To and Fro

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“Young schoolgirls pressing against me, they’re usually soft and smell good. That’s not so bad. In fact, it can be quite nice but of course, it’s mostly salary men, all bad breath, sweat and hard edges, their elbows and cases and other stuff sticking in me. There’s a big groan when we all push together, finding space where there is none. Summer is the worst, it’s tight and hot and the aircon does nothing. I feel like I’m going to pass out. Maybe I do. I often sleep standing up.”

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Unidentified Office Worker, Tokyo, August 07

JR East, Passenger Survey Report

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For as long as I have lived here, inextricably bound to Tokyo life is the rail commute. Crowded carriages and platforms, teeming with restless suits and side-partings, obediently filing off and on – it’s another picture of the city. I think of it and then of a lifeblood, coursing through intricate arterial passages: the rush, the squeeze, the push, the movement, the pause…the repeat; a cycle so persistent, vital and dull. Everyday I join this same flow and catch the same trains, taking some of that slight and precious space with my average size, case and coat. I get on when the doors yawn open, adding my weight to a load already full. And weary, too. Between faces spent and empty I find some standing room only. The movement begins and the travel resumes. I am being carried again. Then through the glass a familiar footage is ignored. My eyes start to close, I lean and drift, the cradle-sway of transit is soothing. I fall asleep and the journey goes.

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Both pictures featured come from the LX3.

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Embedded, deep cover style – the author as commuter

Into the City

There’s a picture I remember by a British painter, C. R. W. Nevinson. It shows a railway ascending slowly into what looks like the deep set heart of a city. The tracks follow a straight path to a point in the distance crowded by skyscrapers, and then, just as it meets them, turns left and once obstructed, is gone. More than just a clever act of perspective, it seems that the closer the line gets to a destination we can’t see, it is consumed and there, close to the centre, that imagined heart becomes at once illusive and a place removed. It says much, at least to these eyes.

Then adjacent to this recollection comes the film, Metropolis, and the scene that opens onto a vast canyon of man-made landscape. It is the grandest of views and again we are drawn inwards. On either side are tall, imposing structures, full of hard geometry and shadow. In between and far below, betraying their size, is a fast moving auto-expressway. All together the scale on show is one that aspires to match nature’s and easily invokes an appropriate and corresponding awe.

Now then, though the visual linkage shared by these prompted images to the picture above may seem strained, even tenuous, it is all the stuff we bring, the emotional synonymy of each, that overlaps and unites them.

There’s something in all three which acknowledges the experience of the city. It’s the feeling of being here, in one, that living in and being part of, remains, even after all this time, a wonder. And of course it is this, that is many things to many people. As for myself, gazing through a provincial town upbringing, I’m accustomed to the silhouettes of smaller streets and slower rhythms, the kind I’ve come to understand endow a life of routine in Tokyo with a peculiar resonance and surprise.

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This picture was composed and taken using the LX3, with settings finally looking like this: ISO 80, f8, 8

Transport 3

Should you have experienced the raw delight of changing the oil and filter on an engine where a leaky head gasket is allowing coolant and lubricant to blend, you might recognise the ominous colours of the sky in the picture. Those depthless and murky shades are what I recall when I look at this version of a Tokyo night.

The elements within this shot quite easily reveal its relation to an earlier post. The imposing dominance of overhead structures running towards a crowded horizon, cooperating with the roads below to create a sharper sense of perspective; the hot laser beams of now invisible traffic, searing lines on the image sensor; even the absence of people in an environment apparently full of activity. It is a striking arrangement but something about it, something within perhaps, threatens to make it less than what it is.

In my defence, it was taken on the wrong end of an already late evening. What started out as a wander in the happy-go-luckiest sense, became a bona fide session lasting hours and despite a smalltime drama with the cops, I found myself unexpectedly energized. I was on a roll, fired up, mooching around and feeling purposeful, eagerly trying out viewpoints, and finding what looked like, good shot after good shot. But I’d become tired and had a couple of celebratory drinks, and the killer haul I thought was taking away turned out to be thinner and less impressive the next day.

The problems with the above composition demonstrate this. They are the kind borne out of excitement and impatience. They are the kind, ultimately, that burden the experience and get in the way. Like ropey grammar might upset a piece of prose, the disappointment is one of a possible pleasure interrupted.

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Not used as well as it could’ve been: EOS 400D, Tamron 11-18mm lens, with settings at ISO100, f/4.5, 6