Neon nights: rain, signs and the Asian city after dark

There is a look that almost everyone now associates with East Asian cities at night: narrow streets, signs stacked one above another, red and blue light, and wet pavement reflecting all of it. Films, games and countless photographs have made it familiar. This set is a small collection of that look, from Japanese alleys to the towers and avenues of Taipei.

Why so many signs?

Part of the answer is density. In cities like Tokyo and Taipei, shops, restaurants and bars are often stacked vertically, several businesses on different floors of the same narrow building. Each one needs to be seen from the street, so the signs climb the façade. The result is a wall of text and colour that looks chaotic, but is really a very efficient directory.

The second frame shows exactly this: a narrow Japanese street where every surface seems to be advertising something.

Rain as a second light

Rain transforms these streets. A wet road becomes a mirror, so every sign appears twice, and the darkest part of the frame suddenly fills with colour. Photographers often wait for rain, or for the moment just after it, for this reason. The figure with an umbrella in the cover image adds the last ingredient: a person small enough to show the scale of the light around them.

From alleys to avenues

The set moves from the intimate to the large. A scooter passing through a narrow alley of shops. A view straight down onto a Tokyo street between buildings. Then Taipei's towers at night, and a long exposure in black and white where traffic turns into lines of light. Without colour, the city becomes pure movement.

A note on looking

By day, streets like these are often quite ordinary, even a little messy. Night edits them. Darkness hides the clutter and leaves only light, which is perhaps why the neon city feels more like an idea than a place. It is worth remembering that real people live and work behind every one of those signs.

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Photos: masashiwakui, binmassam, 4601460, r-q, magictv, fishopen770 on Pixabay, used under the Pixabay Content License. These are not my photographs.