If you’re obsessed with Japan, this exhibition is for you. On view until October 5th at Akio Nagasawa gallery in Ginza (Tokyo), Hiromi Tsuchida’s Ouroboros displays two of the photographer’s most celebrated series: Industrial Archaeology and Fake Scape, both of which aim to portray the rapid growth of the country in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
To many people, Japan is one of the most fascinating countries in the world. Its culture, gastronomy, history, technology, or architecture are among the top reasons millions of visitors decide to take a plane and visit it at some point. But the Japan we know of today has actually been built extremely fast, especially after World War II. Almost four decades later, in 1989, the world changed again for many reasons (the end of Cold War, the breakout of the Gulf War, the Tiananmen Massacre…), and Japan particularly lost Emperor Showa. Just two years later, in 1991, the bubble of Japanese economy burst—something we can all relate to, especially after 2008.
As Hiromi Tsuchida explains, “While standing right at the pivotal point in history and witnessing all those things happening around me, I launched two separate projects: Industrial Archaeology in 1991, and in 1993, the Fake Scape series.” The photographer aimed to capture how quickly his home country was shifting toward a new direction, one that involved looking at the outside while keeping its traditions alive. But Tsuchida wasn’t always a photographer; in fact, he graduated from the University of Fukui’s School of Engineering, but later quit his work as such to devote himself to art.
Turning his lens to his favourite subject matter, Japan and how it was changing and evolving, Tsuchida has witnessed how, in a matter of decades, the country put itself back up. He’s portrayed hundreds of people, photographed bomb sites in Hiroshima, and immortalised the before-and-after landscapes of a country that blossomed after being destroyed.
As he explains, Industrial Archaeology “focuses on production sites of key industries during the period of rapid economic growth, while Fake Scape, following two years later, is a portrait of stores with flashy, eccentric designs that were set up along national highways (mainly Routue 16) in the suburbs of major cities. I eventually continued to photograph these places until around 2005.”
But in today’s world, they feel as relevant as ever, offering a unique glimpse and testimony of a time gone by that, nonetheless, is what brought us here. “Today, in the year 2024, the advance of digital infrastructures is accelerating, the cycle of production and consumption transforms in ways beyond intelligibility by conventional concepts, and it seems as though it still drifts along with the continuously fluid situation. I believe that it is a meaningful practice to examine the status quo by looking back on those days of the 1990s,” he concludes.
