In 1920, a merchant from Aomori, at the far northern end of Honshu, had a house built in Tokyo. His family’s fortune had begun in cloth: a kimono-cloth shop, then cotton wholesale with a branch in the capital, then a bank, a soy sauce company and, in 1919, a major share in a new cement company back home. For his own house in Tokyo he reached for none of the new materials. He hired a shrine carpenter.
That traditional Japanese house in Tokyo is still standing, and on a clear November afternoon it held the pre-wedding photos of two people who had come a very long way to be there. They had flown in from the Middle East with a clear idea of what they wanted: editorial images, iconic and fashion-minded, with Japan as the canvas. It was a pre-wedding session that was really three things at once, part elopement, part engagement shoot, part fashion story. They could have been photographed almost anywhere. They chose a house that was built for arriving in this city from somewhere far away, and then feeling at home in it.
A House That Cloth Built
The history his home town keeps of him says that in the Taisho years he built a house in Tokyo and spent his later life there. The house’s present keepers describe it the way a carpenter would: chosen timber, rare woods, and master craftsmen of every trade working to the limit of their skill. The man who built it is named as a miyadaiku, a carpenter of shrines and temples.
There’s something in that choice we keep coming back to. Within a year of backing a cement company to build his town’s future, he trusted his own home to wood and to a builder of shrines. The house has stood through the 1923 earthquake, the war and a century of Tokyo tearing itself down and rebuilding. Its keepers say that while many houses like it were lost, this one survived almost by a miracle. It’s the same house where we held a Tokyo garden wedding, and we keep its name to ourselves. It’s one of the places we bring couples into quietly, and we’d like it to stay that way.
Built for Shade, Just as Glass Arrived
A Japanese house begins with its roof. The eaves reach well past the walls, so the rooms sit inside a band of shade and the sun comes in low, from the side, already softened. For centuries, paper screens were how these houses let the light in, and a shoji still takes the edge off whatever reaches it.
Glass was a recent arrival. Japan’s first flat glass factory only began production in 1909, eleven years before this house was finished, so it was built right at the moment when the old way of living with shade met a new way of letting light in.
We think about that more than photographers probably should. The deep eaves of a house like this keep the sun low and sideways, and sideways light is the light we wait all day for. Most of what makes a portrait feel honest is what’s left in shadow. A room built to hold darkness gives two people somewhere to be close without being on show, and the light finds them in bands and slices rather than all at once. We’d rather work with the light a place already has than bring our own, and this house has been shaping its light for a hundred years.
An Afternoon That Belongs to Two People
A wedding day belongs to a great many people. That’s its joy, and it’s why we care so much about giving guests space and time together. A pre-wedding shoot is the rare part of the story that belongs to the couple alone: no schedule held by anyone else, no guests waiting, and an afternoon to get used to the idea of each other in these clothes.
They saw each other for the first time that day in the garden, with nobody watching but us. The light that afternoon was spectacular, the low, late kind that slides in under the eaves. We know we talk about light a great deal. It’s how a chef talks about flavour: bring the right ingredients together and the result is something you can’t plan, only prepare for. We loved how completely they gave themselves to the house, to its corridors, its veranda and its garden, as if they had nowhere else to be. For two people who had come so far to get here, that was the whole point of coming.
When we plan a destination wedding in Japan, an afternoon like this is often where we’d start: somewhere with a history, no crowd, and time. It lets the wedding itself arrive already familiar, with two people who’ve spent a day being looked at kindly and have stopped noticing the camera. It’s why our photography and film begin long before the vows.
Light Through the Maples
In the middle of November, the maples in this Tokyo garden were still holding most of their green, and the afternoon sun came through them in pieces. The Japanese have a word for exactly that: komorebi, light through leaves. It’s a small word for a small thing, and it only exists for as long as the sun is at that angle and the leaves are still on the tree.
A garden like this is built on the same idea as the house. Nothing in it is shown all at once. Japanese garden makers call it miegakure, hide and reveal: paths bend so you come upon things slowly, stones sit half in shade, and a gate frames the next part of the garden before you walk into it. It’s a way of showing that asks you to slow down, and it suits two people at the beginning of something.
Somewhere to Come Home To
A house built a century ago for a family arriving from the far north has spent a hundred years being somewhere to come home to. It was made for shade, for slowness and for staying, and it still keeps all three. For one November afternoon it did that for two more people who had travelled a long way, and it asked nothing of them except that they stay close and let the light find them.
