shashasha

Few things have come to define Japan's nighttime cityscapes as much as glowing neon lights, though their popularity is waning with the proliferation of more energy-efficient LEDs. Osamu Nakamura spent the five years between 2020 and 2024 walking through cities and towns from Okinawa in the south of Japan to Hokkaido in the north to capture the remaining neon lights in the dark. The more than 290 pages of his photo book "Neon Tour" show rows of brightly lit buildings near major train stations, as well as lone figures glowing in the dark.

“We don’t see a clear line between light and shadow in the world illuminated by neon signs. Neons are not taken as mainstream but rather minor. The public tends to look down on them and believes they’re trashy … Nonetheless, the blurred outlines are somewhat heart-warming even in the grey areas of society. This is probably why those who are under the stress of their control in the modern world are still drawn to neon signs, regardless of age or generation.”
― from Jun Yonaha’s essay “What Exactly is Nostalgia?”