「2Bとマンデリン そして僕はこの町を離れる」
池袋から三駅、小さな町の喫茶店に40年近く通っている。少なくとも週に一度、学生時代は毎日欠かさず、講義に出ない日はあってもお店に行かない日はなかった。辛いカレーを食べ、苦くて甘いマンデリンを飲む。
独立するとこの町に事務所を作った。暗室があり、日当たりのいい部屋があり、やがて人が集まる場所になった。僕にとっての東京はこの町のことだった。
2018年、この町を離れる時がきた。事務所ビルが立て替えのため出て行くことになったのだ。
僕はずっとこの町を撮り続けてきた。駅前であったり、商店街であったり、銭湯の煙突であったり。意識は宙ぶらりん、大脳で判断するというより、小脳が反応するように撮ってきた。
ただ、常にいつかはこの町を離れるであろことだけは分かっていた
松岡正剛はノスタルジーを「取り戻したい故郷が失われたことを巡る感情」と定義した。
この表現こそが「2Bと苦くて甘い珈琲」を巡る思いなのかもしれない。
“ 2B and Mandheling, and I will leave this town”
For forty years, I frequented a small coffee shop located in a town three stations away from Ikebukuro. I went there at lease once a week, and at times, even every single day back when I was still in school. Even the days I skipped class. During those times, I had spicy curry and drank a cup of bitter Mandheling coffee.
I founded my office in this town when I became a freelance. The office had a darkroom, the room was sunny, and eventually became a place where people gathered. This is what Tokyo meant to me.
The time has come to leave this town in 2018. We have to move out of the building because of the upcoming renovation.
I have been taking pictures of this town for a long time. They are the pictures of the front of the station, of shopping arcades or may be even the chimney of the public bath. I was taking pictures seemingly without conscience thought, acting on the part of the brain governed by cerebellum rather than the cerebrum.
Never the less, I was conscious to the fact that there would come a day when I would have to leave this town behind.
The writer, Seigo Matsuoka identified that nostalgia as “a feeling around the loss of hometown which one desires to retrieve”.
This could be the best way to express how I feel, and the underlying meaning behind the “2B and bittersweet coffee”.
