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Poetry and photography from the Osaka underground pulses with life and exposes the raw aesthetics of contemporary Japan.
List of contents
Nihongo
Poems
I.
1. The Tea Room
2. Zero Years Old
3. Sunday Memory
4. Hello
5. Caterwaul
6. A Convenient Armageddon
7. Fletcher 8
8. A Secret Yellow-Green
9. Gradient
10. Motivation
11. Fire Extinguisher
12. From the Tea Room
13. Cozy
14. An Apartment 600 Miles Away
15. Scars Are Scars
16. A Primal Scene
17. Yesterday the Afternoon Disappeared
18. Six Six Years
19. Dice Male
20. A Day I Did Not Want to Laugh
21. Morita
II.
22. Things I Know
23. On My Way
24. IN Nihon
25. Gone Insane
26. Passing By
27. Normal Everyday Faucets
28. The Rain Continues to Fall Indiscriminately
29. Soothing Air
30. The Last Flower I Will Ever See in This Life
31. Vitality, Control, Unnecessary Items
32. nu
33. A Former Red Hotel
34. Giant
35. An Average Daily Life
36. Broken Hand
37. Off
III.
38. Subtraction and Blackness
39. On Emeralds
40. Everyone (1/14)
41. This Novel of Strange Love
42. Hi
43. The Resident
44. Gold As Gold
45. What Are You Looking at?
46. I Proclaim
47. Please Do Not Laugh
48. With a Calm Visage
49. Around the Yeti
50. Do You Understand?
IV.
51. One Dark Night in a Late Spring
52. Goodbye Scissors
53. Formal Attire
54. Fevers
55. Open Your Eyes
56. Visited
57. Thinking in Bed Intertwined
58. Firmly Clasped Hands
59. Framing the Freedom of Being Torn Apart
V.
60. A Staircase Landing
61. Example
62. Old People
63. Soutaro
64. Choosing
65. Artificial Flower Skin
66. Play Synthesis
67. Habit
68. My Uncle is Drama Itself
69. Falling Forward Slightly
70. I Don't Sympathize
71. Legs/
About the author
Yoshinori Henguchi is a photographer, artist, musician and poet from Osaka, Japan. He won Canon's 2006 New Cosmos of Photography Excellence Award for emerging talent. He has exhibited his work in galleries around Japan and in the 2011 Dusseldorf Art Expo. Henguchi performs his poetry at live houses in Japan to the musical backing of the band Shinai Kankei (Inner City Relations). He publishes his poetry through independent magazines in Japan known as dojinshi that are sold through underground bookstores.
Summary
Yoshinori Henguchi's explosive poetry and gritty photography build on the surrealism of Haruki Murakami and his contemporaries to create a new aesthetic for a young generation of Japanese artists. Henguchi explores what he calls man's "foolish will" to define himself on a canvas of "infinities and nothingness."
This collection is especially designed for book lovers, collectors, and readers who revel in the act of reading. It includes Henguchi's essay-poem Nihongo in both English and Japanese, more than sixty pages of color photography, and seventy beautifully designed poems. The overall effect of the book is to plunge the reader into an underground subculture somewhere in the backstreets of Osaka. The mundane trappings of life in JapanTV screens, kitchen cutlery, household tools, plastic umbrellas, women's shoulder padsare rendered absurd and surreal in both Henguchi's poetry and photography.
Yoshinori Henguchi is a photographer, artist, musician, and poet from Osaka, Japan. He often reads his poetry at live houses in Japan while accompanied by the grinding guitar rhythms of musical group ShinaiKankei (Inner City Relations). He publishes his poems in dojinshi journals sold at underground bookstores in Japan. In 2011 he read his poetry at the Dusseldorf Art Expo and took part in the 50 Eyes: Save Japan Photo Cards Project sponsored by the Tokyo Institute of Photography and CMS Corp. In 2006 he won Canon's New Cosmos of Photography Excellence Award. This is his first book in English.
David Michael Ramirez II, the translator, has a PhD in Japan studies from Osaka University of Foreign Studies.
Heather Kirkorowicz has a master's degree in philosophy from Stanford University.
