Photographs from a small group of islands
The photograph below was taken just shy of 7 years ago — a day when 130,000 spectators squeezed into Tokyo Racecourse for the Japan Derby. Not that long ago really, and yet in the current climate it almost looks like another world. All those people, hardly any masks, and, pandemic comparisons aside, an almost complete absence of smartphones.
2014, it turns out, wasn’t half bad, and perhaps appropriately, the winner that year was One and Only.
This time last year I did a short series on suburban bus stops and their sometimes comically eclectic seats. A set of photos that was deliberately devoid of people as the emptiness seemed to somehow suit the surroundings.
The old Tokyo bus stop below, on the other hand, has always felt like it needed the right person, or indeed the right people, to really do it justice — something that had never quite happened until I fortuitously happened upon these three fellas last week. A trio who for me at least compliment the scene almost perfectly.
Old and long-abandoned Japanese villages are hard to top when it comes to looks and character, but this wonderfully faded and atmospheric little mountain settlement more than holds its own.
Slowly deteriorating signs for souvenirs and refreshments point towards better, and previously busier times, yet just like so many of Japan’s old resort towns and crumbling day-trip destinations, they are now little more than dying reminders of a very different past.
The clearly visible decline unsurprisingly imbues such places with a very real sense of sadness, and yet at the same time there’s also a certain element of beauty involved. An unconventional sort of beauty it has to be said, but for me at least the poignant mix of unknown memories and natural decay exudes a quiet, subdued charm all its own.
Below then are the photos, which for what it’s worth were taken just over 4 years ago. It’s a location that will live long in the memory, both for the village itself, and the bar in the last shot. The latter is the only one in the village, so it’s where the local men, and men only, go to drink and basically be bawdy. Nothing out of the ordinary there, but the reaction we got when we opened the door was anything but normal — the slack-jawed, utterly disbelieving looks going way beyond anything either of us had experienced before. An entrance that also garnered a chorus of, “Foreigners!”, followed by a barrage of questions that made for a full-on experience to say the least. To be fair though, after realising we weren’t overly weird, and that we were more than willing to join in, the far more important business of drinking and gambling quickly took precedence once again, meaning another ordinary night in what for us was an extraordinary place.
The older residents of older parts of Tokyo are generally what make such areas so interesting, but the similarly ageing architecture also plays its part, and when it comes to textures and colour, this garage most definitely takes some beating. A building so fantastic in fact that locals appear willing to colour coordinate accordingly.
Tokyo’s Akihabara district got its Electric Town moniker in the post-war period when handmade radios and their components were sold, often illicitly, on the street. A surprisingly humble start for a place that became the capital’s go-to spot for all things electrical.
Over the following decades the area stayed true to its name, but in the 1980s it began shifting more towards gaming, anime and otaku culture in general. A scene that Akihabara went on to fully, and very successfully embrace, making it forever synonymous with subcultures that have now gone mainstream.
It’s a change that is obvious the moment you leave the station, but at the same time there are still plenty of electronics shops in the area, and even the old-style component side of things hasn’t completely disappeared, meaning it’s still possible to get your hands on whatever obscure, or fiddly little part you could ever wish to find. An element these two previously posted photos — taken in 2018 and 2019 respectively — amply prove. Almost comically small businesses that in so many ways hark back to those very early days of radios, market stalls and a distinctly DIY approach.
Taken before either of those photos, however, is the shot below, which predates the earlier one by 4 years. Long forgotten, it’s an image I found recently when searching for something else, but seeing it again, it somehow seems a lot older. A moment — to my eyes at least — that almost manages to straddle Akihabara’s early days, and the world famous maid cafe anime mecca it has become.
