Earth, Air, Fire and Water – in Sapporo

A two-day relaxing trip to Sapporo, Japan – at least as relaxing as 70,000 steps of photo-walks can be in 31°C. The title emerged from the images I happened to take rather than being a pre-planned exercise. And there are a few more images at the end – let’s call them ‘Spirits’.

I shot three rolls of film: FP4+, Fomapan 100 and Delta 100 in that order, The films were developed together in PMK Pyro for 11 minutes (a slight under-development for the Delta). The camera was a Leica MP with a Zeiss 35mm f2.8 C-Biogon with a yellow or occasionally orange filter, and all images were taken hand held with exposure times down to ¼ second. It’s been a long-time since I used a 35mm lens – the only practical option on the MP/M6/M-A cameras because of the 0.72 magnification viewfinder. I’ve become spoiled by an M3 and 50s – I can feel a ‘bye-bye MP’ coming on.

Earth

Underground actually. Sapporo has a maze of underground streets, walkways between metro stations and/or air conditioned shopping streets. Side entrances to shops are often very smart and offer a getaway from the bustle of the walkway.

Winters in Hokkaido are long and harsh – four months with snow and ice on the ground so the safety conscious go below ground where possible – and nowadays summers are much hotter than only a decade ago, shade and air-con are welcome.

Air

Blue sky, occasional cirrus clouds and modern steel and glass high rise buildings.

Fire …

… in the belly. In other words let’s go to a restaurant!

Water

The ‘river’ Sosei (featured image, FP4+). ‘River’ seems like an exaggeration though its importance is greater than the quantity of water between its banks – a man-made river dividing the west and east (address system) sides of the city and one of the first constructions on the city site; built by Otomo Kametaro.

Spirits

In the two years since I last came to Sapporo the loss of connection with the past has become starkly apparent. Imagine for a moment that every generation replaces all the infrastructure – roads and buildings – then each generation would see itself in isolation. We do this to some extent already – think of your grandmother’s grandfather – you probably can’t, whoever they were they mean nothing to you. I was walking along Tanukikoji to see my favourite row of ramshackle self-built homes and izakayas: it was gone; just car parks and office blocks, the character and history of the way of life of the people who lived there and in their era was gone. Photographs, museums and history books just don’t preserve reality only its shadow locked away.

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