Watanabe Katsumi "Gangs of Kabukicho" (2006)

Kabukicho in the East Shinjuku section of Tokyo began its life as a swamp. By the time Watanabe Katsumi arrived, the swamp had been filled in and the area, named after a Kabuki theater that was never built, was a well-established red-light district filled with hostess bars, ''love hotels'' and nightclubs. Denizens called it ''Sleepless Town.''

The black-and-white photos in ''Gangs of Kabukicho,'' taken between 1966 and 1980, feature various Kabukicho characters, from actual gangsters to drag-queen geishas, pimps, johns, rent boys, transsexuals and prostitutes posing together like sorority sisters.

With their focus on subjects culled from the urban demimonde and framed in the center of the image, the photographs recall Diane Arbus's work from roughly the same era. But where Arbus was frequently criticized for exploiting her subjects, Mr. Watanabe, who died earlier this year, catered to his milieu, selling his pictures back to his subjects in an attempt to eke out a meager living.

This lack of detachment might explain in part why Mr. Watanabe's images don't possess the same complicated and complex power as Arbus's. But the photos serve as interesting documents of Kabukicho during its seedy heyday. The parade of street fashion, with girls in go-go boots, tattoo enthusiasts and Japanese James Cagneys, foreshadows more recent interest by other photographers in another style-obsessed Tokyo hot spot, Harajuku. And it's hard not to be affected by Mr. Watanabe's subjects, whose expressions range from joyful to heartbreakingly abject.

Text by Iizawa Kotaro.

An edition of 3,000 copies. $55.

3000 copies, the entire edition. Designed by Alexander Gelman and Andrew Roth. Watanabe Katsumi was an itinerant portrait photographer working primarily in Shinjuku in Tokyo. Gangs of Kabukicho reproduces 155 photographs taken in the 60s and 70s in the blue light district of Shinjuku called Kabukicho. The title of the book reflects the title of his first book published in 1973 called simply The Gangs of Shinjuku.

The subjects in Watanabe's photographs are the prostitutes, street people, Drag Queens, entertainers and gangsters (Yakuza) that populated Kabukicho at night. Essentially, Watanabe made his living by selling the photographs to his subjects. He would offer three prints for 200 yen. A modest gentleman, Watanabe had a keen sensitivity to the natural posturing of his subjects which allowed them to uninhibitedly reveal their identities. He saw Kabukicho as a stage; his photographs documented the performers.

To accompany the photographs, Iizawa Kotaro, who wrote The Evolution of Postwar Photography in Anne Tucker's The History of Japanese Photography, has chronicled the history of Shinjuku and offers a biography on the life of Watanabe who died earlier this year. The text is printed in English and Japanese.

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