Study N°14

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.

He approaches Kabuki with a restlessness that feels almost defiant. He unsettles its fixed rhythm and loosens the strict seasonality that once dictated when and how a body appears on stage. He accepts Western roles without hesitation, this autumn he stepped into the title role of Hamlet by William Shakespeare, and moves between languages, forms, and audiences with a natural ease. At the same time, he continues his university studies, inhabiting two temporalities at once: the ancient and the immediate. 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. Together, they began from what we started to call, almost instinctively, a certain Japanese way of dressing. Their 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. The generous, architectural volumes and radical pattern cutting of Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto still echo here. Fabric wraps, extends, protects. The body is not displayed; it is redefined.

For this issue, we have also created a special insert dedicated to the eyewear house Jacques Marie Mage, a brand who just opened its first flagship store in Tokyo. The story is 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

Design : Rupert Smyth Studio

Content : 208 pages of color and black and white photographs, protective packaging

Dimensions : 21cm x 29,7cm

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