Oh! Shinjuku. Shomei Tomatsu

Oh! Shinjuku. Shomei Tomatsu (photographer)

Shinjuku is a young people’s town Shinjuku is a getting-off-on-the-way-home town Shinjuku is an underground city Shinjuku is a happening-stage Shinjuku is a floaters’ town Shinjuku is a sex-town Shinjuku is the womb of civilization Shinjuku is a giant supermarket Shinjuku is Tokyo in miniature Shinjuku is the Mecca of instant culture Shinjuku is a town of uncertain nationality Shinjuku is a formless amoeba Shinjuku fills us with expectation Shinjuku is the student’s home village (furusato) Shinjuku is where beginners form families Shinjuku is where you can drink and dance for 200 yen Shinjuku is everybody’s plaza Shinjuku is where authority is rejected Shinjuku is frivolity and infamy Shinjuku is a modern jungle Shinjuku smells of crime Shinjuku is a night town Shinjuku is the specter of desire gone wild which can swallow everything There are countless words one can use for Shinjuku If we try to catch them they will wriggle out of the net like eels No place is as hard to decode but I will say the following Every time has its own unique face and the face of a time may appear vividly in a particular town like Asakusa and Ginza in the past Shinjuku is now the town that responds most acutely to the new Theatrical and nontheatrical space mix mysteriously in Shinjuku The town called Shinjuku makes us feel “free” even if this is an illusion This is what so many people have come to love At the end of 1969 however the winter wind blowing through Shinjuku is frigid A raging hurricane of steel threatens to turn the tide and tear that freedom apart The heavy shadow of the state…Oh! Shinjuku