A Day in the Life of Japan and the Fuji Film caper
By Torin Boyd Tokyo, Japan June 9, 2017 When the “A Day in the Life of Japan” book project took place on June 7, 1985 it was touted as being photographed by the 100 of the world’s leading photojournalists. Impossible as it seemed, project directors Rick Smolan and David Cohen managed to pull this feat off resulting in a large format coffee table book in a little over nine months time from concept to finish. This was not their first DITL book as they had worked out a formula from previous projects; Australia (1981), Hawaii (1983) and Canada (1984). But in addition to the immense logistics involved, these projects were expensive and bookstore sales didn’t come close to covering production costs. For Japan, the total costs of the project was approximately $3.5 million including a massive print run. As a way to finance these projects, Rick and David turned to sponsorship and like magicians pulling rabbits out of their hats, convinced major corporations to fu
