“A girl who looked like a foreigner was rare in Japan at that time, and so I thought she was like a fairy when I found her. I was strongly attracted, and asked her if I might make her picture.”

Hajime Sawatari ushered in a new era with works such as Nadia and Alice in the nineteen-seventies, and has published a great deal on the theme of women. Made in 1964, this is a work representative of his early stage, and the encounter it records decided the direction of what followed.