Layla and Majnun, Yokohama
Right next to Yokohama Park, directly across from Yokohama Stadium, there’s a café called FLASHBACK CAFE. When you walk through the streets of Yokohama, you sometimes come across places that seem to have been left slightly behind by the passage of time. Places where music from a different era plays, and where a different sense of time seems to have accumulated.
For me, FLASHBACK CAFE was just that kind of place. The interior isn't exactly bright. If anything, it's dark.
Light streaming in from outside, small lamps, neon signs, and light reflecting off polished tables. Thanks to that faint glow, the chairs, records, signs, and objects that resemble old American symbols scattered throughout the shop gradually emerge from the darkness.
Inside that store, there was a light fixture that just couldn’t help but catch my eye. It was “LAYLA” by Derek and the Dominos, the band Eric Clapton was a part of. It was a light fixture designed to look like stained glass, featuring the face of a woman reminiscent of that album cover. I’ve always loved that album cover.
If I were to talk about the song “LAYLA” itself, there are, of course, countless things I could say. But what draws me here is something slightly different from the music itself.
It is that “face.”
A white face outlined in black. Eyes that seem both closed and as if gazing into the distance. And red lips.
When I looked at that light inside the dimly lit FLASHBACK CAFE, almost everything around it vanished into the darkness, and only that face stood out quietly.
It was unbearably romantic.
The word “beautiful” alone doesn’t quite capture it.
It was somehow lonely, somehow mysterious—as if it were still waiting for someone,
yet also as if it had already given up on everything.
It was precisely because she was in the darkness that her pale face and red lips had such a striking presence.
I thought I'd take a picture.
Rather than trying to take a beautiful photo, I think I just wanted to capture LAYLA as she was, floating in the darkness.
Outside the shop window lies the city of Yokohama.
Just a short walk away is Yokohama Park, and beyond it stands the massive Yokohama Stadium.
On nights when there’s a night game, the floodlights paint the night sky white, cars come and go, traffic lights change, and people pass by.
On game nights, tens of thousands of people gather, and once the game is over, they disappear back into the city.
The massive structure known as Yokohama Stadium, and the people and cars flowing around it.
Outside the store, time is moving at a breakneck pace.
But once you step inside FLASHBACK CAFE, that pace changes just a little.
Old records, American-style signs, a dimly lit counter, chairs, and natural light streaming in through the windows.
And there, floating in the darkness, is LAYLA.
Even though both the inside and outside of the store were in Yokohama, it felt as if time was passing at different speeds.
These photos I took capture a blend of those two different tempos.
The intense lights at Yokohama Stadium.
The taillights of cars speeding down the road at night.
Streetlights casting a red glow.
People visible through a store window.
The silent interior of the store.
And then there's LAYLA.
Come to think of it, city photographs may seem to be capturing buildings, but perhaps they’re actually capturing time.
The store that was there at that time.
The people who were walking by at that time.
The lights that were on at that time.
The music that was playing at that time.
Most of them will eventually change form.
I'll change, too.
That’s why, when I look back at photos years later, I sometimes feel more strongly about what isn’t in the picture than what is.
The atmosphere that night.
The scent of the city.
The dim lighting inside the shop.
The light beyond the window.
And myself, standing there.
Photographs are a curious thing. A photo that meant nothing at the moment the shutter was released can, over time, suddenly become something precious to you.
I think the photo of LAYLA I took at FLASHBACK CAFE is one of those shots for me, too.
A quiet corner of Yokohama at night.
In the dim interior of a shop, just a short distance from the lights of the massive stadium, a woman’s face glows softly. No matter how many years pass, I’m sure I’ll remember this every time I look at this photo. Not the music. Not the shop.
That night, floating in the darkness,
LAYLA's face.
