Kesei Towns

The towns along the tracks…

Behind the glamour and hi tech glitz of the Tokyo most of us know and see, there is another Tokyo, it's a city of beautiful run down arcades, ramen shops and fashionable items from a bygone age. This is where Tokyo People live and work, and eat and drink, street food stalls and tiny shops, cheap places to shop, and a myriad of tiny bars.

These photographs are from some of the Keisei Towns I like to visit and wander the wonderfully melancholic beauty and atmosphere of a rundownness that reminds me a lot of a home on the other side of the world. The old arcades are spookily empty, the families of these little business often don't want to carry on so when Mun and Dad pass the shop comes to an end. I imagine in their heyday they were quite the thing, oh for a time machine to transport me there!

As the gap between those who have and those who have not continues to widen the poignancy of these towns is ever more relevant, these are perhaps the survivors, the left overs, the remnants, the picker uppers of the catastrophe that was Japan's burst bubble and resultant financial crash and hardship; The Lost Decades as they're called here.

Held together with sellotape, string and some long lost hopes Tateishi is my kind of town, perhaps slightly past it’s sell by date. I can relate to it’s faded beauty, a fascinating myriad of run down tiny streets and alleys, banged up shops and beer crate seats, one woman bars with no heir and a long gone groom.With its cool retro shopping mall and small workshops and factories, the area has a real Tokyo Shitamachi atmosphere, I enjoyed my day here immensely, I ate good food, I had some hand signal broken Japanese chats with the shop owners whowere perhaps as curious about me as I was about them and their town ; you don't get many tourists round here and there's not much gentrification, not yet anyway….

P.S. They redeveloped the station and more will follow, the new eats the old relentlessly and the places in these photographs may well be gone next time I

pass by…

The Keisei Line was built early 20th century as the connection between Tokyo and Narita and since the 70’s has been the main link to Narita airport, what I love are the towns and cities(including the one I live on) that lie either side of this railway as it dissects the city and suburbs on it's way into and through Tokyo. A while back I decided to start to explore and photograph them. There's a hard times feel to these streets and a lot of older people on them, as I walk I wonderhow any of these business's survive, the wee shops selling fruit and veg, the barbers, the ramen shops; how on earth do they keep going? The people also have a been there, been through that kind of a look and a demeanor but everyone I connect with seems friendly enough and can smile as we pass a few moments together.One barber offered to cut off all my hair!!

I'm guessing millions of people use the line everyday of every week and the trains themselves have the run down look of a time long passed, which I like, it fits the image I have of myself sometimes! In the mornings when I am waiting to cross the Keisei tracks these trains are rammed full of commuters going to work, their faces flash by me in milli-seconded connection and gone, the barriers rise and I go on my way as do we all day after day. Is it these tiny anchors of connection that keep us all here? I do notice if one of the "regulars" on my carriage is missing, where are they? And then one day someone you've seen for months, years is gone forever never to return. What happened, where did they go? Moved, changed job, died?

There's a quiet melancholic beauty of these towns at night and I think that's when I like them best with or without Tokyo's plentiful rain. I walk, I eat, I reflect, I shoot, it is this simple repetitive process that keeps me here, that keeps me looking for the next shot, the next street, the next idea.....the next connection…