Kishin Kaidan｜Shomei Tomatsu pt.1 - From the Seas of Hokkaido to the Light of Okinawa
Kishin Kaidan｜Shomei Tomatsu pt.1
From the Seas of Hokkaido to the Light of Okinawa
The first chapter of Kishin Kaidan｜Shomei Tomatsu is now online in the members-only area.
Pt.1 stays close to the 1975 stage in Sapporo: Kishin Shinoyama introduces Tomatsu, talks about how interviews are usually done “in a closed room”, and admits he deliberately avoided talking to Tomatsu on the way there so this public conversation would feel truly fresh.
From there, the talk traces a path from the seas of Hokkaido in the mid-1960s to Tomatsu’s first steps in Okinawa, and finally to his decision to move there just before reversion. Shinoyama asks what changes when you only pass through a place versus when you actually live there.
Tomatsu’s answer turns into a small manifesto: what really matters is not “tourist vs. resident”, but the total amount of time he has lived that condenses into each shutter click.
In the members-only version, pt.1 is presented with:
- the original Japanese text of the interview
- a full English translation
- a full Traditional Chinese translation
