shashasha

For the seventh volume of his ongoing “Prospects” series, Kazuyuki Kawaguchi visited once-prosperous towns and cities in Japan’s Kanto, Tohoku, Kansai and Koshin’etsu regions. His photographs of buildings, streetscapes and urban sceneries in these economically declining places capture a kind of beauty (and sometimes ugliness) that is unique to these small Japanese towns – undeniably affected by relentless decline, yet full of sentimental charme and old prospects. Shot between 2020 and 2023, his photographs also coincide with the three years in which the Corona pandemic transformed Japan and became a part of people’s everyday lives.