For this 14th issue of Study, we looked at the world of Sennosuke Kataoka, a kabuki actor only twenty-six years old, already carrying on his shoulders the weight of a formidable lineage. He is the heir to a long line of performers, born into a tradition where gesture and silence are transmitted like family secrets.
In the fall, during performances of Fuji Musume, two photographers followed him closely. Kotori Kawashima spent two days immersed in the private hours of rehearsal, where the art is still uncertain, searching for its final shape and Mayumi Hosokura entered during dress rehearsals and the charged intensity of live performance, when costume, light, and breath align before an audience.
What emerges from these parallel portfolios is an unfiltered portrait: not the polished icon of a classical art form, but a young artist in motion, passionate, disciplined and sometimes solitary. His ambition is clear : to carry kabuki into the twenty-first century. To let it travel beyond the borders of Japan. To prove that tradition, when held with intelligence and courage, can become something fiercely contemporary.
The fashion insert was photographed by Joséphine Löchen and styled by Rae Boxer references reach back to the first seismic arrival of Japanese designers in Paris in the early 1980s, when silhouettes shifted and the Western idea of tailoring was quietly broken down.
For this issue, we have also created a special insert dedicated to the eyewear house Jacques Marie Mage photographed by Takashi Homma, the legendary image-maker who has long observed Japan with a style both tender and unsparing. Over two days, he moved through the vast, restless body of Tokyo alongside stylist Akari Endo-Gaut, capturing portraits of Japanese models on sidewalks, at crossings, between towers of glass and concrete.
Contributors : Rae Boxer, Akari Endo-Gaut, Takashi Homma, Mayumi Hosokura, Sennosuke Kataoka, Kotori Kawashima, Joséphine Löchen, Tenko Nakajima