A visual archive of the extraordinary animal covers of Japan’s Weekly Playboy. With the magazine’s launch in 1966, its cover series transformed the female figure through elaborate costumes, body paint, props and carefully staged studio photography, creating surreal hybrids of women, animals and, later, everyday objects.

Photographed primarily by Yuji Hayata, the covers combined eroticism, humour and visual illusion to establish a distinctive identity for the newly launched magazine. This book brings together the majority of these remarkable covers alongside rare behind-the-scenes photographs, documenting an unusual period of experimentation in Japanese publishing and magazine design.