[6] Fukase's Karasu (Ravens) was shot between 1976 and 1982 in the wake of his divorce from Yōko Wanibe, and during the early period of his marriage to the writer Rika Mikanagi.
The project originated as an eight-part series for the magazine Camera Mainichi (1976–82), and these photo essays reveal that Fukase experimented with colour film, multiple exposure printing, and narrative text as part of the development of the Karasu concept.
Beginning in 1976, exhibitions based on this new body of work brought Fukase widespread recognition in Japan, and subsequently in Europe and the United States.
The heavily autobiographical approach of Karasu has its origins in Fukase's foundational photo essay, Hyōten (Freezing Point) of 1961, but it pushes the central themes of isolation and tragedy to new levels of depth and abstraction.
[10] Technically, the photographs of ravens were very difficult to achieve, with Fukase having to focus his camera on the small, moving black subjects in almost total darkness.
[11] In 2010, a panel of five experts (Gerry Badger, Ute Eskilden, Chris Killip, Jeffrey Ladd, and Yōko Sawada) convened by the British Journal of Photography selected Karasu as the best photobook of 1986–2009.
[12] In 1992, Fukase suffered traumatic brain injury from a fall down the steep steps of his favourite bar—Nami—in the Golden Gai area of Shinjuku, Tokyo.
These were From Window which formed part of the Another Language: 8 Japanese Photographers exhibition at Rencontres d’Arles,[17] France, and The Incurable Egoist at Diesel Art Gallery, Tokyo.