Mr. Nakajo was reluctant to publish a book compiling his work to date. He explained that in terms of the inconvenience that he thought he might cause the publisher, but maybe he just doesn’t like to get caught up in things past. Ms. Keiko Kubota at Art Design Publishing eventually managed to persuade him, and work on the book started with Mr. Kaoru Kasai and myself taking over editorial duties. I was also in charge of design. I didn’t really know how to go about this rather frightening task, and I ended up neglecting my job several times along the way. Mr. Nakajo kept his initial promise to “look at the book when it’s done” and did not see the progress of the work. He would just call a couple of times to tell us to “Get it done quickly!” “A 70-page booklet will do!” “Feel free to chop my work into pieces and make it all your own!” “Don’t make it look pretentious!” “It’ll be fine if you just line it all up in order!” “Don’t choose only the weird stuff!” etc. But then again, he also said things like, “I have a feeling that it might be the end once the book is out, so take your time.”
Rather than making grand arrangements, we simply lined the works up chronologically by decade and wrapped it all in a cover that features Nakajo’s creations from several different eras. For the front cover of the box, we took a heart motif from his exhibition back in 1973.
