What did Japan look like three decades ago? How were Japanese people, culture and urban landscapes in the 1970s?
As pictures tell a thousand words, the 76 photographs by 23 Japanese photographers answer these questions, portraying Japan from the 1970s up to the present day. The photographs are displayed in a photo exhibition titled "Gazing at the Contemporary World: Japanese Photography from the 1970s to the Present".
The event is an overview of the diverse photographic expression that has emerged in Japan since the 1970s. It tracks the changing face of Japan caused by rapid economic growth in the 1980s, economic stagnancy in 1990s, the rise of consumerism, and waning traditional culture in small villages.
In the exhibition, the photographs are categorized into two parts. The first is titled "A Changing Society", which focuses on human beings as members of society. Here, photographers seek to portray something beyond the ordinariness of everyday life.
Kazuo Kitai's "To the Village" observes the traditional ways of life in early 1970s that are quickly disappearing due to rapid economic development. The black-and-white shot capture the transformations of society.
Kitai, for instance, captures six elementary students walking over a bridge, while another photograph shows an old fisherman in sweat shirt, pants and a cap, sitting on a traditional wooden boat while smoking a cigarette.
An image of a fisherman's face and his body language invoke a thousand words. His expression could be one of weariness or relief, depending on how you look at it.
A wedding entourage, dressed in kimonos and formal suits, walking along a snowy path in a village really takes you back to the olden days of Japan.
Kitai is famous for working with social and urban issues. In 1989, he released Funabashi Story, portraying the life of a new modern housing area in Funabashi on the outskirts of Tokyo.
Nobuyoshi Araki's Subway Love captures the activities of passengers on the subway, such as a group of female students playing on the train. The corresponding section of the exhibition is themed "Changing Landscapes", and examines Japan's urban and natural landscape.
The photos show the landscape of Japan changed most dramatically in the years after the period of rapid economic growth, which lasted through to the early 1970s.
Be it in the urban setting where capital and population were concentrated, or in rural villages, which are quickly lost population, to old buildings and communities that were barely surviving.
The landscape is continually transformed - and changing. In the late 1980s, Norio Kobayashi was one of the first to notice the suburbs and capture the empty landscapes. He, for instance, shows a plot of hilly and fenced land by the road. Ryuji Miyamoto, through the series "Kobe 1995 After the Earthquake", presents the impacts of the natural disaster at Kobe that washed a ship ashore and wrecked its entire body.
The rapid growth of urban areas is portrayed in Takashi Homma's Tokyo Suburbia, which shows the development of a housing complex from 1995 to1998, while the series In Tokyo by Eiji Ina, captures the view of modern buildings in the capital in the early 1980s.
Some people might find it hard to connect one picture with another, to form the essence of Japan's changing society and landscapes, as some pictures seem to bear no relation to the others.
Take Tokuko Ushioda's series called Ice Box, which captures refrigerators in different angles and conditions. One picture shows a closed refrigerator full of notes on its door, while other photos show opened refrigerators filled with food and drinks.
Senior photographer Firman Ichsan, who is also a curator and lecturer at the Jakarta Arts Institute (IKJ), said that photographers often used still-light photography.
"You might think that picture tells us nothing because it is just a refrigerator. What's so special about that? But a simple object can be very important for the photographer," he said.
Knowing the history of Japan, he said, is also an advantage to those who come and see the exhibition.
"A photo is something unique. It frees our imaginations and drives us to know more about the meaning of it. It can tell us many stories. It is very different from a movie, which tells us exactly the beginning and the ending of the story," said Firman.
So, imagination and a little more time are the keys to enjoying the beauty of these creations.
Gazing at the Contemporary World
Japanese Photography
From the 1970s to the Present
Hall & Mini Gallery
The Japan Foundation
Summitmas I, 2nd floor
Jl. Jend. Sudirman Kav. 61-62
South Jakarta
021-5201266
From July 16 to August 4, 2009
