Japan celebrates the same year end holidays as in the west. They make a big to-do about Christmas, even though their traditional holiday is the new year. Appearances, though, can be deceiving. In spirit, the holidays are reversed: New Year is the quiet family holiday spent at home with family and relatives, while Christmas is a time for parties, friends, and colleagues. Had I known this I wouldn’t have been so eager to visit Tokyo.
But I’m glad I did because I saw something I wouldn’t have otherwise seen, a vision straight out of Nobody Tokyo. When I got up New Year’s morning and went out into the street I found it completely deserted. The only businesses open that day were convenience stores, pachinko parlors, and porn shops. It seems at least half of Tokyo’s residents return to the towns and villages in which they were born and where their families still reside.
Many of Masataka Nakano’s images seem to have been shot around New Year. The winter trees are bare, and on many of the streets one can see the national flag, the Hinomaru. The images are poignant for having been shot during the 90s, of which I missed only 94-95. The pictures on which I lingered were those with lots of signage, over which I picked in search of familiar names and messages. One that western audiences might pick out is the poster for the first Michael Keaton Batman film released in 1989.
What makes these images especially impressive is that they have not been edited to remove evidence of people, but are instead a product of patience. Today I am afraid there is too much suspicion to accept anyone publishing similar work, say of Nobody Dubai.
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Some online source for images from Masataka Nakano:
Gallery Art Unlimited: http://www.artunlimited.co.jp/en/artists/masataka-nakano.html
Samadhisound: http://www.samadhisound.com/artfile/masataka_nakano.html
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