shashasha

Issue 46 of Daido Moriyama’s long-running series of photography zines, a project he began in 1972 and restarted in 2006.

After spending time outside of Tokyo due to ailing health, Moriyama has been able to return to Shinjuku to take photographs. At 82 years of age, Moriyama’s snapshots from the streets of Tokyo are as sharp, dense and expressive as ever. In the afterword (included in Japanese and in English translation), he reflects on Shinjuku’s personal meaning to him:

“When I was a young dude living in Osaka, above all else, “Tokyo” was for me all about Ginza, Yurakucho and Akasaka. That’s because those were the places that appeared in popular songs of the day, and the images those songs had engraved on my mind were not images of Shinjuku or Shibuya. However, shortly after I eventually moved to Tokyo, I got totally immersed in all things Kabukicho/Shinjuku without turning a hair. It was my own nature and temperament that made me a hopeless captive who involuntarily surrendered to the fascination of Shinjuku (…)
After all, that place called Shinjuku is essentially my second hometown, and in my book, it is in fact the hometown of photography itself.”
ー from Daido Moriyama's afterword