2009-2011
Published, docu-magazine.com
At the end of October 2005, I moved from Kyoto to Los Angeles. The dry air of L.A. and the everlasting blue sky felt so empty, and that emptiness was strangely comforting. The Internet had passed through its infancy and was soon entering the age of social networking. Through this magical network of information, I happened to discover that an old acquaintance was living in the next town over. It was Miss Erochica Bamboo, the burlesque performer.
When I was still in graduate school studying sociology while dancing and taking pictures at drag queen parties at night, she was either onstage dancing as a go-go girl or simply on the dance floor as a flamboyant guest. Her appearance was always coquettish yet sophisticated, with the air of a professional performer. In fact, she was the only professional burlesque dancer in Japan at that time, as I learned after she won the Miss Exotic World competition, held annually in the Mojave Desert, in 2003. After earning the honor of being named the number-one burlesque dancer in the United States, she moved her base of operations from Japan to L.A. and began working in the United States.
It was a strange coincidence that someone I knew from a small club in Kyoto was living in the next town over, but it made it possible for me to spend some good times with her—sometimes having coffee together and sometimes being invited to dinner by her. Occasionally, I even went to the bar where she was performing and took her picture. Eventually, she began organizing burlesque parties in Tokyo, and I once again begged her for permission to photograph the events, with my usual onlooker’s audacity. She graciously allowed me to do so.
This series of photographs is the result. Although the shooting period was short, the photographs capture an explosion of energy and light arising from the birth of the neo-burlesque movement in Tokyo. As a photographer, it is one of the greatest blessings of my life to have been able to document this brilliance. The complete series consists of approximately six hundred images, of which the photographs shown here represent only a small fraction.
