Ministry of Loneliness

In 2019, I travelled to Japan for the first time for ten days, without having decided on a photography project beforehand.
When I returned to France, I immediately noticed that the photos conveyed a sense of loneliness, a diffuse melancholy, in megacities as densely populated as Tokyo.

Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and I was unable to organise another trip until 2025. Taking a closer interest in the country in the meantime, I learned that in 2021 the government had decided to create a Ministry of Loneliness in order to stem the worrying increase in the number of suicides.

Japanese society is traditionally patriarchal, with a model based on a division of roles between men and women according to their gender. For example, it is generally accepted that a woman should marry and have children, and that she should stop working when she becomes a mother. The salaryman model, which does not count working hours, remains highly valued, but it also leads to many cases of burnout.

From childhood onwards, individuals are subject to strong social pressure, both within their families and at school, and it seems difficult to find one’s place in this highly standardised society when one takes a different path.

This series is not intended to be a documentary, but takes a sociological and poetic perspective. That is why I connected it to nature in order to create tension with urbanity. Shintoism is Japan’s oldest religion. It celebrates the deities of nature, these superior beings, anchored in a cycle of perpetual renewal of life, a source of hope.