Old Tokyo is a fascinating pictorial history of modern day Tokyo depicted through e-hagaki (Japanese postcards).

From the site:

With the establishment of the Meiji Restoration, Japan’s modernization began. Many modern practices, conveniences, and processes were imported, adopted, or acquired, including the Western-style printing press1 that would allow for the rapid reproduction and dissemination of artwork worldwide. Dutch traders introduced photography into Japan during the waning years of the Tokugawa shogunate; Japan’s modern postal service was formed in 1871. These three developments combined together to create the e-hagaki, the Japanese picture postcard, the earliest of which displayed a unique blending of Old and New Japan.

Similar in style to Western-style picture postcards then in vogue, e-hagaki combined Western technology with Japanese sensibilities. The subject matter was wide and varied: famous landmarks, tourist destinations, popular past times, scenes of everyday life, and important historical moments were all portrayed in color at a time when color photography did not exist. Long experience with traditional woodblock printing, ukiyo-e, enabled Japanese artists to reproduce subtle tinted colors, sometimes applied by hand, in ways that had not been before seen in the Western printing. Reproductions of ukiyo-e were realistically limited to a few hundred copies; the Western collotype printing process and, later, the offset printing press, made possible reproductions numbering in the thousands.

The results were a plethora of very beautiful, inspired artistic renditions that even the later development of the color lithographic process could not match. This site comprises a sampling of e-hagaki, and other Tokyo postcard images, from the early years of the 20th century.

The above picture is of Ginza crosing in 1903, the beginnings of what was to become Tokyo’s most sought after and expensive retails real estate - where today a square metre can set you back tens of thousands of dollars. In the background on the left hand side ofthe picture is the Hattori clock tower, home of K. Hattori & Co., the company who would later introduce later introduce the brand name “Seiko” to the world.

The above picture taken from the 1907 Meiji Industrial Exposition at Ueno Park shows the first swimming pool in Japan.

More awazing photos, maps and Tokyo history can be found at http://oldtokyo.com/

The New York Times has an interesting audio visual piece on Japanese photographer Kohei Yoshiyuki, who is suddenly gaining a bit of interest again in the US, for his documenting of couples having sex and the peeping toms who observed them in Tokyo parks in the 1970s.

“What is so striking … is that everyone is crossing the line. The couples who engage in sex in public, the peeping toms who tresspass on that intimacy, he photographer who has betrayed his acquaintances’ trust, and of course, us, so willing to look at what was not meant for us to see.”

Yoshiyuki’s exhibition at Tokyo’s Komai Gallery in 1979 was an underground success. For the exhibition the photos were blown up to life-size, the gallery lights were turned off, and visitors to the gallery were given flashlights. But shorly after the show, fearing recriminations, Yoshiyuki destroyed the prints.

The photos, simply entitled The Park, resurfaced last year, with the publication of The Photobook: A History, Volume II, by Martin Parr. Parr writes:

“The Park is “a brilliant piece of social documentation, capturing perfectly the loneliness, sadness, and desperation that so often accompany sexual or human relationships in a big, hard metropolis like Tokyo.”

Gallery link: Yossi Milo Gallery

Via Funkalicious

There’s another sunset event happening at Enoshima this weekend. They are always good to go to - spectacular venue and a friendly, up for it interesting crowd… like these cool cats…

Here are a couple more snaps from the last event…

Just listened to an interview with Michael Hirschorn about his piece in the Atlantic Monthly about “Contemporary Quirk,” worth a read if you’re into indie film/music/culture.

He’s catching some flack for allegedly “attacking” talented directors like Wes Anderson and well-meaning artist/entertainers like Ira Glass of This American Life, but I understand where he’s coming from. In the interview, Hirschorn says that he likes, respects and enjoys the quirky charachters and meandering non-event storylines everywhere now (see Arrested Development, Flight of the Conchords, Napoleon Dynamite), but what started out as fringe culture (think “Ducky” from Pretty in Pink) now dominates the big and small screen. And while these fairly benign non-stories are usually fun today’s talent is capable of much more, if they didn’t use quirk as a crutch.

There’s an undercurrent of baby-boomer melodrama here (or maybe that’s the Gen X cynicism he writes about), but he’s right: instead of making movies with gravity and meaning, today’s top talent tell stories of hanging out and not much else.

This weekend was also Koenji Awaodori, my favourite of all festivls in Japan. 12,000 dancers take to the street.

First held in 1957, it is not only the most electric, often feeling more like a rock concert than a cultural festival, but also one of the biggest festivals in Tokyo - attracting 1.2million visitors.

The festival has a pretty interesting site in English here: http://www.koenji-awaodori.com/indexEn.html

I guess what I like most about the Koenji Awa Odori is seeing everyone, both the participants and the onlookers, having such a great time - especially seeing young Japanese getting down enjoying their culture so much - something you don’t really see in the West. Ok, on with the videos, not the best quality, and try to imagine the sound about 10 times louder…