Abstract We have developed an optical photon-counting imaging system, IMONY, as an instrument for short-scale time-domain astronomy. In this study, we utilized a Geiger avalanche photodiode array with a $4\times 4$ pixel configuration, with each pixel measuring 100 µm. We developed a dedicated analog frontend board and constructed a data acquisition system with an FPGA to time-stamp each photon with a time resolution of 100 ns. We mounted a prototype model of the system on the 1.5 m Kanata telescope, intending to observe the Crab pulsar and conduct joint observations with the Iitate and Usuda radio telescopes in Japan. We successfully demonstrated that IMONY could image the Crab pulsar as an expected point source and acquire the well-known pulse shape. We found that the time lag between the optical and radio main pulses was $304\pm 35$ µs, consistent with previous studies.