Shisei Kuwabara Explained
is a photojournalist best known for his depiction of the effects of mercury poisoning on people in and near Minamata over a period of some forty years.
Kuwabara was born - as Fumiaki Kuwabara (Kuwabara Fumiaki) - in the village of Kibe (now part of Tsuwano), Shimane Prefecture, Japan.[1] In 1960 he graduated from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Tokyo Photo School (later Tokyo College of Photography).
In the same year Kuwabara started work as a freelance photographer. With a letter of introduction from a journalist with Shūkan Asahi magazine, he visited the director of Minamata Municipal Hospital, Dr Noboru Ōhashi, in July, to ask for permission to photograph. Ōhashi gave him permission for long-term coverage.[2]
Kuwabara's photographs of Minamata were shown in his first solo exhibition, Minamata-byō (Minamata disease), at the Fuji Photo Salon in Tokyo in September 1962. This won the newcomers' award of the Japan Photo Critics Association.[3]
Kuwabara's works have also won an award from Kodansha in 1965, the Photographic Society of Japan's Annual Award in 1971, and the Ina Nobuo Award in 1982.[4] Since 1997, Tsuwano has had a gallery largely devoted to Kuwabara's work. Until March 2004, this was called the Tsuwano Documentary Photograph Gallery; it was then renamed the Shisei Kuwabara Photographics Museum.
Notes
- Birthday: Works by 25 Photographers in their 20s (catalogue of an exhibition held at Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in 1995), p. 89. Place of birth and original name: CV . Much other information below comes from one or other of these sources.
- Start at Minamata: Works by 25 Photographers, pp. 82 - 3. This catalogue also presents examples of his early work in Minamata, and a potted CV.
- JPCA award: 25 Photographers, p. 89.
- Kōdansha award: (list of award winners). PSJ award: 日本写真協会 過去の受賞者一覧 (PSJ, list of past award-winners). Ina Nobuo Award: (announcement of the 7th Ina Nobuo Award to Shinzō Hanabusa and Kuwabara).
Books by Kuwabara
- Shashin-shū Minamata-byō / Minamata Desease [sic]. Tokyo: San'ichi Shobō, 1965.
- Shashin-kiroku Minamata-byō 1960 - 1970 (1960 - 1970, "Documentary: Minamata disease"). Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun, 1970.
- Seikatsusha gunzō ("Collage of living people"). Tokyo: San'ichi Shobō, 1980.
- Minamata Kankoku Betonamu . Tokyo: Banseisha, 1982.
- Tōji no sato Kōrai, Richō . Tokyo: Iwanami, 1984.
- Kōrai, Richō gendai tōjisen . Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbun, 1985.
- Kankoku genkei ("Korea's original scenes"). Tokyo: San'ichi Shobō, 1986.
- Minamata ("Minamata"). Komichi Shobō, 1986.
- Hōdōshashinka ("Documentary photographer"). Tokyo: Iwanami, 1989.
- Kankoku shinjō toro ("Expressing genuine sentiments about Korea"). Tokyo: Ōtsuki, 1990.
- Yameru taikoku Roshia ("Russia, a sick great nation"). Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1995.
- Kuwabara Shisei / Minamata . Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Sentā, 1996. Black and white photographs, in one volume (sold separately) of a multivolume set about pollution in Japan. In Japanese only.
- Kuwabara Shisei shashin zenshū (The Complete Works of Kuwabara, Shinsei.) Tokyo: Kusa-no-Ne. Each of these four volumes contains explanatory text in English as well as Japanese.
- 1. Minamata (Minamata). 2004.
- 2. Kankoku (South Korea). 1998.
- 3. Chikuhō/Okinawa (Chikuho/Okinawa). 2004. The first half is about the declining coalmines of Chikuho.
- 4. Betonamu (Vietnam). 1999.
- Imujin-gan: Kaima-mita Kita Chōsen ("Imjin-gang: Glimpses of North Korea"). Tokyo: Kusa-no-Ne, 2003. Black and white photographs of North Korea. In Japanese only.
Other books with works by Kuwabara
- Nihon shashin no tenkan: 1960 nendai no hyōgen / Innovation in Japanese Photography in the 1960s. Tokyo: Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 1991. Exhibition catalogue, text in Japanese and English. Pp. 104 - 113 are devoted to Kuwabara's photographs of Minamata.
External links
an article about an exhibition in Seoul of Kuwabara's photographs of South Korea
