SEIJI KURATA
Born in Tokyo’s Chuo-ku in 1945, Seiji Kurata is one of the most highly acclaimed Japanese photographers of the modern era. Working mostly as an engineer until the age of 30, he found himself disillusioned by 1975. He took a gamble and quit his job with a deadline of 1 year to pour all his effort into his newfound passion of photography. He quickly found success and in the same year joined the photography school WORKSHOP which boasted members such as Daido Moriyama, Nobuyoshi Araki and Shomei Tomatsu. Kurata associated with Moriyama’s style and gravitated to him as a mentor.
Over the next 5 years, Kurata spent almost every night in the seedy backstreets of Ikebukuro with his camera. Focusing on the night life, gangsters, prostitutes and bosozoku - his determination culminated in the seminal 1980 book Flash Up. The book, a collection of 190 black and white photos, garnered immediate attention. Kurata was lauded for his raw talent and ability to capture intricate stories in a single frame. This, despite the fact that he had chosen a subject matter considered trite at the time. The photo on the cover of Flash Up is particularly memorable - a tattoo covered yakuza with a sword who had demanded that Kurata take him to a nearby rooftop for a shoot to make him look tough.
Kurata’s talent extended beyond just nightlife photography. His later work, AKB 80’s, was a compilation of photos taken from 1986-89 at the Kanda Market in Akihabara. Purposefully focusing on the older market rather than the booming electronic town, Kurata created a poignant statement on what he saw as a dying aspect of Japan’s culture.
Passing away in 2020, Kurata is remembered by his peers as notoriously difficult to work with. He had no email and rarely answered his phone. He would procrastinate endlessly and obsess over his methodology and how the works should be presented. The only reason he was able to get away with this attitude was due to the intrinsic artistic talent that he contained. His works present one of the best examples of a photographer capturing the underbelly of Tokyo. As his fellow photographer Shomei Tomatsu once said - “I smell blood in Kurata’s photographs”.
