Still Life

The Wintertag (A winter’s day) series is dedicated to winter landscapes in my region Kanagawa in Japan. This series is an ongoing project, which started in January 2014. More particularly, these photos were all taken at the foot of Mount Fuji and nearby my hometown (an area along the Sagami River). Lake Yamanaka, a central figure to the series, rests at the foot of Mount Fuji and is approximately 70 km from where I live. While it rarely snows in town, Lake Yamanaka freezes over every winter. In November of 2016, after a record 54 years, it finally snowed again in my hometown. Lake Yamanaka is also the headstream of the Sagami River, and as such the only lake with a natural outflow into Mount Fuji's Five Lakes rivers. // A sub-theme of this series is representing the landscapes imagined in early childhood. I grew up in Kanagawa prefecture, where it rarely snows. When I was small, my mother would often say to me, “There was terrible snow the day you were born.” What she was referring to was different from what I imagined. In fact she was talking about a terrorist incident that took place in snowed-under Nagano prefecture. There is no connection between me and this incident. My image of the day I was born is the winter landscape I imagined from hearing my mother’s words.

America in Kanagawa | There are dotted with US naval facilities in Kanagawa where I live. Of these US Radio Transmitting Facility Kamiseya in the suburbs of Yokohama was drawn off and the land was returned in 2015. The site area was 242ha. Cherry blossoms were planted along the surrounding highways as a sign of friendship. This part of the square opened to the public during the first week of April, despite the former border fence, the crossing is still prohibited. It is planned to attract an International Horticultural Exhibition which will be held in 2026, on the site of this US naval facility. After that, there is a plan to build a big theme park. The purpose of this photo series is to record one part of the history of Japan and the history of Kanagawa where the landscape will soon be reborn. This series is an ongoing project, which started in April 2019 / Part II: US Army Sagami General Depot (Return of the land in 2014. 17ha) at Sagamihara, Kanagawa.

This photo series focuses on the area that extends underneath the Seisho Bypass along the Seisho Coast and National Route 1. The Seisho Coast is usually a quiet place with few people around, familiar to locals as a fishing spot and a walking route for large dogs. At the same time, coastal erosion due to natural processes has progressed. Some areas have lost as much as 45 metres of sand beach in the last 65 years, and the seawater pools at Hiratsuka and Kozu have recently been closed. In the Ninomiya area, a typhoon washed away the beach and caused a section of the Seisho Bypass to collapse in 2007. Currently this area has an artificial sand beach. At Kozu the pier structure of the Seisho Bypass is being eroded by waves, and tetrapods are becoming increasingly common here. I decided to make a photographic record of the appearance of this coastal area that has been restored by humans. Another purpose of this photo series is to make a comparison between Hiroshige’s depiction of Hiratsuka, Oiso and Odawara in "The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido", and how these three places look nowadays. This series is an ongoing project, which started in September 2018.

This personal photo story is an ongoing series, which started in 2010. These photos are at my parents’ house and surrounding countryside the Izu peninsula. My father said, "When I retire, I'd like to spend the rest of my life in the Izu peninsula". In 2010, my father bought a house in the Izu peninsula. Mountain-burning on the Mt. Omuro is one of the events of the Izu peninsula. It will be carried out in February every year for refreshment of grasses. I think it to be reincarnation (A never ending cycle of life). It is the last place that my parents live. *The paper airplane that my father handed to my mother is the contract sheet of this house. Latest shooting date: November 2022

400 years ago, a quarry at Cape Manazuru, a headland on the south-western edge of Kanagawa Prefecture, provided stone for the walls of Edo Castle (now the Imperial Residence). The remnants of the site have been left undisturbed by human hand. The headland was created hundreds of thousands of years ago by lava from an erupting Mount Hakone. Here, in the time of the shogun Hidetada Tokugawa, stone hewn from the naturally formed rock was cut, loaded onto ships and carried to Edo Castle. This kind of scene, if it included stonecutters, samurai and sailing ships moored on the beach, might feel as quintessentially Japanese as the ukiyo-e of Hiroshige Utagawa. What I focused on, however, was the shapes given to the rocks, traces left by stone-cutting, rocks washed by the waves and other aspects of the geological environment. These may not seem specific to this or any other country, but they can give us a sense of human activities at that time. There do not seem to be many sites in such an undisturbed state as this quarry left in Japan. And today, in the area around Edo Castle, rows of buildings stand like walls, as if symbolizing the centuries-long urbanization of Edo-Tokyo.

“You keep that,” said my dad. It was a copper medal commemorating the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, which were held before I was born. The second Tokyo Olympics was planned to take place 56 years after the first, in 2020. But the Covid-19 pandemic broke out at the start of the year, and the Games were rescheduled for 2021. In Japan, where the law does not allow lockdowns, states of emergency were repeatedly declared in the major cities. At present, with three months to go before the Games are due to start, the majority of Japanese citizens are still unvaccinated, while the Japanese government’s line is that the Olympics will go ahead. This short documentary series is intended to allow us in future to look back on the once-in-a-lifetime year of the planned Tokyo Olympics. | Latest update: March 04 2022