Wrestler "Lee Gaku Who?" after his fight at a place called "Fight Club". Asakusa, Tokyo, Japan. November 2006.
TOKYO
FLOATING THROUGH SHANGHAI'S BACKYARD
ON THE SEARCH FOR
THE LIAO DYNASTY
HOME-COMING
TOKYO, ASAKUSA, KANNON
THE BIG OUTSET
PORTRAITS
TEARSHEETS
FLOATING THROUGH SHANGHAI'S BACKYARD
ON THE SEARCH FOR
THE LIAO DYNASTY
HOME-COMING
TOKYO, ASAKUSA, KANNON
THE BIG OUTSET
PORTRAITS
TEARSHEETS
Wrestler "Lee Gaku Who?" after his fight at a place called "Fight Club". Asakusa, Tokyo, Japan. November 2006.
Asakusa, built around Senso Temple dedicated to Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy, is an eastern district of Tokyo, flanking the Sumida River.
It came into its own as a hub of pleasure in the 1840s with Geisha houses, Kabuki theatres, jugglers, dancers, comic storytellers, bars, restaurants and so on. The first movie houses in Japan also were in Asakusa, as was Tokyo's first "skyscraper", the Twelve-Story Tower, a 52-meter brick observation tower that was Japan's tallest structure at that time.
Asakusa has been an amusement district since the Edo period (1603 - 1868), but particularly from the middle of the Meiji Era until just before the war, it flourished as Japan's most bustling entertainment area.
Asakusa's wildest days are said to have been in the 1910s, after the Russo-Japanese war, when Russian girls added an exotic tang. The main attraction was to show off women's leg. Countless entertainers and actors made their start in Asakusa.
In the 1920s, short story writer and novelist Yasunari Kawabata (Nobel Prize for Literature 1968) was living in the plebeian district of Asakusa. In Asakusa Kurenaidan (The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa), serialized from 1929-1930, he explores the lives of the demimonde and others on the fringe of society, in a style echoing that of late Edo period literature.
The entire quarter was almost destroyed twice: in the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 and by American B-29 bombers in 1945.
After the war, Senso Temple was restored and Asakusa did regain some of its former glory as a centre for entertainment for a short period of time. But gradually, young people shifted their attention to new entertainment districts constructed near the major railway stations.
Always following the old downtown feeling, this photo essay looks behind the scenes of Asakusa's comedy theatres, Geisha performances, it captures scenes of the red-light district and shows pictures of one of Japan's most prominent Yakuza gangs.
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