a pretty interesting article on what has become an iconic neighborhood in Tokyo
Roppongi Hills glitz, cast in an ironic light
By Kaori Shoji International Herald Tribune
MONDAY, JUNE 5, 2006
TOKYO When Japan's foremost fashion photographer teams up with one of its most visible urban developers, the result, surprisingly, is art.
The photographer Kishin Shinoyama has produced an elegant and attractive book of snazzy building and celebrity shots (designer Vivienne Westwood and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, among others) that define Roppongi Hills: the sprawling, 724,000-square-meter complex of luxury brand boutiques, hotel, high-rise condos, restaurants, cafés, theaters and a Japanese garden that has been designed to surround and complement the 54-story Mori Building, named for the corporation that owns Roppongi Hills.
Since its emergence three years ago, Hills - as the place is known here - has become a Tokyo metaphor for naughty architectural design, colossal money deals and celebrity glitz. But Shinoyama's photo collection shows a Hills that is intriguing, even exotic, and its title, "Roppongi Hills x Kishin Shinoyama," suggests the pairing of the two names is in itself a cause for celebration.
Shinoyama has been at the forefront of Japanese mainstream fashion photography for the last three decades and has helped launch a girlie culture (as opposed to a model culture) that has been a large influence on the nation's standards of fashion. He has shot one new starlet after another, posed and arrayed in varying degrees of luxury-brand skimpiness - or nothing at all.
He has worked with some of Japan's most cutting-edge actresses (among them Kaori Momoi, co-star of "Memoirs of a Geisha") to produce some of the most talked-about fashion shots of the year. He released a book on the media idol Rie Miyazawa when she was still in her teens, frolicking in the grass in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in nothing but her birthday suit.
Shinoyama's policy has been to value the woman over her wardrobe, and her physique over her personality - not unlike a fellow photographer and archrival, Nobuyoshi Araki. Araki, however, has accused Shinoyama of having no idea what eros was or what women wanted.
Indeed, Shinoyama's fashion photos evoked no sexuality or emotion. Critics pointed out that Shinoyama's shots were too safe, too sterile, and that women wound up looking perfect and manicured but very little else.
This time, however, the sanitized sexiness of Shinoyama's craft and the sanitized monstrosity that is Roppongi Hills have created a matching chemistry. Shinoyama's stark, vivid prints reveal the subtext of the Hills project: Tokyo as dominated by the Mori Building Co. Ltd.
One of the biggest property developers in the world as well as the controlling company behind most of Tokyo's major development projects of the last decade, Mori Building now sets the standard for most things in the city, from architectural aesthetics to art to food to fashion.
In Roppongi, Mori has built another Hills complex, on the Omotesando strip in the Aoyama district, and in the same neighborhood, the Midtown Project is slated for completion in 2007.
Of these, Roppongi remains the most interesting, for its sheer size and steep, labyrinthine structure: a seemingly endless maze connected by narrow slopes, pathways and escalators that inevitably lead to a boutique or some other venue of conspicuous consumption.
Understandably, high-end brands compete ruthlessly for floor space in Roppongi Hills; it's a mark of success and ultra-high visibility to be able to afford retail floor space, however small, in the Hills complex.
The same goes for restaurants and cafés; Joël Robuchon's café is an enduring dating hot spot, and the bar inside the Grand Hyatt hotel is a gathering place for many of the city's celebrities. The current tofu dessert trend in Tokyo is said to have been launched from the tofu café located near the main entrance to the Mori Building.
Shinoyama concentrates less on the physical aspect of the buildings than what goes on inside them. At an exhibition featuring photos from his book that was held on the top floor of the Roppongi Hills Mori Building, viewers were surprised to see that the Hills grounds has a preschool and a day-care center, and members of the "Hills-Tribe," the nickname for the residents living in the high-rise condos, actually gather for an event as traditional as a rice-planting ceremony.
Among the celebrities who live here, Shinoyama Nigo, the designer behind the Tokyo brand A Bathing Ape, and his actress girlfriend, Riho Makise, posing in their penthouse condo surrounded by samples of Nigo's New York Pop Art collection (he is one of the wealthiest entrepreneurs in Japan). He also chose the bad-boy designer-artist Takashi Murakami, standing in front of what appears to be a Japanified Nirvana consisting of a lotus pond and a Murakami sculpture. There are also shots of Ryuichi Sakamoto in his office/ study and Minoru Mori, the chief executive of Mori Building Co. Ltd., posing before a mock-up display of Tokyo.
What surfaces from Shinoyama's collection of images is a deadpan irony unseen in his previous works. He focuses his precision lens on what seems, in the end, a gigantic and ruthless piece of urban machinery that the city is powerless to stop, gobbling up the nitty-gritty side of Tokyo living and spitting it out in glossy, plasticky little pieces.
Shinoyama recognizes the machinery for what it is and takes a perverse delight in framing those images that attest to its workings and to the artificial air that perpetually wafts through the vents, the densely cocooned, ultra-controlled environment that is Roppongi Hills.
Only a few feet away stretches the infamous and filthy metropolitan expressway, straddling the dirty noodle stalls and sex shops that make up the rest of Roppongi. There's probably an urban moral to be drawn from all this, but Shinoyama slyly hides his message, inviting the reader to look and ponder and look again.
TOKYO When Japan's foremost fashion photographer teams up with one of its most visible urban developers, the result, surprisingly, is art.
The photographer Kishin Shinoyama has produced an elegant and attractive book of snazzy building and celebrity shots (designer Vivienne Westwood and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, among others) that define Roppongi Hills: the sprawling, 724,000-square-meter complex of luxury brand boutiques, hotel, high-rise condos, restaurants, cafés, theaters and a Japanese garden that has been designed to surround and complement the 54-story Mori Building, named for the corporation that owns Roppongi Hills.
Since its emergence three years ago, Hills - as the place is known here - has become a Tokyo metaphor for naughty architectural design, colossal money deals and celebrity glitz. But Shinoyama's photo collection shows a Hills that is intriguing, even exotic, and its title, "Roppongi Hills x Kishin Shinoyama," suggests the pairing of the two names is in itself a cause for celebration.
Shinoyama has been at the forefront of Japanese mainstream fashion photography for the last three decades and has helped launch a girlie culture (as opposed to a model culture) that has been a large influence on the nation's standards of fashion. He has shot one new starlet after another, posed and arrayed in varying degrees of luxury-brand skimpiness - or nothing at all.
He has worked with some of Japan's most cutting-edge actresses (among them Kaori Momoi, co-star of "Memoirs of a Geisha") to produce some of the most talked-about fashion shots of the year. He released a book on the media idol Rie Miyazawa when she was still in her teens, frolicking in the grass in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in nothing but her birthday suit.
Shinoyama's policy has been to value the woman over her wardrobe, and her physique over her personality - not unlike a fellow photographer and archrival, Nobuyoshi Araki. Araki, however, has accused Shinoyama of having no idea what eros was or what women wanted.
Indeed, Shinoyama's fashion photos evoked no sexuality or emotion. Critics pointed out that Shinoyama's shots were too safe, too sterile, and that women wound up looking perfect and manicured but very little else.
This time, however, the sanitized sexiness of Shinoyama's craft and the sanitized monstrosity that is Roppongi Hills have created a matching chemistry. Shinoyama's stark, vivid prints reveal the subtext of the Hills project: Tokyo as dominated by the Mori Building Co. Ltd.
One of the biggest property developers in the world as well as the controlling company behind most of Tokyo's major development projects of the last decade, Mori Building now sets the standard for most things in the city, from architectural aesthetics to art to food to fashion.
In Roppongi, Mori has built another Hills complex, on the Omotesando strip in the Aoyama district, and in the same neighborhood, the Midtown Project is slated for completion in 2007.
Of these, Roppongi remains the most interesting, for its sheer size and steep, labyrinthine structure: a seemingly endless maze connected by narrow slopes, pathways and escalators that inevitably lead to a boutique or some other venue of conspicuous consumption.
Understandably, high-end brands compete ruthlessly for floor space in Roppongi Hills; it's a mark of success and ultra-high visibility to be able to afford retail floor space, however small, in the Hills complex.
The same goes for restaurants and cafés; Joël Robuchon's café is an enduring dating hot spot, and the bar inside the Grand Hyatt hotel is a gathering place for many of the city's celebrities. The current tofu dessert trend in Tokyo is said to have been launched from the tofu café located near the main entrance to the Mori Building.
Shinoyama concentrates less on the physical aspect of the buildings than what goes on inside them. At an exhibition featuring photos from his book that was held on the top floor of the Roppongi Hills Mori Building, viewers were surprised to see that the Hills grounds has a preschool and a day-care center, and members of the "Hills-Tribe," the nickname for the residents living in the high-rise condos, actually gather for an event as traditional as a rice-planting ceremony.
Among the celebrities who live here, Shinoyama Nigo, the designer behind the Tokyo brand A Bathing Ape, and his actress girlfriend, Riho Makise, posing in their penthouse condo surrounded by samples of Nigo's New York Pop Art collection (he is one of the wealthiest entrepreneurs in Japan). He also chose the bad-boy designer-artist Takashi Murakami, standing in front of what appears to be a Japanified Nirvana consisting of a lotus pond and a Murakami sculpture. There are also shots of Ryuichi Sakamoto in his office/ study and Minoru Mori, the chief executive of Mori Building Co. Ltd., posing before a mock-up display of Tokyo.
What surfaces from Shinoyama's collection of images is a deadpan irony unseen in his previous works. He focuses his precision lens on what seems, in the end, a gigantic and ruthless piece of urban machinery that the city is powerless to stop, gobbling up the nitty-gritty side of Tokyo living and spitting it out in glossy, plasticky little pieces.
Shinoyama recognizes the machinery for what it is and takes a perverse delight in framing those images that attest to its workings and to the artificial air that perpetually wafts through the vents, the densely cocooned, ultra-controlled environment that is Roppongi Hills.
Only a few feet away stretches the infamous and filthy metropolitan expressway, straddling the dirty noodle stalls and sex shops that make up the rest of Roppongi. There's probably an urban moral to be drawn from all this, but Shinoyama slyly hides his message, inviting the reader to look and ponder and look again.
TOKYO When Japan's foremost fashion photographer teams up with one of its most visible urban developers, the result, surprisingly, is art.
The photographer Kishin Shinoyama has produced an elegant and attractive book of snazzy building and celebrity shots (designer Vivienne Westwood and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, among others) that define Roppongi Hills: the sprawling, 724,000-square-meter complex of luxury brand boutiques, hotel, high-rise condos, restaurants, cafés, theaters and a Japanese garden that has been designed to surround and complement the 54-story Mori Building, named for the corporation that owns Roppongi Hills.
Since its emergence three years ago, Hills - as the place is known here - has become a Tokyo metaphor for naughty architectural design, colossal money deals and celebrity glitz. But Shinoyama's photo collection shows a Hills that is intriguing, even exotic, and its title, "Roppongi Hills x Kishin Shinoyama," suggests the pairing of the two names is in itself a cause for celebration.
Shinoyama has been at the forefront of Japanese mainstream fashion photography for the last three decades and has helped launch a girlie culture (as opposed to a model culture) that has been a large influence on the nation's standards of fashion. He has shot one new starlet after another, posed and arrayed in varying degrees of luxury-brand skimpiness - or nothing at all.
He has worked with some of Japan's most cutting-edge actresses (among them Kaori Momoi, co-star of "Memoirs of a Geisha") to produce some of the most talked-about fashion shots of the year. He released a book on the media idol Rie Miyazawa when she was still in her teens, frolicking in the grass in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in nothing but her birthday suit.
Shinoyama's policy has been to value the woman over her wardrobe, and her physique over her personality - not unlike a fellow photographer and archrival, Nobuyoshi Araki. Araki, however, has accused Shinoyama of having no idea what eros was or what women wanted.
Indeed, Shinoyama's fashion photos evoked no sexuality or emotion. Critics pointed out that Shinoyama's shots were too safe, too sterile, and that women wound up looking perfect and manicured but very little else.
This time, however, the sanitized sexiness of Shinoyama's craft and the sanitized monstrosity that is Roppongi Hills have created a matching chemistry. Shinoyama's stark, vivid prints reveal the subtext of the Hills project: Tokyo as dominated by the Mori Building Co. Ltd.
One of the biggest property developers in the world as well as the controlling company behind most of Tokyo's major development projects of the last decade, Mori Building now sets the standard for most things in the city, from architectural aesthetics to art to food to fashion.
In Roppongi, Mori has built another Hills complex, on the Omotesando strip in the Aoyama district, and in the same neighborhood, the Midtown Project is slated for completion in 2007.
Of these, Roppongi remains the most interesting, for its sheer size and steep, labyrinthine structure: a seemingly endless maze connected by narrow slopes, pathways and escalators that inevitably lead to a boutique or some other venue of conspicuous consumption.
Understandably, high-end brands compete ruthlessly for floor space in Roppongi Hills; it's a mark of success and ultra-high visibility to be able to afford retail floor space, however small, in the Hills complex.
The same goes for restaurants and cafés; Joël Robuchon's café is an enduring dating hot spot, and the bar inside the Grand Hyatt hotel is a gathering place for many of the city's celebrities. The current tofu dessert trend in Tokyo is said to have been launched from the tofu café located near the main entrance to the Mori Building.
Shinoyama concentrates less on the physical aspect of the buildings than what goes on inside them. At an exhibition featuring photos from his book that was held on the top floor of the Roppongi Hills Mori Building, viewers were surprised to see that the Hills grounds has a preschool and a day-care center, and members of the "Hills-Tribe," the nickname for the residents living in the high-rise condos, actually gather for an event as traditional as a rice-planting ceremony.
Among the celebrities who live here, Shinoyama Nigo, the designer behind the Tokyo brand A Bathing Ape, and his actress girlfriend, Riho Makise, posing in their penthouse condo surrounded by samples of Nigo's New York Pop Art collection (he is one of the wealthiest entrepreneurs in Japan). He also chose the bad-boy designer-artist Takashi Murakami, standing in front of what appears to be a Japanified Nirvana consisting of a lotus pond and a Murakami sculpture. There are also shots of Ryuichi Sakamoto in his office/ study and Minoru Mori, the chief executive of Mori Building Co. Ltd., posing before a mock-up display of Tokyo.
What surfaces from Shinoyama's collection of images is a deadpan irony unseen in his previous works. He focuses his precision lens on what seems, in the end, a gigantic and ruthless piece of urban machinery that the city is powerless to stop, gobbling up the nitty-gritty side of Tokyo living and spitting it out in glossy, plasticky little pieces.
Shinoyama recognizes the machinery for what it is and takes a perverse delight in framing those images that attest to its workings and to the artificial air that perpetually wafts through the vents, the densely cocooned, ultra-controlled environment that is Roppongi Hills.
Only a few feet away stretches the infamous and filthy metropolitan expressway, straddling the dirty noodle stalls and sex shops that make up the rest of Roppongi. There's probably an urban moral to be drawn from all this, but Shinoyama slyly hides his message, inviting the reader to look and ponder and look again.
TOKYO When Japan's foremost fashion photographer teams up with one of its most visible urban developers, the result, surprisingly, is art.
The photographer Kishin Shinoyama has produced an elegant and attractive book of snazzy building and celebrity shots (designer Vivienne Westwood and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, among others) that define Roppongi Hills: the sprawling, 724,000-square-meter complex of luxury brand boutiques, hotel, high-rise condos, restaurants, cafés, theaters and a Japanese garden that has been designed to surround and complement the 54-story Mori Building, named for the corporation that owns Roppongi Hills.
Since its emergence three years ago, Hills - as the place is known here - has become a Tokyo metaphor for naughty architectural design, colossal money deals and celebrity glitz. But Shinoyama's photo collection shows a Hills that is intriguing, even exotic, and its title, "Roppongi Hills x Kishin Shinoyama," suggests the pairing of the two names is in itself a cause for celebration.
Shinoyama has been at the forefront of Japanese mainstream fashion photography for the last three decades and has helped launch a girlie culture (as opposed to a model culture) that has been a large influence on the nation's standards of fashion. He has shot one new starlet after another, posed and arrayed in varying degrees of luxury-brand skimpiness - or nothing at all.
He has worked with some of Japan's most cutting-edge actresses (among them Kaori Momoi, co-star of "Memoirs of a Geisha") to produce some of the most talked-about fashion shots of the year. He released a book on the media idol Rie Miyazawa when she was still in her teens, frolicking in the grass in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in nothing but her birthday suit.
Shinoyama's policy has been to value the woman over her wardrobe, and her physique over her personality - not unlike a fellow photographer and archrival, Nobuyoshi Araki. Araki, however, has accused Shinoyama of having no idea what eros was or what women wanted.
Indeed, Shinoyama's fashion photos evoked no sexuality or emotion. Critics pointed out that Shinoyama's shots were too safe, too sterile, and that women wound up looking perfect and manicured but very little else.
This time, however, the sanitized sexiness of Shinoyama's craft and the sanitized monstrosity that is Roppongi Hills have created a matching chemistry. Shinoyama's stark, vivid prints reveal the subtext of the Hills project: Tokyo as dominated by the Mori Building Co. Ltd.
One of the biggest property developers in the world as well as the controlling company behind most of Tokyo's major development projects of the last decade, Mori Building now sets the standard for most things in the city, from architectural aesthetics to art to food to fashion.
In Roppongi, Mori has built another Hills complex, on the Omotesando strip in the Aoyama district, and in the same neighborhood, the Midtown Project is slated for completion in 2007.
Of these, Roppongi remains the most interesting, for its sheer size and steep, labyrinthine structure: a seemingly endless maze connected by narrow slopes, pathways and escalators that inevitably lead to a boutique or some other venue of conspicuous consumption.
Understandably, high-end brands compete ruthlessly for floor space in Roppongi Hills; it's a mark of success and ultra-high visibility to be able to afford retail floor space, however small, in the Hills complex.
The same goes for restaurants and cafés; Joël Robuchon's café is an enduring dating hot spot, and the bar inside the Grand Hyatt hotel is a gathering place for many of the city's celebrities. The current tofu dessert trend in Tokyo is said to have been launched from the tofu café located near the main entrance to the Mori Building.
Shinoyama concentrates less on the physical aspect of the buildings than what goes on inside them. At an exhibition featuring photos from his book that was held on the top floor of the Roppongi Hills Mori Building, viewers were surprised to see that the Hills grounds has a preschool and a day-care center, and members of the "Hills-Tribe," the nickname for the residents living in the high-rise condos, actually gather for an event as traditional as a rice-planting ceremony.
Among the celebrities who live here, Shinoyama Nigo, the designer behind the Tokyo brand A Bathing Ape, and his actress girlfriend, Riho Makise, posing in their penthouse condo surrounded by samples of Nigo's New York Pop Art collection (he is one of the wealthiest entrepreneurs in Japan). He also chose the bad-boy designer-artist Takashi Murakami, standing in front of what appears to be a Japanified Nirvana consisting of a lotus pond and a Murakami sculpture. There are also shots of Ryuichi Sakamoto in his office/ study and Minoru Mori, the chief executive of Mori Building Co. Ltd., posing before a mock-up display of Tokyo.
What surfaces from Shinoyama's collection of images is a deadpan irony unseen in his previous works. He focuses his precision lens on what seems, in the end, a gigantic and ruthless piece of urban machinery that the city is powerless to stop, gobbling up the nitty-gritty side of Tokyo living and spitting it out in glossy, plasticky little pieces.
Shinoyama recognizes the machinery for what it is and takes a perverse delight in framing those images that attest to its workings and to the artificial air that perpetually wafts through the vents, the densely cocooned, ultra-controlled environment that is Roppongi Hills.
Only a few feet away stretches the infamous and filthy metropolitan expressway, straddling the dirty noodle stalls and sex shops that make up the rest of Roppongi. There's probably an urban moral to be drawn from all this, but Shinoyama slyly hides his message, inviting the reader to look and ponder and look again.
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