Araki’s Tokyo Lucky Hole reviewed by me (explicit content)
Nobuyoshi Araki documented the adult only entertainment centers in the early 80s. The result is a book where there is a portrait of those times in Japan.
PLEASE NOTE: In this post there is explicit sex content showed. You decide if you want to continue the reading.
Araki was a frequent visitor to the sex clubs of Shinjuku neighborhood in Tokyo. He documented the golden age of Japan's sex industry. Over 800 photos make up Tokyo Lucky Hole where the attitude and approach of the Japanese master is condensed.
From quickly scrolling through the pages you are invaded by explicit nudes and sex scenes that leave nothing to the imagination. The photos shared here are also light.
At a second, more careful reading of the book, you enter the world of clubs for adults, in Araki's encounters with the various women who will pose for him. not infrequently it happens to see them completely dressed and then completely naked. Araki's photographic creed develops in the awareness that reality in photography is in any case a document of something that has fiction and art in itself.
When the photographer himself appears inside the frames we understand that on stage there is the truth and the behind the scenes of the truth. As a participant Hitchcock ends up becoming a game that also makes the portraits a moment of presence of the same photographer. You feel and feel it even when he is not in the picture. The artist who enters the medium making the constant communication between photographer and photographed.
The book alternates these life photographs from entertainment venues and hotel rooms, of street scenes…because Araki is also a great street photographer. You should consider this book a big photo album of life lived, played, acted and documented. It is a sort of visual diary of a man that was visitor and witness of the golden era of porn in Tokyo, before the New Amusement Business Control and Improvement Act that put a stop (never really stopped in any case) to pornography.
The erotic underworld in Shinjuku contributes to the myth of that neighborhood to the point that many photographers still have memory of that. And it is thanks to Araki and Moriyama. By offering the context in the contents through photos showing the everyday life and also the dressed models then, finally, naked, sometimes busy in sex action, Araki creates the documentary of this visual diary.
Without obscenity, our cities are dreary places and our life is bleak.
Nobuyoshi Araki
You know I love erotica so much. And I don’t divide things in artistic and pornographic. So I love this book a lot. Araki is a mad man, or maybe he plays a lot with that. I always associated him to the old chinese character in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues 1976’s novel written by Tom Robbins. But Araki showed to be also a a very sensitive man, loving till the end his wife sick of cancer, and he loves cats.
He loves pussises too. And you can see it how much on this book haha. From a photographic point of view is the Araki I learned to love. These portraits are not glamorous. They are snapshots of real life. And real life includes sex, a lot of sex.
Having seen the series The Naked Director I was able to appreciate this book even more because I found a part of the things described in the series on Netflix of that era that must have been really fun in Tokyo.
I am very happy to have now in my collection this book. It is one of those books that you want to see more and more because they propose inspiring stuff for your photography. Thanks to my wife for this precious gift.
