Shisei Kuwabara


Shisei Kuwabara 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 — in the village of Kibe, Shimane Prefecture, Japan. In 1960 he graduated from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Tokyo Photo School.
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.
Kuwabara's photographs of Minamata were shown in his first solo exhibition, Minamata-byō, at the Fuji Photo Salon in Tokyo in September 1962. This won the newcomers' award of the Japan Photo Critics Association.
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.
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.

Books by Kuwabara

  • Shashin-shū Minamata-byō / Minamata Desease . Tokyo: San'ichi Shobō, 1965.
  • Shashin-kiroku Minamata-byō 1960-1970. Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun, 1970.
  • Seikatsusha gunzō. 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. Tokyo: San'ichi Shobō, 1986.
  • Minamata. Komichi Shobō, 1986.
  • Hōdōshashinka. Tokyo: Iwanami, 1989.
  • Kankoku shinjō toro. Tokyo: Ōtsuki, 1990.
  • Yameru taikoku Roshia. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1995.
  • Kuwabara Shisei / Minamata. Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Sentā, 1996. Black and white photographs, in one volume of a multivolume set about pollution in Japan. In Japanese only.
  • Kuwabara Shisei shashin zenshū Tokyo: Kusa-no-Ne. Each of these four volumes contains explanatory text in English as well as Japanese.
  • *1. Minamata. 2004.
  • *2. Kankoku. 1998.
  • *3. Chikuhō/Okinawa. 2004. The first half is about the declining coalmines of Chikuho.
  • *4. Betonamu. 1999.
  • Imujin-gan: Kaima-mita Kita Chōsen. Tokyo: Kusa-no-Ne, 2003. Black and white photographs of North Korea. In Japanese only.

Other books with works by Kuwabara