Sony Corporation - Sony Imaging Gallery | Tsuneo Yamashita Photo Exhibition

Tsuneo Yamashita Photo Exhibition GARDEN CITY

Dates: Friday, October 7 - Thursday, October 20, 202211:00～18:00

Denentoshi is how the “Garden City” urban planning concept posited in England by Ebenezer Howard in 1898 was translated when the idea was introduced in Japan. That all began when Denentoshi KK, a development company founded by Eiichi Shibusawa in Tokyo in 1918, developed Senzoku Denentoshi. He also founded a railway company and used it to market the suburban residential area on the less-than-an-hour commute to the city’s center. That railway company later became Tokyu Railways and, over the 40-plus yeas from 1959, spearheaded the development of Tama Denentoshi between Kajigaya Station and Chuorinkan Station.

I moved near Saginuma Station for college in 1982 and began photographing the rapidly changing landscape alongside the tracks. That was when I first learned of the Kintsuma residential area near Tama-Plaza Station, which was just one station over. They leveled a bunch of hills, built new roads and a subway to create a new town around a big shopping center.

This year, I decided to walk the area along the tracks again. The areas that had been developed early on had lost some of their color and new homes were being built on the unused hill slopes. I photographed the mixed landscape of nice-looking homes with waxed cars in the garages and the remnants of the once-farming village like it was my hometown.

Tsuneo Yamashita