The Bondage Queen of Tokyo Ed. 1 of 6

Yu Reika is really quite famous in Japan. So it was with a sense of awe that I made my way into the Rippongi district of Tokyo to meet her. I have no interest at all in bondage and discipline, but I am fascinated by Japanese "hyper-culture" and the people that inhabit the transgressive, subversive world that Tokyo offers. The Elvis impersonators, the Rockabilly fanatics, the adults who find respite from their jobs in childlike video games and anime culture; Tokyo is a shimmering kaleidoscope of people fetishising anything that is not, well, 'Japanese.' The whole place is a mega-sized homage to something else, whether it be a dead Hollywood icon, a character in a cartoon or a baby wolf/penguin toy thing. What the Japanese crave most though is security; Japan is an island that over thousands of years has endured invasion, Tsunamis and two atom bombs. Tokyo for me resembles an artefact, more specifically a memory of the 1990's, that most secure and stable decade, with its neon lights and frontier digital happy-place. As China rises, Japan clings fondly and nostalgically to its glory days.