Shelf Life: Tokyo Style
In the Shelf Life series, I want to introduce you to various books from my personal art book collection. May it be recent additions, more obscure rarities and finds, or timeless classics with decades of shelf life in the literal sense of the word.
This 1993 gem is deliciously unpolished and rightfully gained a lot of recognition lately. Kyoichi Tsuzuki‘s Tokyo Style is as real as an interior design book can get and manifests as a fascinating document. I first came across it, when I read an interview with Tsuzuki in issue #20 of apartamento magazine in which he explained the methodology behind the project. As a magazine editor, he was bored with the strict margins of what considered “good design” within the constraints of mostly minimalist “neo-Zen” aesthetics at the time. So he decided to capture the genuine and unadulterated lifestyle of young (mostly poor) people living in Tokyo and present them in an authentic context.
““I don’t like the view that living in a clean, simple space is intellectually superior to living in a small, cluttered space. [...] Most expensive apartments are boring because they’re all the same, but in small apartments, you can’t hide your personality”
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Tsuzuki used to drive his friends around Tokyo on his Honda 50cc scooter - to which the book is dedicated to - like a mini guerilla taxi. When he dropped people off at home or picked them up there, he would ask for the favor or privilege of taking spontaneous photos of their homes as compensation for the ride instead of money. Having worked as an editor for the influential Japanese magazines Popeye and Brutus, most of his friends were in some kind of creative profession and living an „independent“ lifestyle. He photographed their apartments with all-natural light, mostly using long exposure shots. Some friends told him the whole project was “cruel and unusual”, what might seem strange at first. But after flipping through the book, it becomes clear why someone would come to that thought. Tokyo Style is full of very private photos. Probably the most personal as a photograph can get without the persons themselves present in them. To some, this might seem like an invasion of privacy. In my opinion, Tsuzuki is never ridiculing his subjects in any way. Instead, his photos are honest and sharp - a demonstration of his curious eye.
There are separate chapters for different themes - both organized or overflowing dens of collectors, the not-so-much lived in stays of musicians, or the personal homes of parents living with small children for example. Despite the different personal situations, the inhabitants of the living spaces might find themselves in, there is an overarching theme layered under all of Tsuzuki’s photos. They blatantly illustrate the value of every single square meter in a modern metropolis as densely populated as Tokyo (in the 90s even). Some places are a little cluttered while others raise borderline hoarder-red flags. The interesting thing is, that no matter the object density, all the rooms seem intriguing. Maybe this has something to do with a certain taste of voyeurism Tokyo Style provides. Personally, I was just curious to see how people actually lived in Tokyo during the 90s and was glad to be able to get such an extensive and authentic depiction.
Thumbnail image: Tokyo Style photograph by Kyoichi Tsuzuki
Source: Roadsiders
