Photography

A key aspect of my photography is returning again and again to areas I find interesting, and with Tokyo redeveloping so rapidly, there’s invariably some demolition to document if nothing else. Yet notable changes or otherwise, the people, situations and various interactions make each and every visit unique.

Regularly photographing locations also allows me to piece together stories of sorts, and this almost shed-like Tokyo home is one such example.

It’s a place I’ve featured before, including half a dozen of the photos below. However, when passing by recently, I managed to capture several frames of the owner at the back of his property making use of some collected rainwater. A presumably daily practice that further highlights the truly basic nature of his life there. There’s also the first shot, which I took a few months ago, showing the old man looking out from his front door. He was possibly seeing how the weather was, or maybe even checking on his fish tanks. Whatever the reason though, it was a scene that felt particularly poignant.

Finally, as a bit of background information to add a few facts to the photos, the man has lived there almost his entire life, having moved to the property as a youngster. He’s now in his early 80s, which makes the lack of facilities and the difficulty of living in such an environment seem all the more shocking. Thoughts, along with so many still unanswered questions, that hit me each and every time I revisit.

Like so many old Japanese towns and resort locations, the best days of this place are long gone. Many of the businesses are now closed, and a good number of those still operating seemingly do so more out of habit than any real sense of commerce.

That said, such areas are almost always fascinating to explore, and despite only being small, this one was no exception. There were hints of the past round every corner, and in a region hit particularly hard by the nation’s ageing population, the sight of a long-broken condom dispenser seemed especially poignant. Well, at least as poignant as such a machine can be.

The sets of images I usually post are invariably put together to try and tell a story, or tie similarly themed photos together. These, however, don’t really work that way, as the only things they have in common are their differences, along with the fact they were all taken recently in Tokyo. And in that sense at least, they provide a way to show the surprises a city on such a scale can regularly conjure up. Which, in a way, is a theme in itself.

The crowded nights and bright lights of Shinjuku’s famous Kabukicho red light district do a good job of disguising a lot of its general dinginess. It’s also a fairly similar story when it comes to the much darker reality of what goes on behind the area’s often garishly decorated exteriors.

Away from the capital, however, and in a much smaller city with the time approaching dusk, any hint of glamour surrounding such locations can be considerably harder to find.