Outsiders In The Cradle of Humanity: Joji Hashiguchi’s Street Photography Across Six Cities

In the sum­mer of 1981, Japan­ese pho­tog­ra­ph­er Joji Hashiguchi left Tokyo on a self-direct­ed jour­ney through Liv­er­pool, Lon­don, Nurem­berg, West Berlin, and New York to cap­ture young peo­ple on the streets of those cities and show them as they were, the images he cap­tured are a doc­u­ment of the times, yet the strug­gles they depict are haunt­ing­ly time­less.

Already a pub­lished pho­tog­ra­ph­er in his native Japan, the self-taught Joji “George” Hashiguchi was no stranger to direct­ing his lens towards young peo­ple who had slipped through the cracks. Hav­ing just pub­lished Shishen (‘The Look’), a prize-win­ning book of pho­tographs of the youth counter-cul­tures in Tokyo seek­ing to escape the pres­sures of school and home life in the streets, Hashiguchi want­ed to go beyond the bor­ders of his home coun­try.

Hav­ing read about youth protest move­ments unfold­ing across Europe and want­i­ng to doc­u­ment the con­di­tions of the mar­gin­al­ized, the frus­trat­ed, and the for­got­ten wher­ev­er he could find them, Hashiguchi set out for a trip abroad. most­ly total out­siders and minor­i­ty groups like hero­in addicts in Ger­many, London’s skin­head groups, stu­dents in Tokyo, or impov­er­ished teenagers in New York.

The result was Ore­tachi Doko ni mo Irarenai: Are­ru Sekai no Judai (released in Eng­lish as We Have No Place to Be), pub­lished a year lat­er in 1982. The series, shot entire­ly in black and white using 28mm and 40mm lens­es, depicts youth in tran­sit and in sta­sis: loi­ter­ing at bus stops, slumped in cafés, shar­ing smokes in alleys, each frame teth­ered to a sense of fatigue, uncer­tain­ty, or faint fra­ter­ni­ty with their peers. Across over 100 pho­tographs tak­en over two years that he chose for the book, Hashiguchi showed how youth cul­ture, though shaped by local his­to­ries, shared a sense of dis­en­fran­chise­ment that spanned the globe.

He approached each place with delib­er­ate care. “I could not take away the pain and anx­i­ety from the youth I pho­tographed,” he lat­er said, “but I could get close to them because I under­stood their inabil­i­ty to build rela­tion­ships with main­stream soci­ety.” His empa­thy was not roman­ti­cized; he acknowl­edged that when he pressed the shut­ter, he felt “as though my soul is coat­ed in iron.” Still, he offered some­thing few oth­ers did: to look care­ful­ly, with­out judge­ment. “Per­haps the youth accept­ed me because peo­ple passed by them every day, either avoid­ing them or cast­ing a cold glare.”

His route was inspired as much by cul­tur­al res­o­nance as the polit­i­cal and social unrest that was tak­ing place at the time. “There were a num­ber of rea­sons why I want­ed to go to Liv­er­pool — one of them was to see the place where The Bea­t­les had made their music,” Hashiguchi recalled. “I had also read about the Tox­teth riots… images of young men hurl­ing stones on streets engulfed in flames burned in my mind.” In West Berlin, it was Chris­tiane F’s grim auto­bi­og­ra­phy Zoo Sta­tion that drew him to the city. Nurem­berg offered a con­trast: KOMM, a youth-run exper­i­men­tal “school out­side of school,” stood as a rare exam­ple of coop­er­a­tive urban reform, while New York was expe­ri­enc­ing the ten­sion of the cold war and rapid social change.

Hashiguchi trav­eled between cities by train and fer­ry, inten­tion­al­ly avoid­ing flights. “I want­ed to expe­ri­ence the atmos­phere of the space in-between; to feel the shift in cul­ture, and to feel the phys­i­cal dis­tance between each city with my own body,” he said. The act was inten­tion­al, he want­ed to remain as ground­ed as pos­si­ble and see what oth­ers were see­ing, which often mean wit­ness­ing unem­ploy­ment, pover­ty, prej­u­dice, drug use, and the lin­ger­ing effects of vio­lence. The series often presents the view­er por­traits of peo­ple marred by dif­fi­cult lives: eyes star­ing off into the dis­tance, tired faces, bruised bod­ies, lone­li­ness.

Each chap­ter in the book, one for each city, begins with a quote told to Hashiguchi by a local youth: “I don’t have any mon­ey. I don’t have any work. It’s like I don’t even have a life.” from an indi­vid­ual in Liv­er­pool. “I didn’t have any­thing to do, I was bored. Back then, the only thing around me was hero­in.” from Nurem­burg.

We Have No Place to Be was reis­sued in 2020 by Ses­sion Press with around thir­ty pre­vi­ous­ly unseen pho­tographs as well as Hashiguchi’s Tokyo-based works from Shisen. The edi­tion also includes Mika Kobayashi’s crit­i­cal essay and a fore­word by artist Yoshit­o­mo Nara, reflect­ing on his own time spent liv­ing in Europe dur­ing the 80s. Kobayashi notes, “Although each coun­try is undoubt­ed­ly home to its own unique social and his­tor­i­cal con­text, these youths shared a com­mon dis­con­tent and pent-up frus­tra­tion that knew no out­let … Unable to choose their place of birth, these youths were con­script­ed to exist with­in their pre­des­tined loca­tion in time and his­to­ry, all the while mouthing their cry, ‘we have no place to be.’”

Reflect­ing on the book’s reis­sue, Hashiguchi remarked: “Although the way we live has changed, I do not believe the human expe­ri­ence has. Youth today are suf­fer­ing from the same anx­i­eties about their future, and rela­tion­ships with their fam­i­ly and friends, as we were 40 years ago. In Japan, sui­cide rates among young peo­ple con­tin­ue to rise year on year. Despite new ways of com­mu­ni­cat­ing, these sta­tis­tics prove that iso­la­tion and divi­sion with­in soci­ety is deep­en­ing.”

Though his pho­tographs are steeped in hard­ship, they occa­sion­al­ly flick­er with moments of inti­ma­cy and resilience. “Among all the dis­or­der and vio­lence,” Hashiguchi wrote, “on the street I saw tol­er­ance, and kind­ness… the street does not choose the peo­ple who walk it — it is out of reach of ordered soci­ety. The street is the cra­dle of human­i­ty.”