Japanese Portrait

Though my Japanese is really poor, my interest in music and dance is huge and that became one more reason for motivating my research in Japan. One day I saw this group of young girls and boys performing amazing skills for nobody at very late at night in Hirakatashi and it really intrigued me*. Having decided to come back and spend more time with them, I took advantage of the visual anthropology assignments making the first contact after a week - with my embarrassing super basic introduction “watashi no namae wa” - for my surprise they could understand me as long as I tried to show my interest on them. And for sure that was such a relief considering my lack of out-going mood!

Yoshiaki was one of these guys dancing, jumping and falling (on purpose as a part of the performance) frenziedly and he was one of the four guys that I felt more comfortable with to talk and to take pictures of him and concentrating on the environmental portraiture as well. For about two hours I stayed with him he had stopped few times, what shows up a person who prizes concentration, insistence and strength. Furthermore, in his words, presence and poetry is also important in his specially when you are dealing with street dancing style. He had chosen it because he believes on it as a way to communicate his wishes and complains by body and it is energy for the world outside. “What about Japanese hip hop, break dance influences?” At this point I could understand that I have to expected that American urban style was the “coolest” and the “majority” considering the first generation. However, Japan as any other country needs either to seek for free individual expressions thus he practices it as his way of life - at least four times a week in Hirakatashi station.

As expected I made some shots of Yoshiaki performing in what he does his best but above all the poses, falls, slips, jumps and spins we had such interesting exchanges. On that night we switched email address and since then he had suggested me some “classic” japanese hip hop singers as for example King Giddra and Dabo and particularly even though not being my favorite kind of music I am widely glad for having this contact.

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