shashasha

Gorakuso was the name of an apartment complex in Yokohama. Built in 1932 as a Tokyo businessman’s gift to his daughter, after the war it was repurposed by the American forces as a brothel for their soldiers.
“Discovering these facts, the murkey shadow that I had felt in the beginning […] made complete sense to me”, writes Ishiuchi in her afterword.
In certain ways an answer to her first published work “Apartment” (1978), looking through Ishiuchi’s Yokohama Gorakuso series brings out the other, secret history of this building complex.