Book

Nagasawa’s Ogasawara

David Odo, DPhil.
Director of Academic and Public Programs and Research Curator Harvard Art Museums

The photographs in this volume represent well over a decadeʼs work by the Tokyo-based photographer Nagasawa Shinichiro in Japanʼs Ogasawara Islands, also known in Western languages as the Bonin Islands, a stunning group of over 30 islands located about 1,000 kilometers south of Tokyo. The subtropical archipelagoʼs natural beauty has attracted many visitors from Japan and all over the world to its shores, and in 2011 it was designated a natural World Heritage Site by UNESCO – one of only four in Japan – in recognition of its unique and fragile but well-managed environment. Its wealth of ecosystems is home to many endangered flora and fauna, including the Bonin Flying Fox (a fruit bat), and many endemic birds and plants. The seas surrounding the archipelago are teeming with numerous species of coral, fish, whales, and other aquatic life.

Although some of Nagasawaʼs images indeed feature the natural environment, his work is not merely a series of beauty shots of beaches and flowers. Rather, his pictures embody his deep engagement with both the people and places he has been visiting and photographing since 2008. He initially became fascinated by Ogasawara in 2007 after reading in a Japanese travel magazine about a community of “Western Islanders” (as they are often called) in the Islands who trace their heritage to 19th and early 20th-century pioneering settlers from outside of Japan. Although the islands were previously known to European, Japanese, and later, American sailors and whalers, they were first permanently settled by an international group of people from the Pacific, US, and Europe, who sailed from Honolulu in 1830 to establish a whaling colony in the then-uninhabited archipelago. The colony was organized in Honolulu and ostensibly founded under the auspices of Great Britain, but was a de facto independent territory and therefore without the military protection of a powerful country, which made it vulnerable to frequent attacks by pirates in its early years. Subsequent settlers migrated to the Islands from other parts of the world, including Japan, and it was taken over by Japanʼs emerging modern nation-state in the 1870s. Fierce battles between the US and Japan were fought in the Islands during WWII, they were seized in 1944 and occupied by the US Navy after the war, before they were finally reverted to Japanese control in 1968. The Islands are now administered by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and constitute one of the capitalʼs (very) far-flung island villages. Today, Ogasawara is an ethnically diverse community embedded within a larger Japanese society typically (but incorrectly) described as homogeneous. Itʼs no surprise that Nagasawa wanted to learn more about the Islanders, whose story remains little-known to outsiders.

In February of 2008, Nagasawa set out to visit the Islands aboard the Ogasawaramaru, the ship that sails between Tokyo and the port of Futami on Chichijima (“Father Island,” formerly known as Peel Island), the seat of the village government and the home of about 2,000 (out of fewer than 2,500 total) Islanders. The journey aboard the 1,000 passenger ship typically takes about 25 hours. The boat docks at Futami for a few days, turns around and sails back to Tokyo, and does it all over again. There is no commercial airport in the Islands, and this is the only regular mode of transport to the Japanese mainland. Ogasawara time is often measured in boats, the equivalent of a few days. Visitors will often be asked if theyʼll be staying for one boat or longer. Nagasawa excitedly made his way to Ogasawara with a plan to stay for three boats, which he thought would leave plenty of time to introduce himself to members of the Western Islander community and take photographs of them. Things did not go as he expected, however.

The first person Nagasawa sought out was Stanley Minami, the owner and captain of a whale watching boat. Nagasawa introduced himself to Mr. Minami shortly after arriving on Chichijima and told him he was interested in learning about the history of the “Western indigenous people” of the Islands and wanted to take pictures of them. He was promptly admonished to “Get lost – we arenʼt here for you to stare at. We arenʼt Americans. We arenʼt Japanese. We are Bonin Islanders! Donʼt come around here to take pictures just because you are curious!”

This was not an auspicious start, but it nevertheless turned out to be an important lesson for the photographer. Nagasawa walked away from that first, discouraging encounter understanding that this would be a far more complicated and lengthier project than he had originally thought. Fortunately, he soon met others who were willing to talk with him, some of whom even allowed him to take their pictures. They hinted that there was a troubling history of photography in the Islands, including a few cases in living memory where Western Islanders were treated like specimens or objects for scientific study rather than full human beings. One project in particular – conducted by a German geneticist initially in 1927 with a follow-up study in 1957– focused on producing photographic evidence of “race mixing” or “crossbreeding” and phenotypic expression, emblematic of the scientific racism of the era. This study rankled members of the older generation who remembered it personally and those who had heard about it from older relatives and friends who were directly subjectedto it. Photography was deeply implicated in this study, and clearly left a lasting bad impression in the minds of many Islanders. But it was neither the first nor the last (mis) use of photography to create a distrust of the medium among the Bonin Islanders.

The history of photography in the Islands dates to some of the earliest years of Japanese – Islander interactions. The first photographs were produced during Japanʼs 1875 – 1876 colonial expedition to the Ogasawara Islands, which followed a previous, short-lived, unsuccessful attempt to take over the settlement in 1862, toward the end of the Edo Period. (No photographs were produced during this expedition.) The successful Meiji expedition resulted in Japanese rule in the Islands that lasted until the late stages of WWII (resuming in 1968 and continuing to the present day), and was the first Japanese government colonial expedition to include an officially commissioned professional photographer, the Tokyo-based commercial photographer, Matsuzaki Shinji. As an expedition photographer, Matsuzaki created photographs for government information gathering purposes as well as commercial sale to the Japanese public. The landscapes and especially images of the Bonin Islanders created during the expedition read as visual information about Japanʼs new colonial possession – its land and human subjects – made for bureaucratic purposes, rather than as thoughtful or intimate portraits. We can only speculate about the exact conditions of production of these first photographs, but the colonial context suggests that the Islanders would have had little agency in deciding how – or even whether – the pictures would have been made.

After Japanese control of the Islands was firmly established, the government, scientists, media, and others undertook further photography projects, some of　which were ostensibly organized to study the native flora and fauna, but which often included some images of the Islanders, especially the Western Islanders. An album of photographs was prepared for the Taisho Emperor in which many pictures of Islanders were included, and some of which were captioned with othering or racist and language. One image of a mother and child was said to show “Naturalized South Seas Barbarians” (nanʼyō doban kikajin). Western Islanders were frequently featured in picture postcards of Ogasawara produced in the first decades of the 20th century, and were typically shown as exotics, set apart from Japanese settlers. As the war encroached ever closer to Ogasawara and as the outlook appeared increasingly dangerous, the Japanese government evacuated civilians to the mainland in 1944. However, members of the Western Islander community (and their Japanese spouses/children) petitioned American authorities in 1946 to be allowed to return to Ogasawara, after having suffered terrible discrimination as “foreigners” in Japan,as they were easily identified with the American enemy despite their Japanese nationality, and suffered severe wartime and immediate postwar deprivation, as the entire country struggled to feed, clothe, and house its devasted populace.

As the US and Japanese governments were preparing the Islands to be returned to Japanese control in 1968, one village elder proclaimed in a newspaper article that he feared the Bonin Islanders would be come “South Seas Ainu,” meaning that he did not want the community to be othered or exoticized by the Japanese government or future visitors. There was a very rational fear that photography could be mobilized to objectify community members.

Over the years, many other incidents of photographs being taken of Western Islanders without their permission (or compensation) occurred, which naturally resulted inmany peopleʼs distrust of camera-wielding outsiders. Nagasawa was not aware ofthis history when he stepped off the boat in Futami harbor, but took to heart Stanley Minamiʼs proclamation of his identity as a Bonin Islander. This understanding shaped Nagasawaʼs approach to working in the Islands. He realized that he had to attempt to make true portraits of people by getting to know them well over time, learn about their personal and community histories, and come to an understanding of their home, the Bonin Islands. He set about to learn as much as he could about Ogasawaraʼs history, not only from published sources but also oral history, talking with as many people as he could, learning about their personal and community histories, and coming to an understanding of their home, the Bonin Islands.

This contextual understanding is not only what made it possible for Nagasawa to be allowed access to community members. It means that he was partnering with individuals in the community in order to successfully photograph them. It made it possible for him to create portraits with what I would call “photographic partners” rather than “subjects.”

Nagasawa also started to take pictures of places that he learned had local meaning – not merely because they were attractive. These histories are not always accessible to those of us on the outside looking in, but the photographs communicate something about the Bonin Islanders identity, history, and indeed lives.

Nagasawaʼs Ogasawara images reflect a distinctly contemporary sensibility and profoundly new relationship between photographer and subject than was evident in early photographs of the Islanders. As Nagasawa developed this project, he came to understand that his own identity – as a Japanese photographer – required him not only to acknowledge the difficult history and legacy of photography in Ogasawara, but to actively create new relationships built on mutual trust and understanding. In order to make successful portraits, he needed to collaborate with willing partners. The tables had turned completely, and the Bonin Islanders now had the power to refuse

or grant permission to the visiting photographer. Nagasawaʼs persistence in building meaningful relationships with the Islanders and his developing understanding of their history and identity started a virtuous cycle that allowed him to create richer and more authentic portraits of people and the places that hold meaning for them. The result of these collaborations is the set of photographs you will view in this book: a rich and honest portrait, created with Bonin Islanders, not of them.