Hidden in Plain Sight. A Japanese Journey

It’s been about three years since I wrote this pre-foreword to this book.

Although I have a lot of pictures from my various trips to Japan, organising them into a book is a challenge. The photos themselves are good enough to deserve publication. However, most of them are affected by a ‘déjà-vu’ effect. People on the subway, crowded crossroads, striking contrasts between modernity and the past, or between rural areas and highly urbanised ones, pop culture vs. business culture… no matter how hard I try, every single photo gives the feeling that someone has already done it.

I am neither an anthropologist nor an expert on Japanese society, so I have no reasonable explanation for this feeling. Perhaps it is simply a matter of observer’s bias: since, to quote Bergson, the eye sees what the mind is prepared to understand, the problem is what I am able to see, not the ‘resistance’ of Japan to any attempt to be captured (pun unintended) in a frame. Nevertheless, I will continue to collect ‘raw material’ and see if I can make sense of it. 

and now I am close to see it published, hopefully by this December. Yes, there still is four months to wait, but this is nothing compared to the time it took to organise the book and the photos into something meaningful, starting from the title that, as the whole book, will initially be available only in Italian.