While wandering Ameya-Yokocho in Ueno, I captured the back of this leather jacket worn by a middle-aged Japanese man while he was shopping at one of the small stalls beneath the railway tracks of Ameya-Yokocho in Ueno, Tokyo. What immediately caught my attention were the vivid neon colors and the unmistakable image of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen rendered across the jacket’s back panel.
The photograph unexpectedly pulled me back to my late teens and my first exposure to the music of the Sex Pistols and the Ramones, often playing in the background of chaotic barracks parties during my days in the Navy back in the ’80s while stationed in Kanagawa Prefecture. In that sense, the photograph has become less about punk itself and more about how certain images resurface decades later, in places and moments I never would have expected.
- Location: Ameya-Yokocho, Taito Ward, Tokyo
- Timestamp: 2026/01/02・13:46
- Fujifilm X100V with 5% diffusion filter
- 23 mm ISO 1000 for 1/125 sec. at ƒ/2
- Astia Soft film simulation
Check out my full write-up (1-minute read) with references for a deeper diver:
by pix4japan