For forty years, I frequented a small coffee shop located in a town three stations away from Ikebukuro.
I went there at lease once a week, and at times, even every single day back when I was still in school. Even the days I skipped class. During those times, I had spicy curry and drank a cup of bitter Mandheling coffee.
I founded my office in this town when I became a freelance. The office had a darkroom, the room was sunny, and eventually became a place where people gathered. This is what Tokyo meant to me.
The time has come to leave this town in 2018. We have to move out of the building because of the upcoming renovation.
I have been taking pictures of this town for a long time. They are the pictures of the front of the station, of shopping arcades or may be even the chimney of the public bath. I was taking pictures seemingly without conscience thought, acting on the part of the brain governed by cerebellum rather than the cerebrum.
Never the less, I was conscious to the fact that there would come a day when I have would have to leave this town behind.
The writer, Seigo Matsuoka identified that nostalgia as “a feeling around the loss of hometown which one desires to retrieve”.
This could be the best way to express how I feel, and the underlying meaning behind the “2B and bitter coffee”.
Satoru Watanabe
|
