A new photography book titled "ma poupee japonaise" arrived in the post the other day, sent by German-Italian artist Mario A. After skimming through pictures of an apparently life-sized wooden doll posed mostly unclothed in a variety of private and public places, I uploaded a brief note about the publication to an art Web site. A few days later, Mario sent an e-mail, which read in part, "that you introduced my latest work as a wooden doll, makes me very happy . . . (and honored). Hope you will enjoy my show."

"Ma poupee japonaise" photographs by Mario A

I didn't quite grasp his meaning, and only realized last week at his Mizuma Art Gallery opening party that I had made a big mistake: These were photographs not of a lifelike doll, but of a doll-like woman. So much for my discerning critical eye.

Mario, 42, and his longtime model Sachiko Hara, achieved the illusion with lighting and compositional savvy, and with a number of black elastic bands wrapped around Hara's arm and leg joints. The results are startling. At the reception a Tokyo photographer wondered aloud why he had never seen the technique used before. "I wish I had thought of this," he muttered.

The Mizuma exhibition features some 25 works, mostly editioned black-and-white prints from "ma poupee japonaise," along with the plaster casts of Hara's hands used in several of the pictures, and three plexiglass boxes containing copies of Super Photo, the notorious 1980s Japanese photography magazine put out by Nobuyoshi Araki.

Super Photo's spreads are in this show, explains Mario, because they perfectly illustrate this country's seemingly endless obsession with the objectification and eroticization of very young girls.

"I think Japanese women want to remain kawaii," says Mario, "in order to appease Japanese men, who seem to never grow up. It may have something to do with the mother-son relationship, or the manga culture -- I mean, if you only read comic books for 25 years what do you expect?"

And so Mario subverts the cuteness by evolving Hara. The first few plates of "ma poupee japonaise" find the apparently dismembered model lying in a big suitcase, eyes closed. When she awakens, Hara is dressed in a schoolgirl's uniform and taken out for a drive in a convertible through the streets of Berlin, and later to a cafe. The whirlwind tour takes Hara to Tokyo, where she is installed in a Ginza department-store window and laid on a love-hotel bed, all the while with a wooden smile on her clean, white face.

But then, as real people will, Hara gets depressed, and then becomes hysterical. Now there are dark circles under her eyes, and even a trip to a Nagano onsen does not seem to improve her temperament. Finally she is chucked into a pool of water, and sinks peacefully to the bottom.

But this is more than a critique of Japanese sexuality. Actually, veiled catalog references indicate that the show and the book are a sort of cross-cultural homage to Hans Bellmer, a Surrealist who fled Nazi Germany with a suitcase containing one of the anatomically correct young female dolls he crafted over the course of his truly weird life.

Bellmer remains a difficult character -- some museums, mindful of the unspeakable things he did with his dolls, refuse to show his work. Mario says he was inspired to undertake the current project by a suitcase he found in a Berlin market, a big, old bag which suggested Bellmer's own travel kit.

"ma poupee japonaise" is also a metaphor for Mario's relationship with Hara, a theater actor he was once romantically involved with and who is now a dear friend, married and living in Berlin.

This is a surprisingly personal and powerful show, with about the only weak point being a technical one. Overall, the prints look unstable: they should have been done on better paper. In all, it is the best work Mario A has ever done. Note that "ma poupee japonaise" may disturb or offend some people, as art tackling difficult subject matter often will.