Keith Haring drawing on the street in Tokyo’s Harajuku district on January 24, 1988
Photos by Juan Rivera
Keith wrote about this event in his journal:
“Wake up and go to buy a brush at Tokyu Hands and look at Chalk. Trying to find a big piece (or pieces) to draw with on the street in Harajuku for photos for Friday magazine. I could only find regular size chalk, so I bought an entire box. We had to meet the photographers from Friday at 1 PM at the container I painted the first coat on the red circle and then we all headed toward Harrahs Yuko. Underneath an overpass for pedestrians I did several chalk drawings using the existing street markings as a starting point. I added bodies to ‘rectangular’ white markings on the street and added bodies to paint boxes indicating parking positions. Almost immediately a huge crowd gathered. A policeman tried to make a stop, calling my drawings ‘vulgar.’ I found this amusing, considering I was drawing skateboards and a large ‘mother and child’ image, etc. After the photographer explained and persuaded him, he left us alone. We got great pictures and I handed out buttons and did autographs. When we left to head up to the main part of Harajuku, where the dancers are concentrated, a crowd of kids followed us for autographs. Kind of a procession, like the Pied Piper…
I return to the hotel and showered quickly and met Kwong and his friend Yoshi to go to the movies. We went to see Ann Magnuson in Jimmy Reardon with River Phoenix. It was cool to be watching Ann in a movie in the theater in Tokyo. It wasn’t a very good movie, but it had some funny parts and River Phoenix is pretty hot. After the movie we went to eat at a fun restaurant that only served one thing, and then went home to the hotel.”