persimmonous.jp

How odd. This stranger and I passed each other and took the other’s photo.

Opening of an American hamburger franchise in Shinjuku

Photographers here generally wear fashionable hats.

I don’t have to go out and look for photography — it finds me. Or that’s how I’ve felt these past couple of days. Yesterday, for example, I was on the subway when a middle-aged businessman sat next to me. He looked absolutely ordinary except in one way: he was studying this most appetizing catalog of photography books.

I couldn’t control my curiosity and had to ask him where I could one.

“You can’t,” he told me. “At least I don’t think you can in Japan.”

He then explained that he’d just gotten back from Germany and a book event. His suit told me that he was in the printing business, and not publishing.

“Do you work for Dai-ichi (No. 1) Printing?!” I asked, impolitely.

“Dai-ni (No. 2), actually.”

He looked hurt, but went on to explain that his firm printed Masafumi Sanai’s 赤車 (Sekisha, ‘red car’), which was judged one of the top 10 books at the Kessel forum. (I noticed that the Sanai book was chosen by an art professor rather than a photographer, unlike some of the others. I will let you guess my opinion of the work from that).

By coincidence I had recently picked up and looked through Sekisha in a bookstore. It really is beautifully printed and I told him so. The businessman then surprised me by telling me exactly where I had seen it: at the Aoyama Book Center in Roppongi. He knew because it was the only place in Japan that was physically selling what has been declared one of Japan’s best recent photo books.

It reminded me again of how small the of world of contemporary art photography really is. We imagine that such works are seen by millions, when actually the number is in the thousands. It has to be, because these days books for even major names are printed in the low thousands or even high hundreds.

That was yesterday. Today I saw what I think is an increasingly rare sight — the “street photographer,” like this fellow above, at work.

I am fairly sure he was a street-shooter, even though he was in violation of one of the cardinal rules of genre: Never put yourself in a situation you can’t easily escape.

Seriously, though, I find it admirable that someone of student age is actually out taking photos of strangers — that is to say of an outer world that might snap back –
when many contently photograph the dishes in their sinks or the tiles in their bathrooms (or for that matter their red sports cars). That is to say objects, from which we are to meant to read (or not read, which is a statement as well) an inner world.

I also liked his hat. I’d love to wear something as characteristic, but find that the brim sometimes gets in the way of a good shot.

<

I am having a slow week, literally. My ankle is sore from too much running, so I haven’t been able to cover much ground with camera in hand. These people in blue came into view, however:

I didn’t know that people in the camera business have their own nickname for the Shinjuku station area –”Mikame,” which is a shortened way of saying “three cameras.” It comes from a trio of sprawling home electronics shops — Bic Camera, Yodobashi Camera and Sakuraya — that had been battling each other there for years.

They more or less kept each other in check, but at the end of February Sakuraya finally gave up the ghost and shuttered all its shops (including the one pictured above). It’s not good news for the remaining two, since the remains of Sakuraya have been picked up by a really big bruiser — Yamada Denki. Based in the Osaka region, it’s the biggest nation-wide (Bic and Yodobashi are not) home electronics chain in Japan. Last year it started its seige of Tokyo by opening the Labi store in Ikebukuro as the largest electronics store in city.

In Shinjuku it’s not taking over Sakuraya’s former premises. It’s unveiling a brand new, nine-storey big-box, right at the mouth of the Kabukicho district. The shinjuku Labi opens this Friday. They also have plans for building another big-box right in Nishi-shinjuku — which is Yodobashi Camera’s hallowed ground (Yodobashi is the old bname of the area, actually). So it’s back to a balancing act between three companies, except this time around the big boys now find that they are the small ones.

EDIT:

The shop pictured on top is actually being taken over by Laox, so it seems Laox and Yamada Denki may have split the spoils. Laox, by the way, is a Japanese chain that was bought out by Chinese.