broad striped curtain used on the Kabuki stage. Also included is a traditional Japaneses red cloth sized 360x360mm. [CASE]: 275x265mm. Case slightly dust-stained. [ALL VOLUMES]: 265x250mm. 812 pages (each volume contains 203 pages). Cloth-bound Hardcover with sticker and embossed light blue lettering on on front cover. White lettering on spine. [SUMMARY]: This extremely rare, beautifully designed and packed set of four large albums with numerous photographs by one of the most influential 20th-century Japanese photographers, is in very good condition.