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Book: STUDY MAGAZINE VOLUME 14
Art direction is handled by "Rupert Smyth Studio." Each issue is designed with a different aesthetic, intended as a collector's item for those who love fashion, art, and books.
The 14th issue features Senjaku Kataoka, a Japanese Kabuki actor, and "JMM," an eyewear brand launched in 2014 by French designer Jerome Jacques Marie Mage, based in Los Angeles.
This issue delves into the world of Kabuki actor Senjaku Kataoka, who, at just 25 years old, already carries a profound lineage on his shoulders. Born into a family with a long-standing heritage, he was raised in a tradition where even gestures and silences are passed down like family secrets.
However, for him, inheritance is not a museum piece.
His approach to Kabuki is rather challenging. He loosens the strict performance conventions that once dictated the timing and manner of appearing on stage, disrupting their fixed rhythm. He unhesitatingly accepts roles in Western plays, and in the autumn of 2025, he played the title role in William Shakespeare's 'Hamlet.' While gracefully navigating between languages, forms, and audiences, he also continues his university studies, living simultaneously in two times: ancient and present.
In the autumn of 2025, to coincide with a performance of 'Fuji Musume,' two Japanese photographers closely followed him. Kotori Kawashima spent two days in the private time of rehearsals, capturing the process of his art, still unformed, searching for its final shape. Mayumi Hosokura was present at the tense moments of the dress rehearsal and the actual performance, documenting the convergence of costume, light, and breath before the audience.
What emerges from these two portfolios is an unadorned portrait. Not a polished symbol of classical performing arts, but the figure of a young artist who moves with passion, discipline, and at times, solitude. His ambition is clear: to bring Kabuki into the 21st century, to make it travel beyond Japan's borders, and to show how a tradition inherited with intelligence and courage can become sharply contemporary.
This issue also features the eyewear brand "Jacques Marie Mage / JMM," which has just opened its first flagship store in Tokyo.
This story was photographed by Takashi Homma, a photographer who has observed Japan for many years. For two days, accompanied by stylist Akari Endo-Gaut, he roamed the vast and restless city of Tokyo, capturing portraits of Japanese models on sidewalks, at intersections, and between glass and concrete towers.
Homma photographs the city as if it were a private room. The frames, enveloped in a cool blue light, transform the megalopolis's density into something suspended, almost fragile. The city bustles with life, but the faces depicted are calm and somewhat contemplative. Homma's gaze maintains distance while holding intimacy, never intruding excessively on his subjects.
The resulting photographs are immediately recognizable as his own: precise and imbued with a subtle melancholy. At the same time, they clearly illustrate a larger trend in contemporary Japanese photography: a sensibility that finds poetry in the everyday surfaces of urban life.
The fashion insert was photographed by Josephine Löchen, a fashion photographer based in Paris, and styled by American fashion stylist Rae Boxer. They started from what we've almost intuitively begun to call "a Japanese way of dressing," a discipline of volume and restraint.
The reference point dates back to the dramatic appearance of Japanese designers in Paris in the early 1980s. At that time, silhouettes changed, and Western notions of tailoring were quietly dismantled. The architectural and bold volumes, and radical pattern cutting of Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto, still resonate here.
Fabric wraps, expands, and protects the body. The body is not flaunted, but redefined.
The chosen looks use codes such as asymmetry, layering, and disrupted proportions without becoming costumes. As a counterpoint to Senjaku's almost mythical presence in the main portfolio, these clothes are presented as grounded. Models wear little makeup, their hair is pulled back, and there are no theatrical gestures. The drama lies in the cutting and the space created between the body and the clothing.
What was once radical on the Parisian runways is here rethought for everyday life. It is not diluted, but absorbed. The result is a carefully curated wardrobe that carries the memory of this revolution but is lived in daily.
Packaging: Senjaku Kataoka / Photography: Kotori Kawashima
Cover photo: Senjaku Kataoka / Photography: Mayumi Hosokura
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