PASSION FRUIT.(Brief Article)

Nobuyoshi Araki's latest book presents many challenges, to local tastes, to legal standards (censorship laws forbid its publication in Japan), but most of all to shoplifters: "Araki by Araki," a collection of a thousand images taken over the past thirty years, weighs more than thirty pounds. Some readers may remember hefting another book by an erotic art-house photographer, the sixty-six-pound "Sumo," by Helmut Newton, published, like "Araki," by the German house Taschen. Others may unsheathe the silk-bound book from its bubble-gum-pink shipping case and think of shunga, the pornographic prints that brides of the Edo period traditionally brought to a marriage, along with the household furniture.

Araki, who was born in 1940, grew up near Tokyo's tenderloin district; almost daily, he played in a temple graveyard that served as a potter's field for courtesans. His ...