Hardcover with dustjacket, afterwords by Hiromi Tsuchida and Satoru Iwamoto in both Japanese and English.

„Retreat is the first book of the 30-year old photographer Satoru Iwamoto, although the work itself -- of various religious and traditional rituals and festivals -- seems to come from the eye of a much-older vintage. It's true that this is well-trodden subject matter, but it's also true that in a continually fractured, urbanized, pop-centric Japan, it's important that this subject matter can attract a younger generation to document its tenuous existence.
In his afterword to the book, Hiromi Tsuchida, who established himself on the Japanese photography scene in the early 70s with Zokushin, his own explorations of this subject matter, writes:
The idea of reducing his expression to a personal perspective must have never occurred to him....Rather than hastily discovering his own self, Iwamoto focuses on others. The lens of his camera transcends the self and continues to go further and further externally toward others. Thus, his perspective lies in the opposite vector of today's personalized photographic expression.“ (from japanexposures.com)