My work has been critiqued as being something which is both certain and uncertain. During my time photographing Chinese cities I often wondered whether my combined feelings of both relief and excitement were down to my being Asian or not. Moreover, the question arose: am I only able to have these feelings in Asia itself ? To answer this, I left for Europe; moving from country to country, spending my time hanging around towns in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and Britain, taking photographs with no fixed intention in mind.

For me, photographs have the potential to capture that which is ordinarily hidden in concrete objects. “Shade” is one of those things that photography is able to bring out into the open. The concept of shade in question is not the straightforward physical phenomenon of objects obstructing light rays. No, shade here is understood to be something akin to a hidden presence which exists in the core of humans, objects and obscure corners of towns. It also exists inside the “ima”, which are guest-receiving rooms in the traditional Japanese house in which I spent my childhood. In the late afternoon when the room is flooded with evening sunset, the shade slowly diminishes.

I find that the light in Europe had a different quality or essence compared to what I experienced in Japan and China, and I can only characterize the sunset in Asia as being more subdued. I was also struck by the difference in the passage of time in Europe, which seems more leisurely compared to Japan. This lack of urgency is also evident in the to-ing and fro-ing of people. Thus the nexus of man, object and place as seen through a prism of taking one’s time within a defined space might also be considered as “shade” in my idiosyncratic conception of that notion.