Photographs from a small group of islands
When I first photographed this old barber shop it was overgrown.
Now, a little more than five years down the line, to say it’s overgrown is something of an understatement. The business itself is locked up and seems to have been for a long time, but somewhat surprisingly, the house part of the building is still lived in. Best of all, however, remains the name. Barber Mori. Mori being a surname, but also the word for forest.
There are a lot of photos on these pages of Tokyo bars, homes and buildings that have disappeared forever. The city changes at a ferocious pace, and rightly or wrongly, there’s generally little time for sentiment. Old places are to be demolished. It mostly seems as simple as that.
All that said, Tokyo is a truly sprawling metropolis, meaning that while much is gone, a massive amount still remains. Like the fried food and meat shop below.
Five years have passed between the photos, with the evening one taken just recently. However, while the time of day might have been different, the building, food and even the suspicious stare, remain reassuringly the same.
The other week I posted some old and newer graffiti photos on my Instagram account. A mix of people and places from over the years that I re-edited and thoroughly enjoyed revisiting.
Some of them have appeared on Tokyo Times before, but several haven’t, and only a couple in this newly edited form. So with that in mind, it seemed like a good idea to post them. It’s also nice to be able to show the whole set, and at a fairy decent size and resolution. Plus as a decidedly dubious bonus of sorts, I’ve also added a very rare one of me in a favourite little spot of mine. The shot taken by my mate and co-author of the Tokyo Conversations photobook, Giovanni. A nicely meta photo of a photobooth, featuring a photographer, taken by his photographer friend.
Tokyo may well be blessed with an incredible train network that crisscrosses the metropolis, but the city is also surprisingly walkable, so on good days, meanders between specific locales have a lovely habit of conjuring up more surprises than the main destination. Such walks also provide the option of popping into a local neighbourhood eatery, and for the time being at least, that can very often mean an old school machi chuka. A type of Japanese-style Chinese restaurant that was ubiquitous in the post-war period, but the with the owners of such places invariably getting on in years to say the least, they are slowly disappearing.
While they last, however, they are places frequented by all kinds of people. Somewhere anyone can feel comfortable due to their relaxed, down to earth ambience. A sort of home from home feeling that is further added to by the fact that looks-wise, and despite many decades in business, many of them haven’t changed much at all. And with those elements in mind, this little glimpse of one such place ticks all the requisite boxes. For starters there’s the older couple with the man doing almost all the cooking. Then it’s also patched up with tape, the decor and menu haven’t been altered since inception, and perhaps most of all, there’s the pretty much standard, and now beautifully faded, red counter. A little sanctuary that, like the vast majority of such restaurants, is as full of soul as the food that’s served.
This closed and slowly decaying Tokyo shop has always fascinated me. The colours are still lovely, and its slightly odd location under a bridge adds more than a little extra. Plus if that wasn’t enough, there’s also the inexplicable F-1 reference.
The last time I photographed it was nearly a year ago, and I was fortunate enough to capture two young ladies in somewhat matching kimono. So with that shot in mind, I was hoping for something similar.
Instead, I got a couple who weren’t wearing masks. Something that’s still a rarity in these parts. But more than that was their quiet tenderness. A simple arm over the shoulder isn’t exactly a massive show of public affection, but it’s not a common sight in Tokyo at all. And so seeing them both contentedly strolling past was without a doubt much nicer than some simple matching colours or patterns.
There are no shortage of Tokyo bars and homes on these pages that have sadly ceased to exist, and whether it be the emptiness of the building left behind, or its complete demolition, they never fail to have an impact, no matter how inevitable such changes always are. The lovely little bar below, on the other hand, is a slightly different story. Or at least I’m pretty sure it is, and so that’s the version I’m content to go along with.
A friend and I drank there in 2019, and the mama-san was happy to serve us drinks and cook whatever was in her fridge. Her house next door fridge that is, as after nearly 45 years in operation, there wasn’t much of a business left. Instead, it was more just a place where you were cheerfully served if you turned up, but if nobody did, it quite clearly didn’t matter in the slightest. A situation very much like this bar once run by a 93-year-old.
And so we had a few beers, a bit of food was rustled up, and it was a genuinely fun experience. But then, some time between our visit and the end of the following year, the bar was demolished, along with the house next door.
In their place, however, is now a shiny new home. One in which the mama-san lives, as I’m fairly sure I saw her through the window.
