num_pages: 160
description: The subjects of itinerant Tokyo portrait photographer Watanabe Katsumi's 1960s and 70s photographs are the prostitutes, street people, drag queens, entertainers and gangsters (Yakuza) that populated Kabukicho, the red-light district of Shinjuku, at night during that era. Watanabe made his living by selling these photographs to his subjects, offering three prints for 200 yen. A modest gentleman, Watanabe had a keen sensitivity to the natural posturing of his subjects, which allowed them to uninhibitedly reveal their identities. He saw Kabukicho as a stage, and his photographs document the performers. To accompany the photographs collected in this volume, which borrows its title from Watanabe's first book, The Gangs of Shinjuku , published in 1973, Iizawa Kotaro, who wrote the noted essay "The Evolution of Postwar Photography," in Anne Tucker's essential study, The History of Japanese Photography , chronicles the history of Shinjuku and offers a biography of Watanabe, who died last year at the age of 67.
language: English
title: Watanabe Katsumi: Gangs of Kabukicho
titlecomplete: Watanabe Katsumi: Gangs of Kabukicho
genres: Photography
ratings_count: 4
publisher: PPP Editions/Andrew Roth Inc., New York