When the author of purple rivers joins forces with a photographer who has his entrances into the hidden side of Tokyo, the result is inevitably scarlet.
Posted at 11:30 a.m.
Jean-Christophe Grangé and Patrick Siboni, both passionate about Japanese culture and counter-culture, immerse us through texts and images in the streets of the capital, at first wise and conventional, to become over the pages of increasingly prohibited.
The writer, who had probed the nocturnal secrets of the city during research for one of his works, describes and dissects all aspects, setting the table with the hallucinating local gastronomy, engaging on the contrast between traditional culture and pop culture, to finally dive head first into the red zones of a Tokyo already on fire.
Wacky eroticism, bodies streaked with ropes, men in latex on a leash… While Grangé brings us staggering insights into the social and cultural mechanisms that make this obscure machine turn, Siboni’s lens slips into the most forbidden places to take pictures that cannot leave anyone indifferent.
The beauty and variety of these sometimes subdued, sometimes electric images, combined with the detailed and instructive texts of the book, make this tokyo purple a multi-level journey plunging us deeper and deeper into a state of fascination.
tokyo purple
Texts by Jean-Christophe Grange
Photos by Patrick Siboni
Albin Michael
304 pages