Japanese urban space is famously dense but at the same time astonishingly malleable. The architect Fumihiko Maki, in a book now reviewed on this site, observes that “compared with New York, Tokyo is a disorderly, relaxed city, whose architectural framework offers few constraints. That is precisely why the formation of territory in Tokyo is either very delicate and personal or extremely abstract in nature.” My pictures are concerned with both kinds of territory, but I am especially drawn to the spaces between planned projects. It is in these narrow confines that people and businesses perform the countless small-scale improvisations that give Japanese cities their character. These minor spaces are at once public and oddly intimate, and easily missed — the open secrets of urban Japan.
. . .
