Greg Girard’s vintage photographs show the underbelly of boom-era Japan

He left his luggage at Haneda Airport and, bedless, spent his first night in Tokyo exploring the streets of Shinjuku’s bustling city district, camera in hand.

“I was just blown away by the way the whole thing looked, as it had never been presented in this Western, modern city,” Girard recalls in a video interview, noting that his arrival predates movies like “Blade Runner” and ’90s pop culture. exposing mainstream Western audiences to major Asian cities.

“I finally decided, that first night, that I would stay,” he said.

This 1979 image shows a crossing in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district. Credit: Greg Girard

What starts out as a fad becomes a four year stint, which sees Girard teaching English by day and photographing Tokyo by night. He rented an apartment and, nearby, a small dark room where he would develop his photographs.

He didn’t know it at the time, but these images capture the boom years before Japan’s famous economic bubble burst in the 1990s. With the yen soaring, a sharp increase in market speculation will eventually lead to a financial crisis. But before that, says Girard, there was a tangible sense of affluence emerging — woven through the image of consumer electronics, office towers and busy intersections.

“This was a time of awakening Japan, before the rest of the world really realized what was going on,” said the Canadian photographer, who published a selection of his vintage photos in the new book “JAL 76 88”, adding: “It was a period of real optimism and a type of dynamic growth. Japan as a place is starting to be treated as an equal (with the West).”

Light in shadow

During his nightly wanderings, Girard becomes fascinated not only by Japan’s rapidly rising economy but also by what happens there after hours. Many of the book’s images hint at the country’s darker underbelly: Posters of naked women, entrances to seedy nightclubs and empty hotel rooms that leave viewers wondering what might have gone on inside.

“There’s a division between the practicalities of running ‘Japan Inc’ – making sure people go to bed early – and the mechanics of letting go out all night if you want,” says the photographer. “The two things happened simultaneously.

“Trains would stop at midnight, so there was a whole subculture of what to do between the last train stopping and the first leaving (the next morning),” he continued. “There are gaming arenas and all-night coffee shops where people park themselves in front of expensive coffee and nobody bugs you for sleeping in a cubicle all night — that’s what they’re there for.”

Inside of a hotel room in Nara, Japan. Credit: Greg Girard

Girard’s once-futuristic images emit bright greens, pinks, and blues, saturated colors with the use of long exposure settings. The photographer lets the light flood his lens and illuminate what’s in the shadows. Often using a tripod to steady his shots, he focuses on where the light falls, not where it comes from, painting Japanese cities bathed in neon light instead of emitting it.

“It felt right to get away from the cliché of neon lights,” he says, “and to see where the light lands, whether it’s on people, buildings, cars, puddles, or whatever it may be.”

Career in pictures

But despite all the passion captured in photographs, some of his most compelling photographs are void of human activity, whether in deserted construction sites or empty alleys lit by street lamps. As he familiarized himself with Tokyo, Girard used photography as an excuse to explore quieter areas he might not have been.

“Alleys and streets are not far from entertainment districts, or regular neighborhoods – they also have a life of their own,” he says. “I go wandering, just looking at the alleys around the waterfront, before it becomes a popular part of town. Wherever you live, taking pictures is a way to make it your own.”

Nightlife in Yokosuka, a city in Kanagawa prefecture Japan. Credit: Greg Girard

Girard’s experience also helped hone his camera skills, laying the foundation for a successful photography career. Experimenting with long exposures and different types of film was something he “consciously started exploring and getting good at technically” in those years, he said, adding: “So it was also a learning process.”

Looking back, Girard says his Japanese photographs served as a kind of diary of his youth. But despite spending his nights on the town, he always maintains a certain distance from the nightlife he documents. The focus has always been on photography itself.

“I didn’t go to bars to drink or party – in those days anyway,” he says. “I do almost anything and everything just to make pictures.”