I rushed to catch the Shinkansen from Tokyo Station. I was supposed to take the train an hour earlier, but an urgent matter had delayed me. I arrived at Nagano Station at around 4 PM. My goal was to see the exhibition by photographer Keizo Kitajima at the Nagano Prefectural Museum of Art, which would close at 5 PM.
I stayed until the very last minute. Stepping outside, I found the area completely dark. The sky felt unnaturally vast. Not knowing which way to go, I walked, guided by what seemed to be the silhouette of a temple roof. Then I realised it was Zenkoji Temple. The air was much colder than in Tokyo, piercing my neck relentlessly. But it also felt pleasantly refreshing.
It had been such a long time since my last visit to Zenkoji and its gateway town. How long had it been? I recalled passing nearby just once during the pandemic, but I couldn’t clearly remember.
As a child, I came here countless times. To me, Nagano was the greatest city (I hadn’t yet discovered Tokyo). It was here that I played Space Invaders for the first time, ate curry with natto and saw the dinosaur exhibition at Tokyu Department Store. My cousins lived nearby and visiting them was my purpose and greatest joy back then.
The journey from my home in Suwa took over three hours by car, with my father driving. There were no expressways yet. We had to cross a mountain pass near Mount Tateshina. Once we had crossed the pass, we found ourselves in an urban atmosphere.
This might have been my first time walking through the gateway town at night.
Surprisingly, there were few people around. Sometimes the town matched my memories of it, and sometimes it didn’t. The arcades in my memory, which I remembered as being bustling and vibrant, were now sadly quiet and deserted. In contrast, shops with modern façades suddenly appeared. I realised that I was revisiting memories from nearly 50 years ago.
Kisei Kobayashi
Born in Nagano Prefecture in 1968. Graduated from the Photography Technology Department of Tokyo Polytechnic University Junior College. Worked as a newspaper photographer before becoming freelance. Travels extensively throughout Asia to create his work. In recent years, he has been photographing festivals within Japan and his hometown Suwa. He is the author of numerous books, including “Primitive Cries in the Night”, “Deep Silence” and “shasin wa wakaranai (Photography Is Incomprehensible)”. His latest book is “shashin no kotae (The Answer in Photography)” (December 2025). He received the Japan Photographic Society Newcomer Award for the photobook “DAYS ASIA” and the Tadahiko Hayashi Award for the photographic exhibition “The Boats from Far Away”. His debut film as director was “Toi and Masato”.
