Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki in Conversation

28 Sept 2004 · Excerpted from Moriyama : Shinjuku : Araki

19:30 Upstairs at "Saya," Golden Gai "Golden Lane" bar street, Shinjuku

Araki: Wow, what a line-up. Will you look at all those bottles of Ballantine's.

Moriyama: Not Ballantine's, Canadian Club.

Araki: They had a wake in here just before. Care for some on the rocks? They've really cleaned up the place here, haven't they.

Moriyama: Nah, it's the same old same old. Tell me, Araki, don't you have a regular haunt here in Golden Gai?

Araki: Not really. Back when, there was "Cabochard," maybe a few other places, but they've all changed names. "Maeda" and "Lulu" are gone, too.

Moriyama: That's how it goes.

Araki: No, I'm not a regular customer anywhere any more. Still hold a grudge against (Masahisa) Fukase at "Nami," though (laughs), so I peek in from time to time...but everything's completely changed, lots of interesting looking new places.

Moriyama: Mostly a younger crowd now, too.

Araki: No fine women out there on the streets, but around Golden Gai you still see some fine women. Or not? No go (laughs)?

Moriyama: Occasionally, just occasionally.

Araki: Still, nothing but dogs out in the rest of Shinjuku, no foxes, eh? I'm still my dirty old self, which is just fine by me (laughs).

Moriyama: For sure, walk just about anywhere else, and you don't see any foxes. Un-unh.

Araki: Lately, you can put it very simple (laughs). Go to Aoyama, where the fancier clubs are, and you do see some fine specimens, but nothing like that around here, not in Shinjuku.

Moriyama: They're a different type. The ones wandering around here.

Araki: A different breed. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to exhibit in Shinjuku (laughs).

Moriyama: Not to worry. I'll come to the defense. Of Shinjuku, that is.

Araki: Probably how it's gotta be with Shinjuku. There's just something about the place.

Moriyama: You can say that again.

Araki: You know, it's strange. Ask me which neighborhood I like the women most, and you'd think anywhere but Shinjuku, yet somehow, not like it's my hometown or anything, it's really a Tokyo backwater. Not hell, but a safety zone, this Shinjuku. Nah, really (laughs). Sorry I'm not in form. Just been to a wake (laughs again). So even if say I like Aoyama girls with their pert little butts, if I always had 'em around, well...I mean that'd be a bore, right? Once in a while, maybe, fine. But Shinjuku girls, I could have 'em around all the time. And the girls from "old Tokyo" neighborhoods are still another thing.

Moriyama: It's one great, big frontier here. People of all different races and places, so in that sense it really is a frontier.

Araki: Or to exagerate a bit, a little United States. There's people here from all over the world.

Moriyama: Ikebukuro's kinda like that, but only in parts. No, there's more types in Shinjuku. Not just from Southeast Asia, but from China and Korea. That's how the Kabukicho district originally got started after all. The whole of Tokyo's mixed up, but Shinjuku's mix is even more concentrated.

Araki: So no one coming here feels out of place. Whether you come from the Gunma suburbs or from up in Tohoku or from Africa, it's all the same.

Moriyama: It's a frontier. A lot of people just drift into town. Everybody's accepted here.

Araki: Makes a good hideout, if hiding's what you want to do. Can be quite attractive.

Moriyama: Just look at the upper floors here at Golden Gai. The corridors were actually made to be escape routes. Everybody wanted to escape out onto the roofs in case of raids.

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Araki: I've been shooting here since the 1960s, not that I especially set out to "portray Shinjuku." I just ended up shooting here a whole lot. The streets, the women, I just unconsciously kept coming back to Shinjuku. In the 1970s, anything underground, it all came out in Shinjuku first. I'd be in Dentsu on the east side of town but rather go out for the evening in Ginza, I'd come all the way back here to Shinjuku in the west side, it was that magnetic. Maybe that's how I got my "Shinjuku eye." To take photos of Shinjuku is a big deal; I was simply taking photos in Shinjuku. But that's how it was with you, too, right?

Moriyama: When I left Osaka, I was at a total loss at first, for the longest time...but anyway, around 1945, whenever I looked up some relative they were always in Ginza or Harajuku or Shibuya, so I never came to Shinjuku. But if you've turned twenty and you come to Tokyo, Shinjuku was the place, right? I mean, I was rooming just a couple of stops away in Kami-Kitazawa. But really, this place just blew me away.

Araki: (laughs) It can be powerful.

Moriyama: No, really. Ever since then, almost straight through to today. Between Kami-Kitazawa and (Eikoh) Hosoe's office in Yotsuya at the time, or (Shomei) Tomatsu's office in Kojimachi. Coming and going always took me through Shinjuku.

Araki: So your movements at the time were the deciding factor. That can do it.

Moriyama: Then, at one point, I didn't have anywhere else to go, so for a while I stayed in the flophouse area of Okubo [just north of Shinjuku]. Everyone was down and out there. I was down and out. But y'know, I can never forget the scenes. Burrowing under the covers in my bunk, like I was in a cocoon. That and, in the late-1970s, there was CAMP gallery. So all in all, I had something going in Shinjuku nearly every day. And just like you said, I wasn't taking photos of Shinjuku.

Araki: It's like you're taking pictures of yourself, your life and how you live. That's what shooting Shinjuku is. And you were more in the thick of it. 'Cause Osaka's a long way to come. Minowa's a lot closer, so I can get home, right? (laughs). Me, I'm spoiled. I was in Dentsu. I'd hear "Hey, something's buzzing," and make my way over. I wasn't right here.

Moriyama: So tell me, Araki, around when did you first get the sense you were "shooting Shinjuku?"

Araki: My first real "Shinjuku" must've been Carmen Marie no Shinso [The Truth about Carmen Marie]. Not even the town.

Moriyama: Fair enough.

Araki: I tricked this deadbeat futen of a girl (laughs). Did her up like Carmen Maki, who was big at the time. Her face and style of makeup, that whole scene was Shinjuku, as I recall. I asked her "Wanna come to my studio?" though Dentsu was my studio (laughs), there I shot her portrait, her nudes, pastoral body, that was physically Shinjuku. Shooting in Ginza oughta make for a cleaner image, more stylish nudes, right? But her makeup, hopeless! Practically drawn with magic marker (laughs). But that make was her, the expression of that girl, an expression of the times, no? Extreme, but expressed all out, that Izumi Suzuki. Which is why I think Carmen Marie, or the nudes I took sleeping around, that was my Shinjuku. Shoot a crotch spread wide in the studio, that's Shinjuku. The frontier (laughs).

Moriyama: (chuckles)

Araki: And another thing, it's like, with Tokyoites, it's not cool to not be up on the latest thing. So they all went to jazz cafes, jazz bars. The rock and roll scene at ACB in Ginza. But I wasn't that type, so I'd come out here and listen to who-knows-what jazz, real dark and dank.

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Preview ends here. The complete conversation is available to Members Only in English, Japanese, and Traditional Chinese.