Fragrance of Kogiku: Early Pop Collages assembles more than 200 collages by Japanese pop artist Keiichi Tanaami (1936–2024), made in the late 1960s and early 1970s — works never intended for exhibition, rediscovered in 2012 among an uncle's inherited warehouse materials.
Cut from pre-war movie magazines, 1960s American comics, and pin-up magazines, the collages layer weaponry, superheroes, and movie stars into dense, hallucinatory sheets anticipating Tanaami's better-known paintings and prints. First published in Japan by P-Vine's ele-king books in 2016, the volume appeared internationally in 2018 through Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, as a 272-page hardcover with 238 color reproductions and text by Tanaami.
Tanaami studied at Musashino Art University, worked as a graphic designer and illustrator, and became the first art director of the Japanese edition of Playboy in 1975. A 1968 meeting with Andy Warhol pushed him toward the posters, prints, and animation that made him a forerunner of Japanese Pop art. His work entered the collections of MoMA and the Walker Art Center, and was the subject of the 2024 retrospective Adventures in Memory at Tokyo's National Art Center, the year of his death.
Notes
Input title given was 'Fragrance of Nostalgia: Pop Collages' — no publication with that exact title was found. Identified this as the real, verifiable book: the Japanese title 小菊の香り (Kogiku no Kaori) literally means 'Fragrance/Scent of Kogiku' (a variety of small chrysanthemum), evidently mis-recalled/mis-translated as 'Fragrance of Nostalgia' — 'Pop Collages' matches directly. Used the internationally distributed English edition (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, 2018, ISBN 9783960980568) rather than the original Japanese-text ele-king/P-Vine edition (2016, ISBN 9784907276560), since it is the English-language edition and the one distributed via ARTBOOK/D.A.P. Cover sourced from Goodreads (edition record 60646172) resolution is modest (300x416) — no larger clean front-cover image was found within budget, but it is confirmed as the actual front cover (title text 'FRAGRANCE OF KOGIKU / TANAAMI EARLY POP COLLAGES' visible). authors[0].url (keiichitanaami.com) currently 301-redirects to the NANZUKA gallery artist page (confirmed via curl) — the domain is still the artist's own but no longer serves independent content, likely following his 2024 death used it anyway as the nominal official site per the brief, with NANZUKA also listed separately in artist_links. Collage collection archiving, July 2026. Accessioned 2026-07-29.
