Issei Suda photographs the everyday style and theater of the 80s in Tokyo

When Issei Suda was asked about his shooting process, he simply replied, “I’ll shoot anything I think is good.” It’s an unusually simple lens, but one that helps explain the quiet grace of his work. Issei is undoubtedly one of the best in Japan; however, until his death in 2019 he remained almost anonymous in the west. This may have been because he feared “causing unrest or expressing political discontent”, and therefore did not align himself with the militant motivations that consumed his contemporaries – or any other political movement. ‘somewhere else. If so, it would be surrealism, as Giorgio de Chirico was Issei’s favorite artist, although the photographer resisted any direct influence. “I prefer discovering little surprises that are usually ignored in our world,” Issei said. “Surreal things are not just in my work but all around us.”

To understand Issei, you have to go back to his roots. In 1967, after completing a course at the photography school (despite his father’s wish that he take over the small family business as an only son), Issei was recruited as a set photographer by the audacious troupe underground theater Tenjô Sajiki. It was led by Shūji Terayama, a cultural outlaw whose wild and chilling reimaginings of native Japanese mythology made him a provocative public figure in the bustling 60s avant-garde scene. Blending themes of folklore, from rural superstition, dreams and magic with highly dramatic music, lighting, vulgar imagery and black comedy, Shūji’s style contrasted sharply with Issei’s more subdued sensibility. However, Shūji’s influence over Issei was enormous, prompting him to seek two things. One: the “essence” of a pre-modern Japan. Two: the innate creativity of the ordinary person.

SKETCH OF THE KATO AREA © ISSEI SUDA. COURTESY OF AKIO NAGASAWA EDITIONS

In 1971, Issei said he was “on the starting line, ready to go”. As a freelance, self-guided photographer, he traveled through the Japanese countryside – the last remnant of an ancient, abandoned world – photographing down-to-earth rural people engaged in matsuri (festivals). Witnessing this “collective madness” was, for Issei, “a deeply moving affair”. He compiled his performative plans in Fushi Kaden (1978), a photo book that has become legendary. It takes its name from a classic 14th-century treatise on Nō theater (a traditional Japanese theatrical form) translating to Transmission of the flower of acting style, written by Zeami, considered the greatest playwright and theoretician of Nō theater. Issei read it “hungrily,” and his title pinch declared his intentions to capture the actor hana (flower) – that is, a transcendent state in which one can find the universal in the individual.

SKETCH OF THE KATO AREA © ISSEI SUDA. COURTESY OF AKIO NAGASAWA EDITIONS

Despite his interest in native Japanese tradition, Issei was not the nostalgic type. “I can observe things objectively without getting deeply involved,” he once said, adding, “It can be quite fun because I can build my own drama in my head.” It wasn’t long before Issei brought his unique brand of theatrical photography to the streets of Tokyo. Issei didn’t make the city his muse like Daido Moriyama did, but he made it his stage.

The Issei Archive is the gift that keeps on giving, as evidenced by a beautiful new cloth-bound book published by Akio Nagasawa Publishing, titled The sketch of the Kanto region. He compiles the little-known city snapshots he published in six issues of Asahi Camera magazine in 1983. As in the originals, the chapters are captioned with Japanese pop song titles. Indeed, there is a distinctive musical quality to Issei’s shots. Capturing anything spontaneous or mysterious, he could photograph almost anything and make it sing.

SKETCH OF THE KATO AREA © ISSEI SUDA. COURTESY OF AKIO NAGASAWA EDITIONS

In the foreword, Issei dwells on the confusions of urban life. “Here I am, drinking High Sour and sputtering arguments in the middle of a downtown street, trying to forget the pain when my heart feels empty, and dreaming of Madonna, as I take my “Tokyo Syndrome chika chika” with just a little sigh. And I’m going to laugh at things again tomorrow… I’ll only hear myself mumbling, ‘What a beautiful city Tokyo is!'”

The small alleys that Issei wandered around—seemingly worlds away from the metropolitan sprawl—felt like cities within cities. While you’re only ever privy to small glimpses of the city’s architecture, over the course of the book an enchanted atmosphere emerges, steeped in the lingering mysteries of understated drama. “Instead of the stars I saw in the sky, the night is filled with neon stars that twinkle suspiciously like light traps,” Issei wrote. “From below in the valleys between the buildings, the black concrete peaks form landscapes that seem almost sublime to me.”

SKETCH OF THE KATO AREA © ISSEI SUDA. COURTESY OF AKIO NAGASAWA EDITIONS

Despite Issei’s refusal to make grand social or political statements (the 1980s saw a giant bubble economy propel Japan to new heights of extravagance and excess), he witnessed more evidence of life modern. Each frame reveals its own dissonant harmonies and confusing nuances, the textures of Western modernity and traditional culture not so much clashing as intersecting. A businessman in an oversized suit walks through a bamboo grove. Tricky schoolboy jumps under colossal steel beams. A girl in a kimono sips a beer in a hip urban style (obviously a different kind of woman than Issei has seen in the countryside). Even in the small corners inhabited by Issei, change was underway.

SKETCH OF THE KATO AREA © ISSEI SUDA. COURTESY OF AKIO NAGASAWA EDITIONS

Although these photographs are rich in references – the panoramic focus of Orson Welles, the sharp contrasts of Richard Avedon, the inky figures that might even have made his mentor Shūji shiver with joy – Issei’s point of view is unquestionably his. The technical precision he found in the square format is unparalleled, and totally at odds with the wildly abstract “are-bure-boke” (translating as “rough, blurry, and blurry”) style that had revolutionized Japanese photography in the early days. ‘era. 70s. But that doesn’t mean Issei was looking for the “perfect” shot. Working carefully but instinctively, Issei saw himself as a channeler of the chaotic forces of the universe. “There are always one or two crazy ideas floating around,” he said. “They will surely come to my mind and lift me up.”

SKETCH OF THE KATO AREA © ISSEI SUDA. COURTESY OF AKIO NAGASAWA EDITIONS

This spontaneous way of working (he says “reflexive”) is what gives Issei’s images a particular subjectivity, which rubs shoulders with the surreal. Time and again, you feel like Issei hangs on too long, turning an ordinary scene into something half-click off-center. The subjects are caught off guard – blinking eyes, blowing hair, tilted head – suggesting that the cultural configuration has been violated. While the slipping of a girl’s plastic smile into an uncooperative scowl might be an awkward mistake in timing, what Issei reveals is something universal about the human subconscious.

Issei’s photographs do not vibrate with the egocentric delirium of his To provoke contemporaries – the radical Japanese photo magazine printed in the late 1960s – (think Daido or Takuma Nakahira). Nor will you find the impetuous ardor of politics, seduction, youthful rebellion or social criticism. By circumventing the arrogance and machismo that marked his generation, Issei created his own observant aesthetic that gave way to sensitivity and vulnerability. His lasting legacy lies in the very tender way in which he expressed the underlying mystery of everyday existence.

SKETCH OF THE KATO AREA © ISSEI SUDA. COURTESY OF AKIO NAGASAWA EDITIONS

“Just as there is no nameless flower, there are no nameless humans existing in reality,” Issei wrote. “Although they seem buried in the casualness of everyday life, each of them carries their own power and tenacity, hidden deep within themselves… Their time may have only been a moment passenger who is long gone, but as a photographer I seem to feel the repercussions and significance of their existence even today.”

‘The sketch of the Kanto region‘ by Issei Suda is published by Akio Nagasawa Publishing.

SKETCH OF THE KATO AREA © ISSEI SUDA. COURTESY OF AKIO NAGASAWA EDITIONS

SKETCH OF THE KATO AREA © ISSEI SUDA. COURTESY OF AKIO NAGASAWA EDITIONS

Credits

All images courtesy of Akio Nagasawa Publishing