The Japan I Hadn't Seen (part of the "Unmoored" Project) 2015-

I was born in Tokyo and lived there until I was eleven. I also worked as a stock trader in the heart of the city for a decade following my graduation from university, and I often visited my grandparents in Hokkaido when they were alive. But I felt like I had never really seen my motherland beyond some of its most iconic locales. When I became a photographer in 2015, one of the things I sought to do was to revisit Japan from a new perspective.

My initial inspirations were the stories, fairy tales, poetry and artwork I grew up with - where were the places that inspired these tales? Deep, mysterious, and dark yarns like Night on the Galactic Express and Matasaburo of the Wind, by Kenji Miyazawa—a writer from Iwate Prefecture with whom my relatives had ties—came to mind as I journeyed across the archipelago, camera in hand.

One story was the folk tale of Urashima Taro, about an old fisherman named Taro, who rescues a sea turtle, which thanks him by taking him to a beautiful underwater palace where he is wined and dined for what he thinks is a few days. When he departs to return to his village, the princess of the palace gives him a box with an admonition to never open it; but he cannot help himself. As Taro opens the box, 100 years go by, and he turns into an old man and everyone he knows is now gone. When I returned to live in Japan in 2017, six years after I had last lived there and having changed careers entirely, I felt like the protagonist in this tale. Everything and everyone had changed around me.

More than ever, I had an appreciation for the depth and beauty of my home culture, yet I also felt distant and removed from it in many ways. Being from a mixed background in a homogeneous country, I realized that I would never fully fit in. As I traveled up and down the country, mostly by train, I came to slowly embrace the feeling of isolation I experienced and accepted that this would be an essential part of my sensibility.

In this series, I make photographs when I feel a sense of otherworldliness from the scenes that I encounter: a cherry blossom billboard is a portal to another world, a coin in a basin becomes the moon, a maple tree becomes the Milky Way Galaxy.

My experiences living in, exploring and seeing my motherland in this new light will be part of my lifework going forward.


The Japan I Hadn't Seen（別名 Unmoored、日本名「見たことのない日本」）2015～

私は日本で生まれ、11歳まで住み、大学卒業後10年間そこで働いた。しかし有名な観光地を除いて、本当の日本を見ていないと長年感じていた。幼少期に読んだ童話、詩、昔話などのインスピレーションとなった風景はどこにあるのだろうか？

2015年以降、写真家への転身を決意した私は、新たな視点から日本をカメラ片手に旅をした。特に大好きだった宮沢賢治の「銀河鉄道の夜」や「風の又三郎」、または「竹取翁」のような神秘的で暗い物語が、列島を旅する中で浮かび上がった。


2017年に写真の勉強のために3年近くアメリカの西部を旅していた時期を終え、日本に帰国した私は、まるで浦島太郎になったような気持ちだった。友人や家族が遠のいただけではなく、新たな眼差しで故郷を見ることによって、周囲の全てが永久に変わってしまっていた。


これまで以上に、長き日本の歴史と豊かな文化を理解できることへの感謝を感じつつも、その一方で、海外に住んだ期間と、父親がカナダ人であったことによる隔絶された感覚も抱いていた。子供の頃はよく「純粋な日本人じゃないよね」と言われた僕は、調和を求める社会で多様な背景を持つ者として、完全に溶け込むことはできないと気づいた。しかし、それはネガティブなこととは決めつけず、その孤立感を抱き入れ、これが私の感性の本質的な部分だと受け入れるようになった。日本人にとっては、この写真は典型的な日本の風景にしか見えないかもしれない。そして外国人には理解できない写真かもしれない。二つの文化の間に生まれた者こそ日本の新たな原風景のあり方に気づく可能性があるのだと思う。


このシリーズは、旅の中で遭遇する日常的な場面から「異世界感」があるものを被写体にしている：名残り紅葉は天の川に見え、つくばいの下に沈む一円玉が月に見え、旅客機の翼が波に見える様な場面に日本の神秘的な現代風景を感じる。