Dynamite Graffiti

“My mother’s dynamite suicide catapulted me out of my hometown. Maybe.” This is how @sueiakira recognizably concludes his life story in this journey based on his autobiography through the wildest years of his unbridled existence as a designer, lover, erotica freak, son, essayist and human being.

After a brief detour along smoky factory buildings, we dive into the nightlife of Tokyo in the sixties (and seventies and eighties) with the young Suei. Suei finds work there as a designer of signs for sex bars and quickly makes a name for himself in the industry. While his ups and downs in the ‘book industry’ follow each other in rapid succession, we even get to know the award-winning and perhaps most notorious Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki along the way.

Driven by avant-garde jazz notes and the lustful creative urge of its main character, Dynamite Graffiti is a steam train at cruising speed whose stopovers are all the more penetrating. Thus, his mother’s suicide so many years ago seeps through the hilarious madness of the night with almost fixed regularity and we see Suei staring into nothingness several times with a full ashtray next to him. We have no doubt that you will do the same at the end credits.

PS: the Skoop is of course smoke-free.

Based on the autobiographical essay “Suteki na Dainamaito Sukyandaru” by Akira Suei (published in 1982 by Hokusousha).

All images: © 2018 “Dynamite Graffiti”