How a Photographic Obsession Became a Book About Japan’s Vending Machines

Know anyone that's been to Japan and they'll surely have mentioned vending machines at somepoint in their storytelling. The metal wonders are everywhere, and filled with the most wonderful stuff. For Field Mag Editor-at-Large Tanner Bowden, his own enlightenment journey started when he first traveled to Japan to race the 2023 Tokyo Marathon. With an old film camera packed to document his trip, he soon found himself studying the machines placed neatly in rows throughout the country. After a second trip, Tanner made the decision to share his well documented obsession with the world, editing a collection of original photos into “The Observer’s Guide to Japanese Vending Machines,” a self published photo book now available now.

If you’ve never traveled to Japan, it might be surprisingly to hear how widespread these vending machines really are. A stretch of four or five might line the entrance to a train station, while a small canopy could shelter just one or two machines down an unassuming alley-sized street in Tokyo. Smaller towns house their local population of vending machines, but the show of scale and variety in the country’s major cities are impressive to the visitor taking notice.

With a current population of over 14-million, these little towers of commerce offer the capitol city’s residents convenience at nearly every turn. In many of the vending machines, you’ll find hot and cold beverages, snacks, and other odds and ends. “Cake-in-a-can, a hot bowl of ramen, individually wrapped pieces of fruit, caviar, clothing — the list goes on,” Tanner details. If you had visited the country prior to the mid-90’s, you would have found plenty of machines loaded with cold cans of Japanese light lagers and pilsners before their placement was scaled back to address issues like underage drinking.

With the daunting task of editing and self-publishing “The Observer’s Guide to Japanese Vending Machines” complete, we caught up with Tanner to ask him some questions about what drew him towards this subject matter and the publishing process itself.

Tell us about your favorite, or an especially memorable vending machine spotting in Japan. What was it vending, and where did it live?

On my second trip, my partner and I spent five days hiking part of the Kumano Kodo, a famous pilgrimage route that goes through the mountains of the Kii Peninsula. These trails are not easy; every day there was a long, steep ascent and a long, steep descent. On one of the hardest days of the hike, after finishing a climb up through the forest, the trail intersected a logging road for a short stretch. We popped out of the woods onto this road and there was not one but multiple vending machines up there in the mountains, probably 30 minutes from the nearest village. It was cold out, we were tired, and dang the hot can of coffee we bought felt like a little miracle. I also bought a small bottle of hot green tea to put in my pocket.

Have you received any feedback about the book from any residents of Japan? If not, how would you expect they’d react to an entire book documenting a banal fixture of their life?

I've thought about this, because there are often stories about Japan in Western media that essentially boil down to "look at this weird and quirky thing they do over there!" and it feels gimmicky at best and culturally patronizing at worst. I think, through the intention of the design and the photos, that I was able to avoid this because that was never what this project was about. Banal is a good word—I think there's a huge opportunity to find interest and beauty in the banal. There are enough photos of the Yasaka Pagoda out there, show me something else! A few folks I'm connected to on Instagram over there have reacted positively to the work, and I hope others would at least find it amusing, the idea of this foreigner who's obsessed with vending machines.

How did you get from film scans to page spreads, what did that editing process look like for you?

It was a process! I'll try to give you a quick breakdown. I made general selects and then edited the photos and then let them sit for about a month. That separation helped when I came back to them to make final selects, I was more objective, less precious. From here I printed them all out—you can do this on the cheap at Staples—and spread them out all over the floor of my house and looked for interesting themes and patterns to help me make groupings. Then it was back to the computer, where I translated these groupings into spreads using layout rules I'd already decided on. Then it was back to Staples to print the spreads out so I could tape them up on the wall at home to see everything all at once and move things around. I left them up for a long time until I was confident in the final page order. (I could go on and on; if people are interested in more process stuff they should check out my newsletter archive).

What kind of advice would you pass on to a photographer thinking about self-publishing their own photo book?

First I'd tell them the same thing I was told about printing: it's going to take longer than you think it will. I scoffed at that advice but there was a point when I was telling certain people this book would be out in June and I got them at the end of October so joke's on me. Here's something a little more concrete—once you know the general size, shape, page count, and materials you're going to use, start talking to a printer. My printer was constantly asking me questions about things I didn't realize I needed to consider and it helped me understand the limits and possibilities of the design. Also, look at a lot of photo books. (Buy them! Support artists!) Find the ones you like the most, figure out what you like about them, then design that into your own.

For the photo nerds reading this, can you share what cameras and film stocks you shot throughout your book?

There was the Olympus PEN-F I mentioned earlier and I also had my trusty Canon AE-1 Program. Most of the vending machine photos wound up on Portra 400 but I also shot some Tri-X 400 and CineStill 800T while I was in Japan. I also shot a lot of digital using my Canon R5.

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