_valerian

There seems to be a surge of Showa-era themed street photography books in the Japanese Photography sections of bookstores as of late. It’s as if ever couple of months a stack of negatives find their way to a publisher who is fine with adding another good old showa photo book to the shelves. Most of these are heavy on lower quality reproductions laden with additional “memories” text, with the layout being geared less about a moving collection of Pictures than simply a grouping of black and white photos taken around the same time in roughly the same area.
This book, “Tokyo Downtown 1930” by Kineo Kuwabara is an good collection of mostly excellent photographs of parts of Tokyo in the 1930s. The editing sometimes wanders into the realm of “(insert local town name here) in 1940/50/60″ with captions like “This was back before you saw cars on the streets”. But what separates this book from most of the other Tokyo street books is the overall photographic quality of Kuwabara’s work. Even though there are a few filler photos, the “hits” just sing. Too bad most of the best photos had to be printed across the gutter.