Students of automotive design and history will advise us the death of the rear-engine air-cooled car was dictated by a number of changing fashions and requirements. Pollution and noise requirements ensured two-strokes with their oil-burning lubrication systems, were phased out, and still more stringent regulations in many jurisdictions started to enforce additional requirements.

Making the job of NVH (Noise, Vibration, and Harshness) engineers difficult, the requirement for low drive-by ambient noise levels put the rear engined car at a natural disadvantage – with induction, combustion, and exhaust all at the same end, a rear-engined is naturally louder (from one end at least) than a car with its potential noise sources evenly distributed. Air-cooled versions perhaps more so.

The addition of a water-jacket for cooling, the deletion of large and many air-flow promoting openings, and an always running air-cooling fan, further makes water-cooled engines attractive. Requirements for heater and demister operation also favoring a water-cooled engine, with air-cooled engines requiring complex heat exchangers, flaps & valves, or even auxiliary engines to heat the cabin rapidly.

Abandoned car collections can be found all across Japan: kei-cars, sports cars, saloons, trucks, even buses. I’ve seen a few of each type, but only ever a smattering of air-cooled goodness. So, this collection in Saitama, on the Kanto Plain north of Tokyo, is even more remarkable as almost all of its neglected machines are rear-engine and air-cooled. A real find.

Honda 360, Subaru 360, Honda TC, Honda Vamos, Suzuki Cervo, Mazda Carol, all in various state of decay. The only ’360′ missing appeared to be the Mitsubishi. A large number of whole engines, cylinder heads, fans, cooling shrouds, interior trim, and the usual junkyard parts lay about from the collection.

Subaru 360 and Honda TC kei-trucks are reasonably common, as too are Suzuki Cervo, but Honda Vamos are quite rare, as is the Ford Anglia inspired four-cylinder Mazda Carol. The red one here is quite complete, with any missing parts appearing to lie scattered on the ground near by.

Also in the collection is a Mitsubishi Debonair, resplendent in funeral black, the only faux-pas being wire wheels, perhaps fitted in the 1970s when I suppose they were a popular accessory to make cars look “classy”. At least they are real wires, not just plastic hubcaps from proto-Auto Bacs.

The collection also includes a boat-tailed Alfa Spyder under cover, a few lesser Japanese classics, but also a car I’ve never seen before – a Daihastsu Compagno. Though not air-cooled, or rear-engined, its small convertible configuration would have made it an obvious nice-to-have for any car collector. In surprisingly good condition, its European style is perhaps reminiscent of a small Fiat or Alfa Romeo. A Daihatsu otaku might be aware of its design and marketing history?

Unlike some abandoned collections throughout Japan, this set is actively owned by someone and at least one of these interesting machines is posted for sale via on-line classic car sales, so it would be reasonable to assume offers would be accepted accordingly for others seen here.

Continuing the air-cooled in Saitama theme, just down the road from this collection, and made by the company that was later to produce the Subaru 360, an air-cooled Rabbit scooter was parked out front of the local scooter distributor…

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Tokyo’s Metropolitan Expressway — Shuto Kōsoku Dōro — is Tokyo’s answer to handling large volumes of traffic traversing the megalopolis.

The first sections were opened in time to showcase Tokyo for the 1962 Olympics. Not designed as an unlimited speed road, its main purpose was to ferry cars around at moderate speeds, unhindered by the non-car friendly Tokyo streets.

While some sections snake alongside rivers, or behind buildings at ground level, most of the road sections are elevated above ground, or tunnel under major areas such as the Imperial Palace or other surface roads.

Many sections of road deck are multilevel, often consisting of four or more layers. Because of limitations of the landscape, buildings, subterranean infrastructure (other roads and train lines), the often convoluted elevated sections, tunnels, dividers, ramps, interchanges, and tollbooths all conspire to enhance the legend of the Shuto as being a challenging road to drive, at any speed.

The Shuto also includes the Tokyo Wan Aqualine, a 15km straight-line blast under, and then over, Tokyo Bay (wan) to Chiba. The Aqualine used to be a ‘private’ road, built by private interests and with a toll value set at the wish of the operator. Like many private roads in Japan (such as the Atsugi Toll Road to Fuji-san), they used to be un-policed for speed limits. This open status promoted street racing gangs, sometimes badging themselves with ’250′ or ’300′ patches – representing their supposed topped-out kilometer-per-hour speed achievements on public roads.

Sadly, or perhaps for the better, speed limits on private toll roads are now policed — not before I was able to enjoy nailing the throttle on a Ferrari V8, roof down, in a vain attempt to chase down some hairdresser in his RX-7. I am not sure what sounded better: the five-valve V8 from Modena, or the Hiroshima rotary cracking and spitting fire on the over-run as we screamed through the tunnel section. At some ridiculous speed, I chickened out, and watched the RX-7 disappear into the distance.

While street racers have used sections for racing, notably the Wangan (Bayshore) sections, the Shuto gained global exposure with the 1998 release of Shutoku Battle, a Dreamcast console game known as Tokyo Extreme Racer for export markets, accurate for its representation of the Shuto’s layout and surrounding features of Tokyo; down to being able to see my old apartment as you raced past at high speed. I still wake in the middle of the night when hearing a loud exhaust, thinking perhaps I am still in my bed next to the Akasaka-Roppongi-Knot (‘ARK’), a particularly notorious set of bends known to claim the unwary.

Working nearby to the Shuto too, and while enjoying car talk at work one day, one of the senior managers — perhaps sixty years of age — commented that he too enjoyed fast cars, driving a Legacy Turbo. As a joke I asked, “So Tanaka-san, do you get up at 02:00 and go racing around the Shuto?”

“Of course!” he blurted out rapidly, looking at me as if I was mad to even ask such a question.

One notable site for all car types to congregate is the Shuto’s Daikoku Futo – halfway between Yokohama and Tokyo on the Wangan route.

With no other facilities except a gas station and some fast food sellers, it is perhaps a natural place to congregate, talk about rides, and enjoy the sounds of fast cars screaming overhead on the elevated sections.

The Parking Area (‘PA’), on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays is often full of interesting rides. Not only for legendary Japanese cars like GT-Rs, twin-cammed Toyota and fast rotaries, but bikes too, the Porsche, Ferrari & Lamborghini clubs sometimes show up, as do a regular smattering of bozosoku and general shakotan style aficionados.

On the access roads outside the PA, in front of the local koban, less responsible drivers have been known to practice their mountain drifting skills. The massive tire marks, rubber-marbles in the gutter, and the sometimes dinged guard-rail, are all obvious signs of some serious drift work.

YouTube has numerous postings, including bemused police in their koban, and their attempts to shut the drifters down.

The new Yamate Tunnel adds another 10.9km of fun to the run from Ikebukero to Meguro. It features some remarkable engineering, including a twelve-level climb from the subterranean run to nine levels above ground to join the Chuo Expressway at Hatsudai – this up-and-down roller coaster ride alone is worth the ¥700 entrance fee.

While I ride the Shuto two or three times per week, commuting on my barge-like Maxam scooter, the best time of course is as recommended by Tanaka-san in his Subaru: late evenings, or early mornings. Chasing the fire-breathing RX-7s and GT-Rs is a lot more pleasurable when I can forget the camera, and enjoy the wail of an Audi V8, a Nissan inline six, or a high-revving Mazda rotary next to me as we scream through the tunnels and wind through the many routes around Tokyo.

All at the recommended speed limit of course.

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Skorj is a photographer/journalist living in Japan. For information on licensing these and other images please contact Magnesium Photos

In the film Messengers (Yasuo Baba, 1999) one of the protagonists says to our Lycra-clad heroine, ‘You look like a race queen.’ Parochially translated for American audiences as, ‘You look like a slut‘, this missive unintentionally sums up the role of race queens in the modern world.

A variation of the Formula 1 car racing European pit lane girls (who are supposedly present to hold umbrellas over drivers), race queens – or ‘campaign girls’ – are frowned upon in many Western countries as examples of sexism, and of cynical marketing for an otherwise male-dominated industry.

Contrary to the fall-off of sexist advertising campaigns for cars and the automotive industry globally, the race queen still survives in Japan. Major trade shows and industry events in Japan might have seen a reduction in their race queen populations recently, but this is more a sign of economic austerity over any update to sexual perspectives in Japan.

Buoyed by their high status in the modeling industry in Japan, super race queens continue to generate large fan-bases in their own right, commanding high appearance monies, and often driving their own careers accordingly.

The 2010 Formula 1 season opened in Melbourne recently, with a series of very mildly dressed pit lane girls (‘more modern’ was the statement). The same weekend held the annual Tokyo Motorcycle Show at Tokyo’s Big Sight in Odaiba. Present in a bewildering array of skimpy clothes the race queens continued to pout, pose and preen for the cameras as they do countless times a year across Japan.

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If any threat exists to race queens in Japan, it will not be from a waning popularity in their hardcore otaku fan base, nor will it likely come from ‘safety concerns’ associated with their skimpy clothing, and it will certainly not come from any change in perception of the role of women in Japan. Any further demise in race queen populations will surely be a result of purely economic motives.

As for our Lycra-clad heroine in ‘Messengers’, in Japan at least, she triumphs, beats her derisive competitor and wins the heart of the leading man, making a lot of money along the way…

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Photography Curated by Sean Bonner

What is the mystery of photography? Why do we love the static image? What is it that these fragments of reality, frozen in time tell us? What is it about the photograph’s ability to transcend commonplace existence that has taken it from an unrecognized set of chemical reactions to the most popular and life-changing art-form the history of the world has ever seen?

Are we seeking knowledge of our place within the greater universal complexity? Or could it be that we are a conceited bunch of heretic animals in love with posing for and fawning over our own graven image? Is it not rather that we just love to command machines, fiddle with knobs, push brightly colored buttons and play with toys?

Ahh, toys. Ask most people when they started to fall in love with photography and many, if not most will hark back to the golden days of their childhood, when life was simpler, the sun shone brighter and film was, as the only option available, still cheap. Most photographers of today who were raised in the odd limbo generation of the 70s and 80s grew up on one or more of the futuristic Polaroid instant cameras kicking around the house. Or maybe you had the cartridge-based 110 film and disc cameras, invented by Kodak and popularized with the Kodacolor VR, or any number of short-lived point and shoot cameras, that weren’t toy cameras per se, but today can be found lining the discount bins of used camera resellers and garage sales alike, the world over.

When Fuji Camera introduced the Fujipet camera, marketed to a solely Japanese audience, this plastic camera would go on to introduce the hitherto western concept of leisure combined with the snapshot, for use by the whole family. From the instruction manual, “With the Fujipet Camera you can the pictures very easily just as you manipulate your knife and fork…The Fujipet Camera enjoys great popularity among children, mothers and all the members of the family and affords happiness in all homes.”

What about the Hong Kong novelty manufacturer Great Wall Plastic Factory, in first producing the Diana, which in turn spawned tens of hundreds of clones, that unwittingly launched the modern day toy camera revolution. They were just trying to make a fast buck. In doing so, they made history.

Thanks in large part to Mr. T.M. Lee – inventor of the Holga – is it true that anyone can be a photographer?

Despite all signs to the contrary, it was not the original goal of Mr. Lee, nor any of the other manufacturers, to make toys, but rather to ensure that people were fascinated and interested in creative film photography. As the Chinese middle class grew due to economic reform of the 80s – and with it buying power and hunger for better technology – many cheaper products, like Holga, lost ground and were nearly completely lost in the shuffle toward the new paradigm of the 90s tech boom.

As artists, amateur photographers and institutions of higher learning got in on the ground floor of the Holga Revolution, business boomed for Mr. Lee and Universal Electronic- largely in part to the Austrian-based Lomographic Society licensing and repackaging the Holga (as done with the glass-lensed Lomo LC-A – often thought of as a “toy” as well) in marketable and highly profitable kits. He was amazed at the resurgence of his twenty year-old baby, remarking it was “out of my imagination!” and smartly thought to capitalize on this newfound “Toy Camera” popularity by diversifying into a wider range of products. Add-ons for the Holga or completely new cameras (the Micro 110, 6×9/6×12 Pinhole, 3D Stereo, Twin Lens Reflex, a whole range of 135mm cameras, fish-eye lenses, color flashes, etc.) became profitable ways to expand into areas previously unimagined. The future was very bright indeed.

To ask what is the future of photography is too big for anyone to take on except in bite-size chunks. One might be well served to look back to the origins of capturing images for answers to why images- and especially those taken with shoddily-crafted plastic parts which often “leak” light, vignette uncontrollably, and capture images so randomly that the photographer would have no guarantee that any exposure will come out at all- have transfixed us deer-like in the headlights of a tsunami of cause and effect. Many of which have such wide ranging societal repercussions that we would be smart to admit no one really has any idea of what’s happening, let alone what’s on the horizon.

To extrapolate digital photography as a direct result of the Toy Camera boom, to say that Holga created the digital point and shoot in your mobile phone, to credit Hong Konger novelty and flash manufacturers with the digital paradigm as well as their own eventual decline, is not too far a stretch. What will emerge from the next few digital decades, after the Hipstamatic iPhone filter fad has worn off? A perpetual backlash against time-tested, though also time-consuming, archival methods or as Mr. Lee experienced when the unpredictable wave of economic tide turned the middle class Chinese off his product and hipsters on – a rebirth of interest in film and more importantly, sales?

Read the continued Interview with Holga Limited’s Christine So here.

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Only a few man-made structures lend themselves to automatic inclusion in science-fiction movies. Locations so out-of-this-world they have to be used as phantasmagoric shooting locations. San Diego’s Geisel Library, half the Statue of Liberty, the Bradbury Building…

On the Northern outskirts of Tokyo, the list also includes a drain. Also known by the fabricated name “G-Cans” (not an abbreviation of anything in particular), the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel however is no ordinary drain, but a series of enormous, interconnected, underground facilities. Massive holding tanks, surge suppressors, huge pump rooms, networked tunnels, control rooms, inlets, outlets, overflows, and more – all fifty meters underground.

With one hundred kilometers of flood control tunnels, the overall project was started in 1992, with the G-Cans section finishing in 2009. Designed to provide flood control for the northern reaches of the greater Tokyo metropolis, the G-Cans element alone is massive on an unimaginable scale.

Photography: Ken Lee / Magnesium. Nikon F100 35mm and XP2 Super.

The two billion dollar G-Cans project is nearly six and a half kilometers long, with an interconnecting series of holding silos, varying in size up to sixty-five meters tall and over thirty meters in diameter. The largest holding tank is the massive “cathedral” – one hundred seventy-seven meters long and seventy-seven meters wide. Its roof is supported by sixty massive pillars, designed to provide both strength and low resistance to the swirling waters.

The basic design function of G-Cans is to re-channel potential flood waters from one watercourse to another, balancing and regulating the water flow to ensure flood surges and river breaches are kept to a minimum. As well as natural water flows, a turbine hall, equipped with ten megaWatt of Pratt & Whitney pumping capacity, can move over two hundred thousand liters of water per second into the adjacent Edo River. That’s enough water to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in just over one second.

Photography: Skorj / Magnesium.

Construction of the main tunnels utilized a conventional Tunnel Boring Machine (“TBM”) and a two-layer lined tunnel – supporting framework and internal smooth sleeves for water flow. Ground water freezing was undertaken with large-scale expander insertions into the surrounding rock, with condensate forming on their many coupling heads, the now-removed expanders resembled alien spawning stations.

Standing meters below the previous high-water mark, with the sound of compressors and dripping water in the distance, is a remarkably surreal experience. The damp languid air adds to the feeling of potentially being swallowed up by a flooding wave as it careens through the tunnels, sweeping everything to its doom along the way. Fifty meters below the surface, fifty meters below the suburbs, with the kids playing soccer on the fields of Saitama above our heads, riding bicycles through the tunnels as we explored really added to the off-world feeling.

Since completion, the tunnels, side chambers, and main “cathedral” hall have been used in making a Tetsujin 28 film, a Range Rover commercial, numerous other TV spots, and some of the photographs here were used in the source rendering for a computer game.

While the main tunnels are now off-limits for access, the control room, above-ground infrastructure, and main cathedral are sometimes available for tours during the non-typhoon season. Bookings are available for Japanese speakers via their main website.

Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com or use the Contact form for more information on licensing these photographs and others on this issue.

Along with two other photographers, I am sitting in a rented car. As we sit parked on a sparsely lit dock in the south of Japan, we are watching the sun rise. Even before our arrival it feels like a unique journey; short-hop commuter flights, business hotels, a rented Honda rep-mobile, plotted routes on topographical maps, ramen dinners and konbini breakfasts.

It is 04:30, and after having driven through the early hours from Nagasaki to a remote fishing village in search of our boatman, we are ready to embark on the final leg to our ultimate destination – Hashima. An abandoned island-city, Hashima remains untouched in the nearly forty years since its 5000 or so occupants vacated by boat, taking with them only a few scant possessions.

With mining operations established in 1810, on an island less than 500 metres long, Hashima’s well known legacy includes it once being the most densely populated place on earth, housing what was Japan’s tallest building, and its first large-scale reinforced concrete apartment block. The erroneous claim of this island city being shelled by the US Navy in World War Two, ‘as it looked like a battleship’, contributes to the legend of Gunkanjima, or Battleship Island, evident in the popular local nickname for Hashima.

Coming across a few fishermen, who are enjoying their last cigarette before returning home, we are gruffly told our boatman is on the other side of the dock. Approaching him within earshot of his companions, he mumbles nothing more than our departure time, and walks off. At sea, our boatman’s demeanor changes immediately to a jovial, entertaining host arranged at the behest of our sponsors, telling us stories of the sea, and of his Hashima. Forty-five minutes later, he lands us on Hashima, and three of us scramble ashore with a day’s supplies, cameras, and more film than I have ever carried.

After giving us his promise to return before sunset, our boatman maneuvers off station, leaving us alone with the silence of Hashima, awed, and not really sure of what to do next.

Photography: Ken Lee / Magnesium. Nikon F3 20mm and XP2 Super.

The feeling of being in some far off post-apocalyptic land is immense. To experience a place where every way you turn is abandoned desolation, immediately overwhelms; you do not need to imagine what it would be like to stand in a once occupied city after a plague, The Bomb, or at the end of time.

Everything from the hospital, the school, factories, apartments, the bathhouse, the gymnasium, and the shrines stands vacant. Dark canyons of fallen lumber fill the streets, collapsed roofs abound, the detritus of a modern life is scattered under your feet as you walk – washed from the buildings by the wind, the rain, and the sea.

With little more to hear than a plaintive sea bird, and ominously the occasional clattering sound of falling masonry and concrete, we step over telephones, sake cups, toothbrushes, broken toys, milk bottles, and curiously, dental tools, all laying under foot as we scramble over what were once streets, and through the vacant buildings.

It is tempting to try and extract a man-against-nature message when coming to Hashima. The message here however is simply one of isolation, the feeling of vulnerability, and the opportunity to travel back in time to explore the lives of a coal mining island-city; to experience a snapshot of life in Japan from the 1960s and 1970s.

I cannot speak for my companions, but over the course of a day on Hashima as we document what we see, I go from being a photographer intent on making some serious commentary with my work, to gawking like an American tourist in Paris.

With the declining need for coal in the 1970s, Mitsubishi closed operations over a period of a few short months, ferrying the inhabitants back to the mainland with not much more than what they could carry. What they left behind in 1974, is the Hashima you see now.

Photography: Skorj / Magnesium. Polaroid Type-665.

With the passing of ownership and control from the Mitsubishi Mining Corporation to the local Prefecture Office, a 220 meter public walkway has now been opened on the south end of the island. Twice-daily tours, either as a stand-alone Hashima access ticket, or as part of a regional historic pass, are now available. Hashima, as we experienced it, will most likely disappear with the expected advent of the eager day tripper.

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For more on abandoned Japan, click here.

These photos are a selection of work that is available for licensing. Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com for more information.

Beyond the usual cliche, and outside of the normal expectation. These are the viewpoints a Magnesium photographer Skorj attempts to capture with his Polaroid camera. While Polaroid film is no longer being made, and many of these places have disappeared, their memories exist here, and in those who have seen an ordinary life…

An ancient mining town, a still-in-service 1950s’ train, an abandoned resort, a disused gas station, or a building whose occupants have long departed, they are all reduced with a common feeling of being lived in, well-used, and perhaps even loved.

If you are interested in using these in a commercial work, these photos are a small selection from a much larger body of work that is all available for licensing. Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com for more information.

In enjoying cars & motorcycles, to me there are only a few standout machines. While a ragged-edge racing 911 (stripped shell, slicks, Carrera prepped 3.6) reminded me of what it would be like to drive around with Britney Spears duct-tapped to the roof – naked – only few other machines have electrified me as much as the Audi R8.

Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, big Benzes, Rollers, Aston Martins, and a wide range of Porsche all fall away under the combined elements of the R8. Road feel (very 911-like), noise (as good as a Ferrari), looks (greater impact than any present Lambo), and a drivability that matches a Toyota Camry. Smooth, refined, precise, efficient, with good visibility, and overall ease of use make it a stand-out choice for anyone looking to drop their investment banker’s bonus in one hit.

No convoluted i-Drive navi, no silly drop-the-roof needed to reverse foibles, no trendy ‘Start’ button, no hold-your-tongue-the-right-way and hope-for-the-best gear changes, just a simple, refined configuration, tidy design, and very German presentation. No other car feels so at home dropping in for coffee at Omotesando Hills, running out to Costco (perhaps not at 300km/h), or blasting around the Ashinoko Skyline on a mist shrouded morning.

While some suggest the extra second or so off 0-100 from the new V-10, louder note, and generally more supercar feel from the latest update 5.2L version make it a better car, the plain-jane V-8 suits me just fine…

If you are interested in using these in a commercial work, these photos are a small selection from a much larger body of work that is all available for licensing. Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com for more information.

The last decade has seen the Tokyo Motor Show move from one of the most glamorous, over-the-top, motoring events on the annual calendar, to a more subdued, and very restrained event. For 2009, with the well publicized situation of having the European manufacturers staying away, and the then poor state of the global economy, the TMS was expected to feel a lot different.

Only a few major releases were scheduled (one being a rather ghastly, totally tasteless Lexus ‘sports car’) the show occupied only the main hall, instead of the usual multiple, and wide-spread halls. Even the campaign girls / race queen numbers were well down, causing great concern among the otaku looking for their usual T&A fix. Only a few manufacturers were able to keep it together under these constraints, but Suzuki clearly had a handle on a few good ideas. Along with their usual range, they also presented a 1979 Swift with an appropriately attire companion. Easily the stand-out display (at least on press day).

Nissan too, while covering a large floor space, were restrained. While the ever charismatic Carlos unveiled their Leaf Plug-In, the rest of their stand was suitably low-key. A curiously named SUV styling exercise did however catch a few people’s eye.

Honda (always a favorite of mine) too, had a restrained stand, with perhaps their most interesting device being an Insight based updated version of their popular 1980s CR-X.

On assignment for a UK scootering magazine, I was not impressed by any of the scooter or motorcycle stands, with perhaps Yamaha’s EC-1 being a single exception. The only other major events on the two-wheeled scene were from the hideously and overwrought stylists at the Korean and Taiwanese scooter manufacturers. Instead of ball-point pens, they should have been giving away Sic Sacs in their press kits.

While 2009 was a quiet event, leaving the show I kept thinking about that little Suzuki…

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