Zushi

And this is a book of old photographs from around the same time that these photographs are from.

So they're in color, taken by an American, uh, military guy who was stationed in Zushi.

Mm-hmm.

In Kanagawa.

Kimaguren is a duo from the Shonan coast.

The two members, Iseki and Kurei, met at a swimming school in Zushi, the beach town just east of Kamakura, when they were high school students.

They stayed friends.

In 2005, they did something that most musicians would consider an extremely unusual business decision.

Before forming a band, they opened a beach house, a venue right on Zushi Beach called Beach House Cannon , an open-air stage and gathering place on the sand, booking other artists and running summer nights by the water.

While running it, they decided they wanted to be on the stage themselves.

They then called it Otodama Sea Studio, one of the most beloved open-air live venues in the Kanagawa region, where major Japanese artists perform through the summer months, with the stage facing the Pacific and the Shonan coastline stretching in both directions.