Bruce’s desire to visit Japan in the first instance derived from an exhibition at MoMA in 1974, during which he saw a show on New Japanese Photography and was utterly blown away. “So I figured that if they could take good photographs in Japan, Why couldn’t I?” 20 years later and he finally fulfilled his inquest, with thanks to a French grant, Villa Médicis Hors les Murs, and a fellowship from The Japan Foundation. And when he got there, he expedited on a typical search for stand-out faces, the people that struck a chord with him visually in terms of their physical appearance, aura and mannerisms. What he found, however, was an array of homeless people, as well as day workers and the Yakuza – members of traditional organised crime groups in the city. It was an opportunity to document the other side of society; the judged, overlooked and stereotyped groups often left on the fringes. 

At the time of shooting, Bruce explains how it was a flourishing time for the medium of photography. “Culturally, it seemed that the photography scene was starting to blossom,” he notes. As such, he ventured out every day to walk the city’s streets, “returning to places where I thought I would be able to do good work.” The result of which is a series of stark, monochromatic imagery that often sees subjects scowling at his lens; frozen in a state of surprise; or posing coyly – and sometimes brazenly – with cigarettes in hand and an eyebrow raised. It’s very much a revealing depiction of the people that make up the city, achieved through Bruce’s usual tactics of brash and bumptious street photography. But also, quite comparatively, he spent a few regular intervals getting to know the Yakuza, Japan’s mafia, which naturally opened up a more personal window for his image-making.

Speaking of his most favoured image from the series, Bruce directs me in the way of the horizontal picture of two Yakuza, “where one is lighting up the other one’s cigarette.” He adds: “It was in a coffee shop in Ginza and when I saw the scene, I asked if they could do it again because I knew that it would be a wonderful shot.” It’s the very opposite to his process of “jumping at somebody”, but nonetheless an apt example of his ability to seek out a noteworthy moment. Another picture, in Sanya, a neighbourhood in the Taitō and Arakawa wards of Tokyo, was taken in the early morning of January that year. “I was standing in the cold with my camera but not taking pictures,” he says, “when a disheveled homeless man came up to me and started mumbling aggressively at me. Being streetwise, I was ready for him: he swung at my face and missed, so the next thing I kicked him in the balls, and he went down.”

Bruce is clearly opportunist just as much as he is exceptionally skilled at what he does; he’s able to wander the streets of any given location and seek out the golden moments for a photograph. Whether he startles, stirs or seeks permission, he’s sure to produce something that’s overtly telling about the human race. And after his visit to Japan in the 90s, this only solidified his practice even more so. “My work in Japan shows that a photographer can go to a foreign country where they’ve never been to and not only take good photographs in that place, but also delve into the soul of those who live there,” he concludes. “If you’re passionate about something, just go and find it by yourself.”