moom bookshop

My daughter took me for a ride in her car the other day, and drove me to Yokohama. I hadn’t been there for quite a long time, so I was happy to roam the streets of Yokohama with my camera in my hand, always ready to shoot. We parked the car near Kannai Station, and after walking for a while, we arrived at Isezakicho. When I looked up, I noticed (the female singer) Mina Aoe smiling down at me from a giant billboard, and being happily reminded once again that I was in Yokohama, I took quite a few snapshots. That was when I caught sight of a group of cheerful girls parading on the other side of the street, which instantly had me clicking away to all sides. The streets were getting crowded, and seeing the skyscrapers of “Minatomirai” behind the buildings along the avenues, I couldn’t help but feel strongly impressed at how much Yokohama had changed.

Before – in fact quite a long time ago – I often made trips to Tokyo together with the photographer Takuma Nakahira, who was also living in Zushi back then. We would take a train on the Yokosuka Line, and then change to the Toyoko Line at Yokohama. But once we were at Yokohama, instead of jumping on the next train, it happened ever so often that we walked out of the station on a whim, down to the Sakuragicho area, and into a coffee shop where we would end up drinking coffee for hours. Even when I suggested walking around a bit more and taking photos in the neighborhood, Nakahira was only interested in the scenery around the port of Kawasaki at night, so over his coffee he just kept talking happily about things and people. like Godard, or the songs of Mina Mazzini, my favorite singer at the time.

When I think about it now, my only memories related to Yokohama are those of Nakahira shooting like crazy when the two of us eventually went to the port of Kawasaki at night, and then again at the time of his exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art.

The present cityscape of Yokohama has piqued my curiosity.

I guess I will continue going there every now and then, and take a bunch of photos.

– from afterwords by Daido Moriyama