再起動するライティング文化 / issue1

THIS BOOK AVAILABLE HERE. 

When did I start becoming interested in writing? Yes, it must have been when I was in Grade 4 in elementary school. I disliked having the same cover with the image of a flower on my Japonika-Gakushucho(Japanese standard notebook) as everybody else, so I wrote my name in bubble letters on it. I don’t remember why exactly I used bubble letters but I still remember the feeling of elation when I finished the job. My name had many curvy alphabets such as “S” and “M”, and my obsession at that time was drawing airy and smooth curves on these alphabets. At that time, I didn’t realize what I just did writing. To me, it was the same as drawing a picture. I didn’t know until recently that there was a large context to the background of that action. ―I completely forgot about writing until I came to Tokyo but when the tags and throw ups around the city came naturally into my line of sight, it almost became impossible for my brain to filter them so I started taking photos of them. It has almost been four years since I started taking photos of writing in Tokyo and other cities in the world. The more photos I take, the more I have thought experiments about the cultural aspect of writing and its future. Moreover, recently, I have been trying to redefine writing itself through several viewpoints intersecting between the illegality and artistry of writing culture. In this edition, I would like to introduce a part of that.

Editorial Design: Shimpei Miura

Photo, Text: graffiti_hunt_tokyo