SUDIRU

Keisho Okamoto, Daichiro Shinjo

Keisho Okamoto (1937-2024) was a Zen monk deeply rooted in Miyako Island and one of the earliest folklorists to undertake the study of Okinawan folklore. Beginning in the latter half of the 1960s, before the reversion of Okinawa to Japan, he conducted extensive fieldwork primarily in the village of Karimata, delving into the folk culture of the region under the influence of leading Japanese scholars such as Kunio Yanagita, Shinobu Orikuchi, and Kitaro Nishida.

This book compiles photographs taken by Okamoto between the late 1960s and late 1970s as part of his practice of folklore as local studies. His lens captured the rituals and ceremonies of Karimata, Shimajiri, Ikema Island, Nishihara, Kurima Island, and Sunagawa. What emerges from these images transcends their role as research materials: they are unembellished portrayals of people expressing gratitude to the gods and to nature, deeply immersed in prayer. As Okamoto was not a professional photographer, his images project a reality free from artistic manipulation, offering a raw and intimate perspective on these sacred moments.

The book also presents works by Daichiro Arashiro, who overlays Okamoto's photographs with layers of indigo and ink, layering the present over the past to create a space for rebirth. Following Okamoto's passing, his invaluable academic materials--including photographs, notebooks, audio recordings, and artifacts--were continuously preserved by his grandson, Arashiro. The past recorded by Okamoto intersects with the present lived by Arashiro, resurrecting the photographs into the contemporary world and forging a dialogue across time. Furthermore, the academic perspective titled "Okamoto's Approach to the Study of Folklore" by folklorist Takanori Shimamura and the contribution by photographer Naoki Ishikawa add depth to this exploration of cultural continuity and transformation.

The title, "Sudiru," is a word from the Miyako language meaning "rebirth" or "resurrection." Through the dialogue between Keisho Okamoto and Daichiro Arashiro, this book invites us to reflect on our roots and poses questions to a world where diverse cultures and values intersect, offering a new perspective on the present.

"Folkloric turning. This is precisely what Shinjo is attempting with this book. Okamoto's folklore studies acquire an entirely new form of expression through their connection and fusion with the works of contemporary calligrapher Daichiro Shinjo." 

Takanori Shimamura

"Just as Atget's photographs were discovered by Berenice Abbott and the value of Tsuneichi Miyamoto's photographs was reappraised by Daido Moriyama, Keisho Okamoto's photographs stand tall as a monument to the photographic record and memory due to the efforts of his grandson, Daichiro Shinjo. It gives me great pleasure that the photographs of Keisho Okamoto, which touched my heart five years ago, have stood the test of time and will be released in the form of a photobook." 

Naoki Ishikawa

"Originally, the photographs were not supposed to be made public. But from the instant my grandfather pressed the shutter, through the long and involved process that culminated in their presentation in this expressive form in our time, there is great significance. As I confront these images, the sense of glimpsing my own "roots" fills me with energy and vitality. It seems as if a single thread for expressing the present moment is strongly tied to each of the photographs. Mysticism, curiosities, rarity-these are of no importance. As I continue to engage with the foundation of my being, it seems that I am tracing a path back to my umbilical cord that gives me a sensation of subdued excitement within my heart.What appear in the photographs are not artificial performances but simply the authentic and unpretentious appearances of people who are naturally expressing gratitude to the gods and to nature."

Daichiro Shinjo

---

Related Items

川瀬 慈 『見晴らしのよい時間』	上原沙也加 『眠る木』	今福龍太 『原写真論』	石川竜一 『okinawan portraits 2012-2016』

東松照明 『新編 太陽の鉛筆』 (Out of Stock)	石川直樹 『VERNACULAR』	華雪 『書の棲処』

HIMAWARI

Makoto Yasumori

"What on earth are human beings doing?"

On August 9, 2006, at the Nagasaki Peace Memorial Ceremony to pray for the re- pose of atomic bomb victims, Itcho Ito, the mayor of Nagasaki at the time, began his Peace Declaration to the world by expressing his anger and frustration over the fact that nuclear weapons had still not been eliminated from the world. I am the son of Itcho Ito's cousin. I was deeply moved as I listened to him deliver his Peace Dec- laration on the television. I felt so proud of him and looked forward to great things from him in the future.

I became clearly aware of Itcho Ito when I was in elementary school. At the time, I had the impression of him as being a big man who was cheerful and energetic. He loved sunflowers that bloom turned toward the sun. He was someone whose presence brightened everything around him. His first name was Kazunaga, but people always affectionately called him Itcho-san.[...]

Through slow and steady effort and with "no political base, no name recognition, and no financial backing" Itcho Ito gained increasing public support. He was elected to the Nagasaki City Council and later advanced to the Nagasaki Prefectural Assem- bly. Then in 1995, he ran in the election to become mayor of Nagasaki, a dream he had held since elementary school.

On the day they counted the votes I was in high school then I clearly recall watching the election coverage at home on the television with my family. All of us were silently praying that he would win. At the breaking news that Itcho Ito was the projected winner, my father raised both hands repeatedly, each time shouting Banzai! Banzai! in an explosion of joy that I had never seen in him before. Witnessing that scene of triumph shook me to the soul. I think this was the moment when I inherit- ed the desire of my father and family to support the politician Itcho Ito.

Then twelve years later, on April 17, 2007, during his bid for a fourth term in the Nagasaki mayoral election, when Itcho Ito returned from campaigning to his cam- paign headquarters in Daikokumachi, Nagasaki at 7:50 p.m., he was shot in the back by a man belonging to a crime syndicate. On hearing the news, I trembled un- controllably, tears flowed, I began to sweat, I cried so hard that my nose ran, it was hard to breath, blood oozed from my clenched lips, and I felt faint.

What happened? Why? Please don't die! were some of the thoughts that raced through my mind. I drove through the night to the Ito family's grave where I put my hands together and prayed desperately. My prayers went unanswered. At around 2:30 in the middle of the night of April 18, Itcho Ito passed away.

The incident was reported every day in newspapers and on television for many days afterward. New reports had always seemed to me to be simply a flow of words and images, but news of this incident that was so close to home felt like a terrible weapon gouging into my heart. For a while, I was tormented with despair just seeing those news reports and left unable to do anything for days.

All I can do is take photographs. But I know from experience that photographs can become a weapon, so in consideration of the feelings of the bereaved family I felt that it was wrong to photograph this overwhelming happening.

Years later something occurred to change how I felt.

Every year on April 17, a platform was set up for people to offer flowers at the site of the incident. In 2019, on the 13th anniversary of Itcho Ito's death, it was decided that the platform would no longer be set up. It was then when I began to fear that the memories of Itcho Ito and the significance of the incident would inevitable fade away. After struggling with my reluctance to photograph anything connected with the incident, in the end I became strongly resolved to preserve Itcho Ito's memory through photographs.

I went to Itcho Ito's family members and others close to him who had been his long-standing supporters to tell them about how I felt and to hear their stories about him.

When I had the chance at various times during the COVID-19 pandemic, I visited each of their homes to hear their thoughts on the incident and about the kind of person they perceived Itcho Ito to be. They were all unanimous in saying that they didn't understand why the incident had happened. They also talked of Itcho's aura as a politician and that they had expected he would continue to be even more successful in his efforts.

The incident not only crushed the hopes of the many people who supported this one politician; it also disrupted their everyday lives. Regardless of the reason, taking someone's life is never justified.

As I was photographing the people who had supported Itcho Ito and scenes of daily life in Nagasaki, I carried the hope that no one would have to experience such sad- ness again and that everyone could live their lives in peace. When I spoke to people in the city while taking photographs and they would cheerfully answer yoka to yo, meaning it's okay, it made me feel happy. With each photograph I took, I thought what a great city it is, but at the same time my perplexity deepened about why such an incident had happened here.

Even as I proceeded with this photography project, there was no end to tragic events in the world. Every time I watched such news reports, I wondered. What is the point of continuing to appeal to the public to eliminate violence?! Couldn't such tragedies have been stopped? No matter how much society may advance, it is meaningless without advancement on an individual level.

I am heavily concerned that facts and lessons we must not forget will sink into oblivion. I don't want them to fade away. They must not be allowed to fade away. I want to preserve the memories through photographs.

This is the moment I wish to make an appeal borrowing the words of Itcho Ito. "What on earth are human beings doing?"

I pray that this photograph collection serves as a catalyst for reflecting on that question.

---

Related Items

安森信 『同級生』	頭山ゆう紀 『残された風景』	‪片岡俊 『Life Works』	上原沙也加 『眠る木』

『アルバムのチカラ 増補版』	髙橋健太郎 『A RED HAT』	林典子 『ヤズディの祈り』	石川竜一 『okinawan portraits 2012-2016』

Mary Had a Little Lamb

Shinichiro Nagasawa

There are places in the world that we must not forget. And yet we have forgotten those places.

The Ogasawara Islands lie in the Pacific Ocean approximately 1,000 kilometers south of Tokyo. On Chichijima, one of the islands, a mountain was gouged out and coated with concrete that hardened to form a bunker. There are three openings, two of which are connected by tunnels. This place was never to be known that had been closed off for many years-it was a place that should not be known. A place that was forcibly meant to be forgotten by both time and history.

Photographer Shinichiro Nagasawa spent 13 years beginning in 2008 making numerous trips to the Ogasawara Islands. The one-way trip by boat from Tokyo takes 24 hours over rough seas to reach the islands. He photographed the way of life of the island's indigenous Bonin Islanders, their portraits, and the island's nature and landscapes. These were later published in the photobook The Bonin Islanders. He included old photographs throughout the photobook and interspersed scenery from the past with scenes of everyday life in the present. Turning the pages of the photobook, we are drawn in by the tranquil natural landscapes of the island, both beautiful and rugged, cut from the fabric of time. The collection of photographs is also a record of materials gathered periodically by a cultural anthropologist during fieldwork, as well as a story filled with literary emotion. However, there are unpublished photos that were not included in that photobook. These are compiled in this collection, Mary Had a Little Lamb. At the beginning of the book, Nagasawa states, "A nuclear warhead named Mary's Lamb was deployed on Chichijima under U.S. military occupation." 

Mary Had a Little Lamb is an American nursery rhyme written in the 19th century. It's a story about a little girl named Mary who has a pet lamb that is very attached to her. One day, her brother encourages Mary to bring the lamb to school. The sudden appearance of the lamb at school causes a commotion among the students. The students panic because Mary broke the rules by bringing the lamb to school where animals are not usually allowed. The nursery rhyme includes a line about the students wondering, "Why does the lamb love Mary so much?" Something that was wasn't supposed be there was there. The name almost seems to be metaphorically intended. [...]

Japan promised by law to adhere to the Three Non-Nuclear Principles not to possess, produce, or permit the introduction of nuclear weapons. But nuclear weapons were brought here. Nuclear bombs were stored and retrieved here. Something that shouldn't be had existed here. Nagasawa's photographs of this place bring to our attention faint memories that lie behind what is shown in the photographs. The people who knew that time are disappearing, giving way to a new generation of Bonin Islanders. It is a past of loss and forgetfulness. Nagasawa has unearthed and made visual the secret room-a void severed from time and space. [...]

Nagasawa's photographs reflect the memory of the place. Like archaeology, by recording substance and texture, the memory of the place is unearthed and brought to light. Memory holds neither negative nor positive matter. Entering the bunker in Chichijima,Astanding there, shining light on the memory, and digging and digging as if to unearth it, Nagasawa sought to capture the 'void' in front of him in photographs. Today, if everything can exist as a photograph, the memory of the place that should have been lost, the secret room in the bunker deep in the mountains of Chichijima that should have been buried, things that should not exist have been brought together to dwell in the photographs as memories of the place. Mary's Lamb was once here. Mary's Lamb is no longer here. But Mary's Lamb has not disappeared to some other place in the world. Nagasawa's photographs pose a question to those of us living today. These photographs are memories to take into the future by those who will live from now on.

We were on the verge of forgetting this place. Now we cannot forget.

Excerpts from the text "An Unforgettable Place"

by Tsuyoshi Tane (Architect Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects)

His images feel almost immersive in their darkness, even though he curates our glimpse through that darkness with brightly illuminated areas. This body of work forefronts the uncanny nature of the caves, devoid of obvious markers of their past purpose, but full of intriguing if unfriendly surfaces and textures. The massive, empty volume of the space is given form through the metal covered walls with exposed seams and jutting rivets. Their rusty patinas speak to the passage of time but deny us any obvious markers of their past purpose. Even the plastered, white surfaces seen in some images, which brightly reflect back the photographer's light to the camera, are dirty, possibly stained with rust. There is an overwhelming sense of lost time and memories never to be recovered. [...]

We have some relief from the relentlessness of the caves and tunnels with the interjection of seascapes. [...]

He has transmuted the lack of explicit visual evidence of nuclear weapons to his advantage by focusing his lens on the glaring absences within the caves. They are rich enough to communicate on their own, speaking of troubled and tortured histories, now at least completed, if not truly resolved. The spectral absence/presence of "Mary's Lamb" haunts every photograph. It fills the book with its complicated story of catastrophic destruction - and catastrophic destruction averted - lurking beneath the beauty of the Islands.

"Mary had a little lamb" is actually a nursery rhyme about the opposite of war. It is about love and reciprocity, as the teacher explains to the children, when they ask why the lamb loves Mary so, that it is because Mary loves the lamb. (Indeed, the original version of the rhyme states further that "you each gentle animal/In confidence may bind/And make them follow at your call/If you are always kind.") Thus, the local knowledge of the nuclear weapons storage facility named "Mary's Lamb" on the Islands represents a local knowledge that all is not what it seems, that just as weapons of nuclear annihilation can have whimsical names like Fat Man and Little Boy, a nuclear storage facility can be named after a children's rhyme about love. This powerful collection of photo- graphs holds within it this contradiction and the ghosts it has left behind.

Excerpts from the text "The Opposite of War"

by David Odo（Georgia Museum of Art)

---

Related Items

‪長沢慎一郎 『The Bonin Islanders』	清水裕貴 『岸』	田川基成 『見果てぬ海』 ‬	髙橋健太郎 『A RED HAT』

オサム・ジェームス・中川 『GAMA』	黒田光一 『弾道学』