東京の地下鉄の一日の利用者は８００万人を超え、巨大な都市に張り巡らされる大動脈として都市機能を支えている。村上は学生の頃からの２０年間、その地下鉄を利用しながら写真を撮り続けた。

バブル経済崩壊以降、日本が低迷し続ける中で村上が見続けた眼差しの先の人々は、あたかも東京という海を漂流するかのごとく、いまだ出口の見えない街を彷徨っているように見える。

平成から新しい元号となり２０２０年という節目の年を迎える東京、地下鉄日記が描く姿は過去のものになるのか、それとも未来のものになるのか。確かなのはこの作品がスナップショットの歴史に残る楔になることだとroshin booksは信じています。

With more than 8 million users per day, Tokyo’s subways are a pulsating aorta supplying the city with life. Since his student days, Masakazu Murakami has been capturing the scenes unfolding underground as a fellow passenger.

Murakami kept shooting as Japan entered its long recession after the burst of the Bubble, the people at the other end of his gaze seemingly lost in a city without exits, drifting through Tokyo’s subway system as if it were an endless sea.

With Tokyo embracing the milestone year of 2020, having switched to a new imperial era after thirty Heisei years, will the figure drawn by Murakami’s Subway Diary be one of the past or one of the future? No matter the eventual answer, roshin books believes that his work will become a turning point in the history of snapshot photography.