We’ll never know what we missed in Okinawa, but if the last several days are any indication, our change in plans has been a blessing in disguise. Yesterday, with the help of Dan Abbe, a young American photographer living in Japan, we were able to have a full day of shooting and carousing with Kazuo Kitai, who arranged a car and driver to take us to the area around Haneda Airport. This is not a part of town tourists usually see (or would want to see), but it is perfect Gossage territory: nondescript and unexciting on the surface, but exuding a slow timeless eloquence that John is able to capture in pictures.

We started in a mosquito-infested park. At first Kitai did not understand exactly why we were there, but after observing John for a few minutes, he commented how interesting John’s process was, how he could see what John saw, and then he busted out his Leica (with an 80 year-old lens) and began to photograph.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He was amused when John started shooting a praying mantis. Seeing two great photographers squatting on the ground with a green bug in between them must surely rank as one of the strangest moments of my bookselling career. When John laid down to get the correct shot, the Japanese men grunted in appreciation. We’ll see if it makes the final cut.

 

We walked to an area by water where people took picnics and airplane spotters set up their tripods. I can not tell you where this was. Maybe half way between Haneda and the racetrack. Unfindable. It felt like a scene out of Wolfgang Tillmans’ Concorde.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a small temple, a shipyard, and innumerable tiny streets where laundry hung to dry and corrugated tin buildings were the prevalent style. We ate a modest lunch of maguro don in a local restaurant, and took a look at some nearby shops. This is a Japanese pickle I think.

Then we drove in search of Starbucks and wound up at a mall that could have been in Paramus, New Jersey. We had a snack at Bagel and Bagel!

Once back at the hotel John asked Kitai to inscribe his copies of Resistance and Sanrizuka. (I went overboard and had four copies of Resistance signed…) In the bar lurked the ghost of Martin Parr.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After some confusion about where to go for dinner, we strolled the neighborhood and I spotted a izakaya restaurant that looked appealing. No English spoken; no English menu. Portends of a good meal. Shrimp cakes and sashimi, grilled fish heads (Kitai ate the eyes!) and fried chicken. A bunch of indecipherable small plates. There will be no such luck at breakfast. 5 straight days of eggs.

Thanks for reading.

If the trip had progressed according to plan, I’d be writing this from my desk at the Naha Terrace Hotel in Okinawa. Instead I find myself still at the Hilltop in Tokyo, having just returned from yet another early morning run to McDonalds for coffee. Two days ago, while scouting for books in the cramped confines of Kuyo-shobo in an area of Tokyo where no foreigners can be spotted, Kazu received a call from Yasunori Hoki, the innovative publisher of photobooks under his imprint Super Labo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yasunori was to be our guide in Okinawa, and had in fact planned our entire trip there, including a meeting with Shomei Tomatsu. We found out, much to our chagrin, that Yasunori had come down with the flu and would be unable to accompany us. We had a decision to make: either press on to Okinawa where we knew no one and had no sense of the place, or remain in Tokyo and find alternative locations to photograph. We opted for the latter, especially after checking the weather forecast and determining that Okinawa would be hot and rainy.

Many years ago John had been invited to curate a exhibition in Yokohama, and he remembered a part of town between his hotel and the famous Yokohama Ferris Wheel that might provide a good opportunity to photograph. Despite the obvious connection to Okinawa, where many great photobooks had been shot and an entire genre of Japanese photography essentially created, John’s needs as a photographer are usually not site-specific. He was, as it turns out, looking for a different scale than what was available in Tokyo; an area perhaps on the periphery of town, scruffy, where the vicissitudes of daily had been uninterrupted by bullet trains and neon lights. So Kazu volunteered yesterday to drive us to Yokohama, and we began anew the search for material.

Shooting photographs, I have learned, is not dissimilar to scouting books: you search high and low and hope to find something. This is a tried and true formula, and fortunately for John’s book and exhibition, it is working. On first glance Yokohama looks a bit like Hartford, Connecticut, but on the water. The approach is industrial and depressing: highways cutting through factories and chemical plants, used car lots and convenience stores.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a downtown core constructed near the waterfront, a baseball stadium (the team is bad), and Japan’s largest Chinatown (where we were served an excellent dim sum by a waitress who appeared to be suffering from the same flu that felled Yasunori). As we drove into town, John noticed a neighborhood off to the side of the highway that was ragged and down on its luck. You could see shipping containers and rail yards in the distance. The homes were small and shabby. This was an area that Japan had left behind, neither historic nor futuristic, where people went about their business without hope of government stimulus or external stimulation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kazu stopped the car and parked. It was hot in the midday sun, and right away in the stillness of the day it appeared we had found the kind of forlorn place that Gossage has made a career of photographing.

I haven’t previewed what John shot; his process is wholly organic; it creates its own narrative out of disparate parts and ties itself together through the elegance of an artist’s eye. I have traveled and enjoyed taking photographs along the way, but never have I had the opportunity to follow a John Gossage around and see what kind of choices a real photographer makes. What vision really is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we wandered around this part of town where poor dock workers live in shabby rooms packed in together like on an Indian train, the only eloquence here being their carefully arranged shoes, I had the uncanny feeling of being in a Japanese photobook, rather than looking at one. I have made a career buying and selling, and really giving little thought to what the photographs I peddle actually mean, other than simply their monetary value, or a quick sentence here and there attempting to codify an aesthetic or a movement I understand mostly through the prism of commerce. Here are some of the shots I took in Yokohama:

 

 

Sweaty 80 degrees at dawn. I’m not a photographer so it’s no surprise that I forget a golden rule: always bring your camera with you. I’m at McDonalds getting coffee. There’s a group of students asleep at a table. Great shot, but no camera. I race back to the hotel but by the time I return they’re gone. Lesson learned. Here’s a shot of an empty Tokyo street, early morning:

Yesterday was a busy affair filled with shooting and book scouting. Gossage and I started with breakfast at our hotel: eggs beautifully cooked and deep orange, the dining room a throwback like the rest of the hotel. Check out the lobby in the annex. Mad Men meets 60s airline terminal:

We arrived at our first shop, Genkido, before opening. This gave John the chance to shoot for 45 minutes in the neighborhood. Here’s some of what we found. (Please note: these are my images, not his

 When the shop opened we scanned the shelves behind the desk for books to look at. Genkido is one of the best photo bookstores in Tokyo. The prices are reasonable and the staff is friendly. I picked up Fukase’s Homo Ludence with the obi and the outer acetate jacket, as well as a copy of the revised edition of Tomatsu’s Nagasaki which I hope to get signed when we meet with Tomatsu tomorrow in Okinawa. There’s was a book of John’s at the shop. He signed it for them. (I’m thinking about buying the Kamaitachi, by the way.)

We left Genkido and went to meet Kazu’s at Starbucks. There were some interesting side streets to photograph. Here are shots of John getting a handle on dried fish, and my obsession with teddy bears. (I think John liked my picture.)

 

We made our way to Komiyama, a four floor emporium on the main street in Jimbocho. The top floor has the best stuff, but it’s all properly priced and the buying is tough, especially at 75 yen to the dollar. There were copies of Kitajima’s New York in both obis; a nice inscribed Sentimental Journey, very close, but with a stain on one page that was a deal killer. I was pleased to see a nice selection of original Kitai photographs. We’re looking forward to seeing him on September 19. I managed to find some good stuff downstairs, like a perfect Ballad of Sexual Dependency for 4000 yen, but nothing earth shattering. This is Gossage scouting on the fourth floor:

The day progressed in this fashion. Books and shooting. It was hot and sunny. Jet lag started to kick in. We opted for an early sushi dinner. The restaurant was filled. Fish circles around on a conveyor belt and you take whatever small plates you want. It’s better than probably all but 5-10 New York City sushi restaurants. And the price is ridiculous: 5150 yen ($60) for three people eating well. You can see my damage below:

At my desk at the Hilltop Hotel in Jimbocho. The hotel is a relic from the 50s, but my room has a large tatami mat that smells wonderful, and I’ve had a shower and donned my yukata. I arrived at 8:00 PM after a 3 hour delay. Kazu was at the airport to pick me up, after having been there earlier to collect John and bring him to the hotel. As I exited customs and walked into the terminal I was greeted with this:

After a quick ride into Tokyo I checked into the hotel, met up with John, and immediately headed out with Kazu to Shibuya to have a delicious dinner of chicken meatballs, warm tomago, tempura, and cold soba with 2 dipping soups. John was already taking pictures, and I was experimenting myself:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After dinner we headed to Kazu’s shop, where I proceeded to pile up a stack of books at midnight:

More tomorrow.

 

 

 

In April 2008 I traveled to Japan to exhibit at the Tokyo Antiquarian Book Fair. I had lived and taught English in Sapporo, Japan, in 1992, after graduating college, but I hadn’t been back since. The book fair was a convenient excuse to go on a book buying trip. My infatuation with Japanese photobooks was in full bloom. I had handled all the classics, like Bye Bye Photography, Sentimental Journey, and Killed by Roses, but I was curious what little-known gems I might find wandering the backalleys of Jimbocho, the book neighborhood of Tokyo. I had been given an annotated map of Jimbocho by my friend Kazu Yamaji, owner of Flying Books in Shibuya, and I was raring to go. For those of you who have never been to Tokyo, there is no better book city on earth. In Jimbocho alone there are hundreds of bookstores selling all kinds of books, from high end literature and art, to magazine shops with back issues of Brutus Trip and Music Life neatly ensconced in cellophane wrappers.

There were a few books I was particularly interested in finding. I had sold several copies of Kazuo Kitai’s great protest books, Resistance and Sanrizuka, but I was hoping to find other, more obscure publications by him, or even perhaps some original photographs. On the second day I followed the map and walked into an unmarked building and up a flight of stairs. The smell of cigarette smoke was thick in the stairwell. Deep on the third floor was a small shop called Ramasha (I think). It was crammed with books and printed matter. Immediately I noticed some interesting photographs mounted on posterboard displayed in a glass case. I couldn’t believe my luck when the owner told me they were by Kazuo Kitai. I bought the photographs, and about 30 books, and struggled back to my hotel on the subway.

A few days and many purchases later, it was time to setup for the book fair. On the opening night I was standing in my booth when a dapper, mild-mannered gentleman introduced himself. He seemed to know who I was. It was Hiroshi Masaki, photographer, and executive at the Japanese book firm Maruzen. Hiroshi was friends with Kazuo Kitai and had somehow gotten wind of my interest in his work. (Word travels fast in Jimbocho.) In short order he had arranged a meeting with Mr. Kitai at the Imperial Hotel to look at photographs. Kazuo Kitai has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in Japan, but he remains relatively anonymous in the west, despite the recent popularity of his aforementioned books. (Sanrizuka will be included in the upcoming Steidl Protest Box; that should help buoy his reputation.) Before I met Mr. Kitai, I had pegged Resistance as a forerunner of the Provoke movement. I was not surprised to learn, therefore, that Daido Moriyama and Takuma Nakahira were fans of Mr. Kitai’s work, and Nakahira in particular had spoken to him at length about joining Provoke.

During that first meeting, with Hiroshi translating, I had the pleasure of being shown original vintage prints not only from Sanrizuka, but also from a series called Barricade that Mr. Kitai had neither exhibited nor published. These were images primarily of student protests in Tokyo in 1968, and included shots of demonstrations and marches, with very personal close-ups of items like protestors’ boots, umbrellas, and even rolls of toilet paper. The juxtaposition of the documentary and the intimate was captivating, and I decided right there, in the lobby of the hotel, that Harper’s Books would publish a book of this work and invite Mr. Kitai to have his first exhibition in the United States.

I traveled to Japan again in 2009 and met Mr. Kitai at his home outside Tokyo. Photographs, ideas, and e-mails have been exchanged, and Hiroshi Masaki has worked tirelessly as the interlocutor between an esteemed Japanese photographer and an American rare book dealer. At some point I realized I had no publishing experience and I would need the assistance of an expert. Few American photographers have been more influenced by Japan than John Gossage. One needs only to visit John’s library in Washington DC to understand the extent of his commitment to Japanese photographers and photobooks. It became apparent to me that John’s involvement in this project was crucial to its success. Gossage and Mr. Kitai share many similarities. They are roughly the same age; they started young; both have published scores of books and have publishing companies of their own; the list goes on. Given John’s intrinsic understanding of Japanese photographic literature, I thought it would be perfect symmetry if he designed Mr. Kitai’s book. (Plus he’s really good at it.)

I had hoped to have Mr. Kitai’s book finished and his exhibition this year, but a combination of scheduling conflicts and the tragic earthquake and tsunami in March have postponed both the book and the exhibition until the summer of 2012. As a result of the amended timetable, Mr. Kitai and I decided it would be a wonderful addition to the project if John contributed a series of photographs to accompany Mr. Kitai’s work. Which brings us to today. On Saturday, Gossage and I will leave for Tokyo, and then Okinawa. While there, we will indulge our common love of books by going to as many shops as is humanly possible in a short span of time, and John will shoot along the way. (Or maybe it’s a full day of shooting and we will scout books along the way.) We have an outing planned with Mr. Kitai in Funbashi, a Tokyo suburb; the photographers will meet and take pictures together. Gossage and I will also travel to Okinawa, the scene of several great Japanese protest books, including Shomei Tomatsu’s Okinawa, and Osamu Nagahama’s, A Long and Hot Night in Okinawa. We will be joined by Yasunori Hoki, whose imprint Super Labo has produced over a dozen excellent photobooks, including work by Gossage, Daido Moriyama and JH Engstrom, among others. In Okinawa, we are honored to meet with Shomei Tomatsu, the dean of Japanese photography.

During the trip I will post numerous updates to this blog. Thanks for looking, and I hope you check back to read about the books we’ve bought, the photographs John and Mr. Kitai have shot, the food we’ve eaten, and whatever else a book dealer and a photographer can cook up over 10 days in Japan.