Yusuke Nagata is a Tokyo-based street photographer specializing in spontaneous street portraits. For two years (2019-2021) he decided to embark on a project about the Toyoko Kids, a group of homeless teenagers living around Shinjuku’s Toho Cinema in the Kabukichō district.
Nagata noticed in his frequent visits to Kabukicho that older homeless people he met way back in 2019 began disappearing. This was because the government was starting to prepare for the 2020 Olympics. The square was being redeveloped to get new buildings for business and this could be a possible reason why the elderly left. The photographer noticed that teenagers, many of them girls, replaced these elderly homeless people. “I guessed they were homeless because they had bought suitcases. They never seemed to leave,” Nagata shared.
The photographer would go to the area regularly to chat with the people drinking out in the space next to the cinema in Kabukicho. “I’d stop by in the evening with a beer and just start chatting,” he remarked. “Once we’ve been chatting for a bit I might snap a picture.”
According to Nagata, these kids did not trust adults, possibly due to their experience with their parents and the police. Some of the teenagers came from abusive homes, and if the police found out their real age, they would send them back to the places they escaped from, or to detention centers.
image credit: Yusuke Nagata