NORTH STACK004

Text :

Hokkaido, the northern isle. From its tip, in fine weather, you can make out Sakhalin
and the Kuriles, the last scales of the Russian dragon. Here you meet the Ainu, the
original people, pushed back by the conquerers from the south. In the summer you
flock to the beaches to escape the furnace of Tokyo; light yukata on the skin, friendly
Parties to the pulse of jazz musicians, mysterious like magicians, the ambiguous candor
of the baths, the onsen, forbidden only to the bearers of « extravagant tattoos » -one feels
transported into an Ozu film. Sixty years before, my uncle Anton had already photographed
an onsen: but he boasted that it was an image stolen from a harem.