Tokyo Tsukiji

Nicola Tanzini

Publisher
Contrasto
Year
2018
ISBN
9788869657542
Specifications
Hardback
21 x 26 cm
200 pages
about 144 pictures in black and white
Italian / English / French / Japanese
Note by Benedetta Donato
Translations by Luisa Centro and Laura Trémoulet

Tanzini chooses to catch one precise moment of the market’s working day: late morning, when that place of crossings, chaos and frenzy slowly turns into a place of quiet and gives itself up to rest. The unsold fish, the tiredness of the workers and the truce after a day’s labour are the protagonists of this account, which offers "an unprecedented visual testimony of the largest fish market in the world": a documentary of the genuineness of human work. After a note by the curator, Benedetta Donato, the pictures are divided into eight sections. In Chaos the market is still in full swing just before the pause, from unloading to sale, combined with Japanese order and precision (Order). Accounts, opened by an emblematic clock stopped at 11:20, introduces the break, between updating the books and a glance at the newspaper. The crowd has gone and everything becomes smaller, enclosed in a small space (In a box). What remains are faces, smiles, time to exchange a greeting (Portraits). It is time to stop, and the tradition of the fish market connects to the technology of the smartphone (Connections). Coffee and cigarettes tells the most symbolic and international ritual of the work break. The last section is Resistance: tiredness, yawning, the wish to give in to rest on makeshift beds before taking up the labour again. Considered a sacred place by Japanese restaurateurs, the market became one of the most visited attractions of international tourism, and risked losing its identity with its relocation to another area, completed by 2020.

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