--- title: Japanese Photographer Shintarrow Yoshikawa Brings His Trilogy Into Focus With Reverse Mediator, Where Landscapes Look Back description: Japanese photographer Shintarrow Yoshikawa pairs Rome, Trieste and Vatican landscapes with independent narratives in Reverse Mediator at Gallery Walk, Tokyo. author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-07-20T18:45:58.471Z updated: 2026-07-21T07:38:41.677Z canonical: https://www.richmanmagazine.com/article/shintarrow-yoshikawa-reverse-mediator-tokyo image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/shintarrow-red-door.webp categories: Destinations content_type: Spotlight region: Tokyo publication: Rich Travel Magazine schema_type: Article about: - type: Person name: Shintarrow Yoshikawa description: "Shintarrow Yoshikawa is a Japanese photographer and visual storyteller whose practice spans photography, visual storytelling and media production. Across a three-exhibition arc at Gallery Walk in Tokyo's Shiodome Media Tower, he has moved from rescued cats in \"CATS Moment of Truth\" (2023), presented as traditional kakejiku hanging scrolls, to people in \"LIVE PASSENGER\" (2025), to the landscapes of \"Reverse Mediator\" (2026), photographs made in Rome, Trieste, Vatican City and Japan, each paired with an independent written narrative. He has presented work internationally, including a photographic exhibition in Budapest and LIMINAL ENCOUNTERS at MondoCon 2026. He photographs the moments when a familiar place stops being merely a record and begins to look back." url: https://shintarrow.jp jobTitle: Photographer and Visual Storyteller --- Japanese photographer and visual storyteller Shintarrow Yoshikawa opened "Reverse Mediator" at Gallery Walk in Tokyo's Shiodome Media Tower this month, the third exhibition in a trilogy that moves from rescued cats to people and finally to the places that hold them. The show runs until 29 July and is free to enter. Rather than marking an endpoint, the exhibition brings the trilogy into focus while Yoshikawa's practice continues beyond it. The arc began in 2023 with "CATS Moment of Truth", a body of work centred on rescued cats. Yoshikawa portrayed them not simply as animals, but as individual lives, each with its own history and presence. Rather than using conventional frames, he presented the photographs as traditional Japanese kakejiku hanging scrolls, produced through a specialised process that adapts traditional scroll-mounting techniques to photographic works. The trilogy continued in 2025 with "LIVE PASSENGER", which turned to people and the transient nature of human presence. "Reverse Mediator" arrives at landscape and space, bringing together photographs made in Rome, Trieste, Vatican City and Japan. Streets, churches, ports, tunnels and stairways appear not as records of places visited but as thresholds, moments where the visible world seems to shift into another register of time and memory. ![CATS Moment of Truth: rescued-cat photographs presented as traditional Japanese kakejiku hanging scrolls](https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/rm-cats-kakejiku.webp) *Photo: © Shintarrow Yoshikawa* The title carries the exhibition's central idea: that photography does not mediate reality in one direction only. "I am interested in the moment when a familiar place stops being merely a record and begins to look back at us," Yoshikawa says. "Reverse Mediator is about that quiet reversal, the feeling that the landscape is not only being seen, but is also returning our gaze." ## A Photographic Trilogy That Came Into Focus in Retrospect The trilogy was not conceived as a fixed three-part project from the outset. Yoshikawa encounters places through his work in media, education and business, both in Japan and abroad, and photographs scenes that stay with him. Rome, Vatican City and Trieste were not selected in advance as locations for a single project; the connection between them emerged only later, through the photographs themselves. > " These were not places I chose in advance for a single series; only later, when I looked back at the photographs, did I begin to feel that the works themselves were revealing what connected them: the moment when a familiar scene turns inside out and reveals another reality. " > — Shintarrow Yoshikawa What connected them, he says, was the sense that history and the present, the sacred and the everyday, presence and absence, could coexist within the same place. In Rome, night light and shadow on stone architecture made the landscape feel less like something observed and more like a presence looking back. In Vatican City, he sensed a quiet reversal between those who pray and the sacred figures before them. In Trieste, where cultures and histories intersect, the landscape itself seemed to hold several layers of time at once. As the trilogy came into focus, Yoshikawa maintained an ongoing dialogue with Professor Kazuhiko Mori of Kyoto University of Advanced Science. Their conversations around Sense of Place helped Yoshikawa reflect on the connections between memory, presence and atmosphere running through the works, and articulate the three exhibitions as part of a continuous exploration. ![Hand-Stretched Somen, from the LIVE PASSENGER exhibition by Shintarrow Yoshikawa](https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/rm-lp-somen.webp) *Photo: © Shintarrow Yoshikawa* ## Narrative Photography Where Text and Image Stay Independent Each photograph in "Reverse Mediator" is paired with a written narrative, and the relationship between the two is precise. The text is neither a caption nor a story intended to explain the photograph. Each remains independent, but placed together they alter how the other is perceived. The photograph is anchored in recorded reality, a place that existed and a moment that was present. The narrative opens an entrance into another possible reality, and the slight gap between them leaves [space for the viewer](https://richtravelmagazine.com/article/pausing-in-times-square-living-with-art-not-just-walking-by-it)'s own memory and imagination to enter. ![Exhibition panel from Reverse Mediator pairing photograph and narrative text](https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/rm-panels-01.webp) *Photo: © Shintarrow Yoshikawa* The clearest example in the show is "From the Cobblestone Road", photographed on Via delle Quattro Fontane in Rome. The photograph shows a steep street at night, stone buildings, the headlights of cars moving through the frame. In the accompanying narrative, the two headlights begin to resemble eyes lifting upward as the road rises. The lines of light run across the cobblestones like fingers moving over piano keys, and the sound of the approaching cars becomes associated with the sudden return of someone half-forgotten in memory. Nothing visible in the photograph is invented; the writing allows the recorded street to become psychologically alive. ## Photography and Storytelling Across Borders ![Visitors viewing Reverse Mediator at Gallery Walk, Tokyo](https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/rm-installation-02.webp) *Photo: © Shintarrow Yoshikawa* Yoshikawa has presented his work internationally, including a photographic exhibition in Budapest and LIMINAL ENCOUNTERS at MondoCon 2026. His practice spans photography, visual storytelling and media production. He does not approach European cities as travel destinations. He photographs the moments when an unfamiliar place unexpectedly [evokes recognition, a memory, or a sense of another time](https://richtravelmagazine.com/article/peeling-back-the-ordinary-natalie-christensen-s-unseen-worlds-deconstructed-self-state-univer), and that sensibility is what "Reverse Mediator" distils. "Reverse Mediator" is at Gallery Walk, Shiodome Media Tower, Tokyo, until 29 July 2026. Admission is free. ### Event: Reverse Mediator 1 July 2026 – 29 July 2026 In-person Venue: Gallery Walk, Shiodome Media Tower, Tokyo, Japan Organized by: Shintarrow Yoshikawa The third exhibition in Shintarrow Yoshikawa's photographic trilogy, pairing landscapes made in Rome, Trieste, Vatican City and Japan with independent written narratives. It follows "CATS Moment of Truth" (2023) and "LIVE PASSENGER" (2025) at the same venue. Admission is free. [Event website](https://shintarrow.jp) **About Shintarrow Yoshikawa** Photographer and Visual Storyteller Shintarrow Yoshikawa is a Japanese photographer and visual storyteller whose practice spans photography, visual storytelling and media production. Across a three-exhibition arc at Gallery Walk in Tokyo's Shiodome Media Tower, he has moved from rescued cats in "CATS Moment of Truth" (2023), presented as traditional kakejiku hanging scrolls, to people in "LIVE PASSENGER" (2025), to the landscapes of "Reverse Mediator" (2026), photographs made in Rome, Trieste, Vatican City and Japan, each paired with an independent written narrative. He has presented work internationally, including a photographic exhibition in Budapest and LIMINAL ENCOUNTERS at MondoCon 2026. He photographs the moments when a familiar place stops being merely a record and begins to look back. [Website](https://shintarrow.jp) ## FAQ **Q: What is narrative photography?** Narrative photography pairs images with story elements so that the photograph carries more than a documentary record. In "Reverse Mediator", Yoshikawa takes a strict version of the form: each photograph and its accompanying text remain independent works, but together they change how each is read. **Q: How is photography used in storytelling in Reverse Mediator?** The photograph anchors a real place and moment, and the paired narrative opens an alternative reading of the same scene, headlights becoming eyes, light on cobblestones becoming piano keys. The gap between the two is deliberate, leaving room for the viewer's own memory and imagination. **Q: When and where can I see Reverse Mediator?** "Reverse Mediator" is on view at Gallery Walk in Tokyo's Shiodome Media Tower until 29 July 2026, with free admission. Following the Tokyo exhibition, the trilogy of "CATS Moment of Truth", "LIVE PASSENGER" and "Reverse Mediator" will be available for future presentations in Japan and internationally through invitations and collaborations. Yoshikawa welcomes enquiries from museums, galleries, universities, cultural institutions and curators interested in hosting the trilogy or developing a collaborative presentation.