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 However, there are unpublished photos that were not included in that photobook.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)

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