This work back and forth between the present and the past, between imagined landscapes, and quietly speaks of gratitude for the peace that exists today and its importance, against the backdrop of the relationship between the land and the personal memories rooted in it. It is also a prelude to the main part of the work.

Ten years ago, when I first started taking photographs, I visited the ocean many, many times. I just photographed what I wanted to photograph until I was satisfied, but why was I so obsessed with the ocean?

In search of the answer, I decided to look back at all the photos I had taken. As I looked at the huge number of negatives, which were all of the sea, for some reason, I was suddenly reminded of the war experiences my grandfather had told me about when I was a child.

“I wasn’t caught in the atomic bombing.”
“I was in Kure.”
“I mean, in the Navy,” he said.
“There, I was making human torpedoes, too.”
“And of course, nobody told me what they were building, but the blueprints told it all.”

It was a childhood memory, but the first time I heard about my grandfather’s war experience was vividly etched in my memory. However, it was unclear how my memories of my grandfather were connected to the photographs I had taken of the sea. So I decided to retrace my grandfather’s life.

It seems that the sea was always close by in my grandfather’s life. He was born and raised in Kure, a military port town, and eventually joined the Navy. At the end of the war, a human torpedo called “Kaiten” was secretly manufactured there, and there were suspicions that my grandfather was involved in its manufacture.

How did he accept this and how did he live after the war? Every time I researched my grandfather’s life and recalled childhood memories of spending time with him, I came to realize that his war experience had led to my obsession with the sea. And I could not help but realize the foolishness of war and how thankful I am to be able to live in peace.

This work was created using a vast number of photographs taken at sea over the past five years. This work is a work that moves back and forth between historical fact and memory, hoping that we can continue to live our ordinary everyday lives.

Dummy
Hiroshima, Japan, 2023
Edition of 73
21 x 27 cm
130 pages