File 7: "Stripper Zukan" by Yoshiichi Hara, 1982, reviewed by Natsuko Oda

Since 1975 Yoshiichi Hara has made more than fifteen hundred photographs of strip-tease artists – and Stripper Zukan is regarded as the starting point of this lifelong project.  In 1981 Hara held his first 'stripper' exhibition at the Ginza Nikon Salon Gallery in Tokyo – featuring the photographs of two hundred strippers created after visiting some three hundred Tokyo-area strip clubs.  The next year he published Stripper Zukan, which comprised of only sixty-five portraits from that series, a book inspired by E.J. Bellocq’s Storyville Portraits (Little Brown & Co, 1970, with images championed – and posthumously printed – by Lee Friedlander).

One immediately sees that each of the book’s portraits is from the clubs’ 'greenrooms'. The greenroom functions as a portal between the stripper’s often-mundane life and the bright stage-lights – a place where a woman metamorphoses into a stripper. Despite the photographer’s presence the women of Stripper Zukan appear relaxed, innocent, and defenseless – alone in their greenroom, protected from the outside world, their true selves before becoming fantasy objects.

Stripper Zukan presents a variety of images of women comfortably napping or lazily smoking – often with too much makeup on a stressed face, but posing proudly with a cheerful smile. There are also various body-types, with too small breasts, fat bellies, skinny arms and legs, and peculiar tattoos – in underwear or showy sequined costumes. In the background may be club notices stuck on the walls or an unmade futon. One discovers the strippers’ fatigue, bravado, sadness, and coquetry throughout Hara’s work. You cannot help but wonder how Hara achieved such free and relaxed expressions – and why he chose to show us these greenroom scenes instead of more typical stage shots.

When Hara was eighteen-years old he traveled to an old spa town in northern Japan and found a strip-club there. A middle-aged stripper, with her fat belly, was standing on the stage – at the side of stage a child (possibly her own child) was roaming about. Hara lost any sexual desire associated with this art because this stripper remained him of his mother – and that the child could be himself. This triggered his introspection and empathy that – under different circumstances – she could have been his mother. 

In short, Hara understood that strippers each have individual lives behind the bright lights – and he recognized that behind their attitude and toughness, these women, who used their own bodies to earn a living, had everyday, often ordinary, lives, needs, and dreams.

In 2013 Hara held an exhibition of vintage prints at Gallery Sekka in Tokyo. As he looked back on his early days he said, “Most of the strippers I met in the past were older than me. And now they are growing older, but I’m sure they still strive to maintain a shadow of how they once looked. I also have aged – I’m already sixty-five years old. I want to show you how the photographs I made and those days haven’t changed. They remain portraits of proud strippers who I love very much”.

Hara’s sincere respect for strippers and their lives can be felt in these words. He praises their spirit and intellect as they try to first be authentic women before dancing as (male fantasy) strippers. In addition he admires their courage as they live hard lives while conscious that they are regarded only as sexual objects to their viewers.

With his sympathy for every stripper he met – and for her life behind the stage, Hara persistently focused on the greenrooms, where strippers show their naked faces as real women. By arranging their portraits in a simple 'zukan'-style (illustrated reference book) Hara presents anonymous identities, but elevates these lives, and their special occupation, into the universality of being any women.

(English translation by Masato Fukuda, Michael Lang, Miwa Susuda)

Natsuko Oda: photobook writer, currently based in Hiroshima, Japan, specializes in Japanese photobooks in the 60s-70s, earned the Master of Arts in Photography and certificate of Museum of Art Counsil from Nihon University in 2000.  Master thesis on Diane Arbus.

BOOK INFO:

Title: Stripper Zukan

Artist: Yoshiichi Hara

Designer: Yoshiichi Hara

Publisher: Del-sha (self-published)

Date: 1982

Size: 31×26 cm

Binding/pages: softcover/128pp

ARTIST INFO: 

Yoshiichi Hara

Japanese, b. 1948

Born in Tokyo, Hara grew up near the theater house where his parents used to take him.  Later the theater became his life long fascination for his work.  Hara was first introduced to camera at his early age and he used to take pictures of his cat, family and any surrounding with a camera that his elder brother won as a prize.  In 1971 he entered Chiyoda Design Photography school.  He held his debut exhibition, “Touhoku Zanzou” (Afterglow of the North Eastern Province), at Ginza Cannon Salon Gallery in 1973. During this period he also joined a circus in Miyazaki prefecture and he took many photographs of their performers. In 1974 he became a photographer for a tabloid paper that was the only newspaper featuring strip-clubs in Japan at the time. After leaving this newspaper company, he devoted himself to photographing strippers around Tokyo – and he has taken their portrait photos as his main subject ever since.

When he worked as a photographer for adult magazines, he had taken, on average, photographs of three strippers per week for forty years, which he used to consider to be his duty.

In addition to this photography books, Hara has published many books about the culture and history of the vanishing world of striptease.

Recently he stopped to take any assignment for adult magazines (because of heart illness) and devotes himself only to his own personal projects. Especially his later work was created from his view of life and death and his understanding of life’s uncertainty. Hara continues to pursue the question of “what is life about?” and always goes back to the days when he first took photographs of strippers.  His photography has been recently reviewed favorably in Japan.

Publication:

1978 Fuubaika (Wind-pollinated Flower), Del-sha, self-published

1980 My Gypsy Rose, Yagenbura Sensyo, Bansei-sha

1982 Stripper Zukan (Strippers Illustrated Book), Del-sha, self-published

1984 Shyukujo roku Hara Yoshiichi Collection (Documents of Ladies in Yoshiichi  Hara Collection), Bansei-sha

1988 Mandara Zukan (Illustrated Book of Buddhist Visual Schema of the Enlightened Mind), Bansei-sha

1994 1994 Strippers Meikan (Directory of Strippers 1994), Fuuga-shobou

1995 Kageyama Rina Densetsu (The Legend of Rina Kageyama), Seijin-sha

1999 The City Where Strip Club (Stripp no Aru Machi), Jiyuukokumin-sya　

2000 The Strippers, Futaba-sha

2000 The Strippers 2, Futaba-sha

2001 The Strippers 3, Futaba-sha

2008 Utsutsu no Yami (The Darkness of Reality), Soukyuu-sha

2010 Showa Strip Kikou (Travel-writing About Strip in Showa Era), co-published by Tetsuhiko Sakata & Pot Publisher

2011 Hikari aru uchi ni (While It Is Still Light), Soukyuu-sha

2013 Tokoyo no Mushi (Insects in the Eternal World), Soukyuu-sha

2013 Tenshi Mita Machi (In The City With Angel), PlaceM　

Exhibition:

1973 Touhoku Zanzou（Afterglow of the North Eastern Province) Ginza Cannon Salon Gallery

1980 Stripper Zukan (Strippers Illustrated Book) Ginza Nikon Salon Gallery and Osaka Nikon Salon Gallery

1981 Nobori No Enkei (A Distant View of Flags Flying)group exhibition Sinjuku Nikon Salon Gallery

1983 Shyukujo roku  (Documents of Ladies ) Shinjuku Minolta Space Gallery

1986 Mandara Zukan (Illustrated Book of Buddhist Visual Schema of the Enlightened Mind) Shinjuku Nikon Salon Gallery and Osaka Nikon Salon Gallery

1987 Mandara Zukan Ⅱ(Illustrated Book of Buddhist Visual Schema of the Enlightened Mind Ⅱ) K Gallery Fukushima 

1993 Eros No Kokuin（Carved Seal of Eros)Ginza Nikon Salon Gallery and Osaka Nikon Salon Gallery

2002 Utsutsu no Yami (The Darkness of Reality) Ginza Nikon Salon Gallery 

2008 Utsutsu no Yami Ⅱ(The Darkness of Reality Ⅱ) Soukyuu-sya Gallery

2009 Maboroshi no Machi(The Lost Illusional Citys) group exhibition Third District Gallery Shinjuku

         Maboroshi no Toki(The Lost Illusional Times) Soukyuu-sya Gallery

　　   Tokoyo no Mushi Ⅰ(Insects in the Eternal World  Ⅰ)Third District Gallery Shinjuku

2010 Hikari aru ichi ni Ⅰ (While It Is Still Light Ⅰ) Third District Gallery Shinjuku

2011 Hikari aru uchi ni Ⅱ (While It Is Still Light Ⅱ) Totodo Gallery Shibuya

        Hikari aru uchi ni Ⅲ (While It Is Still Light Ⅲ) Ban Photo Gallery Nagoya

2012 Hikari aru uchi ni (While It Is Still Light ) Ginza Nikon Salon Gallery  and Osaka Nikon Salon Gallery

         Shashin no kai syou ten (Exhibition of the Prize of “Society of Photography) Place M Gallery Shinjuku

　　 Tokoyo no Mushi Ⅱ (Insects in the Eternal World Ⅱ )Third District Gallery Shinjuku

2013 Participated in Japanese Art Photographers 107 at Tokyo International Forum

　　  Tokoyo no Mushi (Insects in the Eternal World ) Ginza Nikon Salon Gallery  and Osaka Nikon Salon Gallery

　　 Tenshi Mita Machi (In The City With Angel) PlaceM Gallery, Shinjuku

　　 Stripper Zukan(Strippers Illustrated Book) Sekka Gallery, Ueno