Japanese Modernism Across Media

A Woman, A Cat, & One City

" 'If I didn’t have photography,' Nobuyoshi Araki has said, 'I’d have absolutely nothing. My life is all about photography, and so life is itself photography.' Araki’s art overflows with life, and his life is awash in images. They are good, bad, indifferent; posed, random, accidental; prurient, erotic, anarchistic, touching, vulgar, lascivious, lurid, sentimental. The cumulative effect is overwhelming."

--"Photography Art or Pornpgraphy? " Electronically published May 28, 2013 on +diSTRIto47+

Araki's I-Novel (私小説)

I-novel (shi-shosetsu) – an early 20th century genre of Japanese literature where authors write in first person and narrate their own lives. In the introduction to Sentimental Journey, Araki says: “I think the shi-shosetsu is the closest thing there is to photography”. Araki’s photography is extremely personal. His endless documenting of the quotidian, from images of his cat to Tokyo skyscapes, as well as his more well-known erotic shots, have made up a ‘diary’ of his life in pictures.

Araki's pictures showing his wife Yoko during her orgasm (1972) and in her deathbed (1990).

Plenty of his photo books have the word nikki, the Japanese for diary, in them: A Diary, Eros Diary, Diary of a Sentimental Journey, Grand Diary of a Photomaniac. Some of his photo books can be seen as contemporary versions of the Japanese pillow book, a type of private diary, where nothing is too personal or too sacred to be recorded.

Yoko

Sentimental Journey 1972-1992 センチメンタルな旅

Nobuyoshi Araki - Diary sentimental journey from Matej Sitar on Vimeo.

Chiro

冬旅 · 春旅 · チロ愛死 · 愛のバルコニー

Araki's cat Chiro was the subject of hundreds of photos.

The significance of their relationship was explained by Araki himself when questioned about why he continued to take photos after Chiro’s death of her absense:

“Chiro and I had been together ever since my wife, Yoko, passed away. Chiro used to come into my bedroom every morning to wake me up here (points at a photo of his bedroom door), and she used to drink water here while I was in the bath (points at a photo of the bathroom), but that’s all gone now. I wouldn’t call this a requiem for me or my work, but for Chiro, it might be. Perhaps it’s a requiem for Chiro and for analog photography.

...While sitting on my lap, Chiro loved it when I read to her from ‘I Am a Cat’ (by Natsume Soseki). You can tell Chiro’s a girl by the way she stops peeing when I try to photograph her going to the bathroom. She really hates that. When Yoko was in the hospital, Chiro waited by my side for her to return. It was just the two of us watching the western sky.”

Nobuyoshi Araki - Chiro Love and Death from PhotoBookStore.co.uk on Vimeo.

Tokyo

東京ラッキーホール · 東京物語 · 東京コメディー

“Tokyo is my mother. It is my womb", Araki has a strong affection towards his hometown. In fact, the photographer has rarely taken photographs outside of Japan, whose capyical, Tokyo, remains one of his biggest interests and inspirations.

For example, his “Subway Love” (2006) collects the photographs he has taken of the passengers on the Tokyo subway from 1963 to 1972. Yawning businessmen, women asleep, kids who mugged for the camera.. Araki captured them all candidly on film.

Araki's photograph pf the front of a brothel in Tokyo

Araki on the Tokyo subway

Nobuyoshi Araki - Subway - FOAM - 2015 from Nidimages Films on Vimeo.

Visions of Japan(1998) by Araki