The Tokyo Beats

August the 15th is the anniversary of the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II.
Every year on this day 1000’s of people go to the controversial Yasukuni shrine in Kudanshita to pay their respects to the war dead (including the 14 class A war criminals whose souls are intered there).
I have been there every year for the past few years to take photographs (see HERE and HERE) and watch the pantomime that ensues between the hundreds of Uyoku Dantai and the Police that inevitably occurs sometime in the late afternoon.

This year, however, was a little different from other years.

All of the usual elements were present and it was on one level as disturbing a view of the Japanese people as it always is, but this year I had 2 strange experiences that fundamentally changed my views, if not of the controversy surrounding Yasukuni, then at least of some of the people there.

The first was a conversation I had with this wonderful 70 year old lady.

She approached me as I was standing on a bridge over the road that runs directly past the entrance to Yasukuni shrine.
Below us was a particularly vocal right-wing nutcase with a megaphone shouting his hateful message of racial intolerence and bigotry.
“I’m sorry for my fellow Japanese” she said, I was a little taken aback, this is not the opener one expects from a Japanese old person at the best of times let alone then and there.
I thought I had misunderstood her, my Japanese is not what it should be after 3 years in the country, and asked her to repeat what she said.
There was no mistake.
We proceeded to chat for about 10 minutes with her explaining that she didn’t understand people like our vocal friend beneath us and that she thought most of the people there hadn’t really studied history very well if they thought Japan was anything but the aggressor in WWII.She also said she was disappointed in the Japanese people for not thinking for themselves and being so easily lead by the media and politicians.
She kept telling me she was odd for a Japanese old lady, holding the views she did, and I was forced to agree.
She didn’t speak English at all and I’m sure much of the subtlety of what she said was lost due to my lack of understanding but the salient points were very clear.
She stopped a passing foreigner and asked him to take our photograph and then demanded my address so she could send me the picture, she actually hugged me when she left to go on her way (that simple act speaking volumes as it unusual to see even close friends hugging in Japan, let alone an old lady hugging a foreigner she has only just met).

I was genuinely moved by her warmness and candor and wandered off to take more photos feeling a little shaken from my preconceptions.

But, if I had imagined that was it for surprises I was about to be even more shocked.

I headed for the road that leads from Yasukuni down towards Kudanshita metro station and stopped to admire the many groups spouting opinions of varying degrees of ridiculousness.
Not least of them was a group I remembered from previous years collecting signatures and shouting about how the 3rd generation Korean and Chinese residents of Japan shouldn’t be given the vote as “Japan is only for the Japanese”.
Though of course they use that catch all term for anyone who isn’t Japanese, Gaikokujin (at least they remembered the ‘koku’:-), which always gets my back up a little as being a Gaikokujin myself their impassioned ranting always seems to be directed at me too.
I was approached by one of them, who told me in perfect English, that he remembered me from last year.

Actually I remembered him too, last year (when the above photo was taken) he had used some very unpleasant Japanese to berate me for taking his picture.

He asked if he could tell me something, expecting the worst, I said why not.

He then began to explain that many “Caucasians” , he meant Americans and Germans mostly, he elaborated, came to Yasukuni on this day to disrespect the shrine.
The shrine contained the souls of war dead, he told me, as if I was a 5 year old with no idea, and in Japanese culture they must be worshiped or they will rise up again and do “bad things”.
“well, not always bad things, but they will rise up” he said.
That was why everyone was here and what the “Caucasians” didn’t understand.

I told him that I was not here to disrespect anyone, just to take photographs and enjoy the spectacle.
I asked if I could explain something to him.
He was surprisingly amenable and we moved a little away from his group, though he brought the banner he was holding with him.
I continued that I thought what some of my fellow ‘white devils’ were maybe seen as disrespecting was the fact that there were 14 class A war criminals intered at the shrine too and although we too gave our respects to our war dead we didn’t to the war criminals.
Our conversation spiraled off into discussions about his groups use of the word Gaikokujin (if you mean Chinese and Koreans then say that otherwise all of us foreigners feel attacked by you) and the recent Nori-p case and the media assertion that her boyfriend had gotten his drugs from ” a foreigner in Shibuya” despite the fact that her brother was a convicted Yakuza drug dealer and she comes from a Yakuza family.
He told me that there were “no good people in China or Korea” and I retorted that there were bad people everywhere including Japan. He looked a little angry at that until I pointed out that the Japanese Communist party was made up of Japanese people and I was sure he thought they were “bad” people, he reluctantly agreed.
I said I thought it was Politicians in every country (including Japan) that were the bad people, the “people” of each country were just like him and me, human beings were human beings no matter where they were from.

It was all shocking polite and like an actual discussion.

Suddenly an unrelated Japanese guy walking past, hearing my conversation partner with his banner and I having a conversation in English came over and started shouting at me “This is Japan, speak f*&king Japanese”.
Before I had a chance to react, my banner wielding friend turned on him and told him in some of the most colourful Japanese I have heard outside of a Yakuza movie to “f*&k off, I want to speak to him in English you stupid bastard”
The other guy was quite taken aback as was I at being defended in this way.
The gentlemen started apologising profusely and backing away, but not before I too had summoned my best Yakuza Japanese and called him some impolite names and asked him why he was only apologizing to the banner guy and not to me.
“stupid bastard” banner guy said to me and smiled as the other guy skulked away.

That simple act had left me bewildered.
Had this well spoken but clearly bigoted crazy I was talking to just defended me to a fellow Japanese??
This wasn’t how that was supposed to go.

It may not seem like much, but to me it was a huge moment.

The guy was still a closed minded xenophobe, a fairly hateful little man, but he had shown me that he was also an intelligent, thoughtful and almost reasonable human being. By showing me that he respected me enough to defend our conversation to another Japanese person and laugh at the guy after I had berated him he did more to improve my view of the Japanese people than anyone has done for as long as I can remember.

Our conversation continued for a little longer before my conversation partner moved off to rejoin his group, “Are you staying for the show?, its starts about 4pm” were his parting words.

‘The show’ he was referring too is the demonstration that takes place towards the end of the day every year when the 100’s of riot police who have been quietly sitting in their police vans, the Uyoku Dantai and interestingly in the last few years some opposition left wing groups (yes such a thing actually exists in Japan) have a staged, pantomime like ‘fight’.

(Many videos can be found with a simple youtube search)

This year however I wasn’t staying, I was hot and tired and I had actually already got more than I’d bargained for and wanted to leave with those more positive experiences in my mind.

If you read too much and attend events like Yasukuni on the 15th it is easy to become very cynical and depressed about living in Japan as a foreigner, I find myself looking at everyone with the assumption they are a right wing xenophobe and my whole world becomes a little like a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
My two meetings this year had forced me to open my mind a little again and I was very thankful for that.

The releasing of the doves at the beginning of the day seemed like more than a drop in an infinite ocean.

There was a faint flicker of hope.

*Originally posted on Uchujins blog*

See here for a great Photo of Jims of a very interesting man who was at Yasukuni this year.

In conjunction with the Tokyo Beats and in honor of the ever improving conditions of human existence across the globe I am announcing the TBTC (Tokyo Beats Twitter Challenge…YES!) featuring various Tweet superstars such as Uchujin, Eiichi, Zebrio, Motion ID, Manny Santiago & newly added super cool thing: HESO Magazine. The challenge is to understand why we are actually participating in Twitter. Whoever can Tweet the best reason why we tweet gets more than just the satisaction of knowing the answer…much more. Click any glowy link to connect to either or both HESO Magazine and Sugar Disaster to find out the results, plus: get all the juicy updates on the best in cultural, artistic, ecological, photographic and beerographic information going on in both Tokyo and around the world.

HESO Magazine

Sugardisaster

photo by uchujin

My associates, people like Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, we all knew each other. We felt like a secret society that believed in each other. We never criticized each other’s work; although we took extremely different kinds of pictures, we would just look at each other’s work. I guess we all learnt and borrowed from each other—only with the best intentions of course.

-William Eggleston, photographer

I just wrote a reply over on Lightstalkers to a young photographer of eighteen, asking about what it takes to be a working photographer, The comment before mine brought up the subject of beards, so I started with that:

The beard is a must if you decide to pursue landscape photography. For that it should be big, bushy and unkempt.

Grizzled and stubbly is good for many other types of photographers, but be prepared to fill it out on a few weeks’ notice if you do the type of photography which will take you to places where being clean-shaven carries as much credibility as wearing a frilly pink dress.

Just kidding, of course—JR’s comment above made me smile.

As a photographer, be sure you have an absolute handle on the technical aspects of photography. You’ll need to be proficient, to the point where you can produce a well-exposed, well-composed and well-focused shot whenever you are called upon to produce one. Learn to prepare yourself and your gear. For me, it’s stepping off the train, I have a personal ritual of checking that the ISO on my camera is suitable. (checking that it’s not still on ISO 800 from the night before when I’ll be shooting in the daylight.) After that, I check that autofocus is set and that exposure compensation isn’t dialed two stops in the wrong direction and that my battery isn’t about to die. (That’s also when I pull a piece of gaffer tape from the sharpie pen I’ve wound it around and tape my 5D’s power switch on, because it’s in an easy position to get bumped to off, most likely at the worst possible time.)

Kind of a pre-flight check, but the thing is, I do this not even when I’m “shooting,” but all the time. I always have some sort of camera with me, so I give it a once over, generally as I leave the house and look at the light or step off the train. Doorways, I guess, are my trigger.

When I was teaching myself light, I used to carry an incident meter and meter everything, in much the same way. The thing is, you’ve got to have your camera ready at all times. You don’t want to lose a shot that you’re expected to take, because of something stupid like a full roll of film or a memory card you forgot to format.

Next, master the “straight shot” – a picture devoid of artistic tricks and arty overtones. Unless you have a quite unusual editor or a lot of personal clout, it’s better to not shoot your work pictures on a fisheye Holga using cross-processed expired film.

After that, when you’re comfortable taking a competent shot on ten seconds notice, start to think about how you can take a better shot. How can you add something that you see and no one else sees, something profound and inspired. Having studied music, this is something I think of as “virtuosity.”

While the world has hundreds of perfectly competent musical performers, to get to First Chair, you need virtuosity, a term that has it’s roots in the concept of being touched by God. This is the thing that tells you that the violin piece you’re hearing for the first time must be done by Jascha Heifetz, or that the photo you’re seeing for the first time could only have been done by Diane Arbus.

When you have that, it doesn’t matter what you shoot, because everything you choose to shoot will matter. This comes through being relentlessly demanding of yourself and editing your stuff with a cold, unbiased eye.

Of course, orchestras are filled with musicians who will never be first chair, musicians who are fine technicians and probably have comfortable, enjoyable lives, doing what they love to do and there are just as many photographers doing the same. Nothing wrong with that, but I wouldn’t recommend striving for that when you’re eighteen. Dream big.

Most of the world’s significant images were made by people with cameras not as advanced as whatever you probably carry and captured in less than a sixtieth of a second, often by people your age.

Go read about John Filo and his Kent State photo:

http://edition.cnn.com/COMMUNITY/transcripts/2000/5/4/filo/

Here’s a guy about your age, who reflexively shot something he found mildly interesting and not only won a Pulitzer, but helped bring the end of the Viet Nam war, without going more than a couple of hours from his home in a small Pennsylvania town.

(Plus, he did it with a Nikkormat, half a roll of Tri-X and probably a 50mm Nikkor lens, a setup that would probably cost you $50 today in decent shape used. I don’t like gear discussions, but I find something joyful about that.)

OK – I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent and ranted too much, but good luck to you. Wherever you wind up, you’ll want a solid body of work to open doors and show people that you can do what they need you to do. After that, keep looking for those three or five photos that will define your career and make you live forever.

by Jim O’Connell | 15 Mar 2009 11:03 | Tokyo, Japan

Short sweet and to the point.

The Tokyo Beats are now on Twitter.

If you move your eyes slightly to the left you will see a twitter widget in the side bar showing recent tweets from us all.

Follow away ;-)

Recently we were included in a “Best of Japan on the web 2009” list over at Japanzine in the Photo Gallery section. Nothing like some free unsolicited publicity.

(Must remember to buy this Jon Wilks guy a drink, should we ever meet.)

A big thanks to Jon and Japanzine for noticing us.

Also, winner in the ‘Poser’s Corner’ category was the MEKAS site designed by our very own Motionid a.k.a Sean Wood which features many of his excellent photographs and even some of mine

I was recently commissioned to shoot the opening party of the MEKAS website at an insanely expensive and disgustingly trendy club in Omotesando, Tokyo called Le Baron. Luckily they had to let me in as I was working and even more fortuitously there was a free bar ;-)

MEKAS is a website for fashion professionals, featuring the latest news and analysis of the Japanese fashion market, apparently. That would explain all the expensive suits and color framed glasses. It was actually pretty cool and there were some interesting people there, like the head designer for Cartier and the geezer who designed the BMW M3…….not that im remotely impressed by that kind of thing, of course.

Oh and the site was designed and built by our very own Motionid (which is how I got the job….props to you brother ;-)

Click HERE to view the pictures on the MEKAS site

Oh and as an interesting side note (well, maybe interesting), I stayed shooting the party and enjoying the free bar until it stopped being free and then went home, only to discover a few days later that after I left Bono from U2 and Bob Geldorf had turned up.

Excerpts from a Black and White Photography Magazine article by Colin Harding

The Japanese Camera industry in its formative years was characterized by imitation rather than innovation. The first Japanese cameras were copies of varying quality, of European and American designs. In 1933, Goro Yoshida and his brother-in-law Saburo Uchida founded the Seiki Kogaku Kenkyusho (Precision Instruments Labratory) in Tokyo. Their aim was to produce the first original Japanese 35mm camera – a camera that would be the equal of the Leica and the Contax.

The prototype of their first camera, based looely on the Leica II, appeared in 1934. Yoshida, a Devout Buddhist, decided to name the cameras ‘Kwanon’, after the Buddhist goddess of Mercy. Ushida, however took exception to the overtly religious overtones of the name which he felt, with its traditional association, was unsuitable for a high technology product.

Uchida won the day and Yoshida resigned from the company less that a year after he founded it. Uchida, now sole in charge, applied for a new trademark which was granted in 1935. The new name was to become famous worldwide – Canon.

Welcome to the blog of ‘The Tokyo Beats’.

6 Tokyo based photographers, their photography and their assorted rantings on  everything from Photography to contaminated gyoza.