序文 Plorogue 
*English follows Japanese
今号のゲストの小林信子氏は1969年東京生まれ。文化学院の英米文学科を卒業し、1998年から7年間イギリスでデザインと写真を学んだという異色の経歴を持つ。中国に行った事情は本人の文章にあるが、時は2006年から８年にかけてである。胡同（フートン）とは北京の下町のような庶民の住居のことだが現代中国語では小巷と記され、日本語訳では横丁、裏通りなどとなる。明代には??と書かれていたが、清のときに簡略化された。四合院は元来は上層階級の大家族の住居だったが、辛亥革命後彼らが没落してからは、次第に庶民の雑居住宅となった。80余箇所あった胡同は、前世紀の末頃から再開発で取り壊され、現在では保存地区に指定された20余りが残っているだけだが、観光名所にもなってはいる。小林氏は知っている日本の写真家としては木村伊兵衛の名をあげただけだったが、氏の写真も実は同タイプなのである。やはり同類はわかるということであろう。
藤原敦氏の「詩人の島」は岡山県長島に設けられたハンセン病の隔離病棟「愛生園」の現在を撮影した写真である。人物は写っていないが、島には今でも医者、事務員、行き場のない元患者がいる。「癩予防法」は昭和６年から実施され、患者は強制収容された。この病気はその症状から昔は天刑病とも呼ばれ甚だ忌まれた。実際は、伝染力も弱く、遺伝子病でもない。しかし、かつては治療法がなかったことと、ヨーロッパが中世から徹底した隔離政策とったことに倣って行われた。やるべき根拠のない断種も強制された。戦後はプロミンやスルフォン剤系の治療薬が生まれ、完治することが可能になり、欧米では1950年代に隔離制度を廃止したが、日本では実に1996年までこれを続けた。1998年に元患者たちが「強制隔離は違法」という裁判を起こし、地裁はそれを認めた。だが、役人は自分の金で裁判をやっているわけではないから何事でも延々控訴して最高裁まで持っていく。その間に老齢化した元患者たちは死んでいく。上告を止めさせたのは時の総理小泉純一郎である。これは小泉の数少ない功績のひとつであろう。藤原氏の写真に大きなスピーカーがあるが、この病気は進行すると失明する場合が多いので、収容者を誘導するために島のいたる所に設けられているという。ハンセン病患者には俳句や短歌を作る人が多かった。氏の引用している明石海人もその一人だ。彼は発表した短歌が釈迢空に高く評価されその名を残した。そこで私は朝鮮人の患者だった金夏日の歌を引用してみよう。
− ライ園のわれも僅かの献金をしぬ動乱祖国の難民のため −
これは蝶戦争勃発のときの作である。彼は東京多磨の全生園に居た。
唐仁原信一郎氏の写真は今回は「熱海」である。熱海は東京に近い観光地として私の父母の世代なら新婚旅行の地でもあったが、新幹線と飛行機の時代になると近すぎるのが逆に災いして一時凋落した。とはいえ温暖な保養地であることには変わりはないから、近年はイメージを変えて復興しつつあるようだ。私は長く行っていないから氏の写真が新鮮に見えた。
中藤毅彦氏は1970年東京生まれ。早稲田大学を経て東京写真専門学校に学んだ。サハリンには2008年11月に訪れたという。掲載作は未発表だが、すでに写真展が行われ、雑誌にも「サハリン」のタイトルで発表されているからご存知の方も多いだろう。写真の男性はニブヒ族（旧称ギリヤーク族）である。ノグリキという都市の郊外には彼らだけの部落があるらしい。ニブヒもアイヌも国家を形成しなかったため、近代国家の時代になると、国内の異分子として差別の対象にされた。南樺太に居た日本籍のニブヒとアイヌは戦後スターリンによって北海道に追放されたが、その後のことはよくわからない。サハリンは簡単に行ける所ではないから、中藤氏の写真は貴重なものと言ってよい。写真集にまとめられることを希望している。
長谷川明
Introduction
Our guest for this issue, Nobuko Kobayashi, was bornin 1969 in Tokyo. She graduated from Bunka-Gakuin where she studied Anglo-American literature. She also studied design and photography in England for 7 years starting in 1998. I must say her personal history is a bit strange. The reason why she visited China is as explained in her own writing, but the time period is from 2006 to 2008. 胡同 or Hutong is residential housing in traditional working-class neighborhood of Beijing. In modern Chinese, it is writtenas小巷and the literal translation is something like alley or sidestreet. It was written as Kodou during the Ming dynasty, but it was simplified during the Qing dynasty. Sihiyuan was originally a residence for a big upperclass family, but since they subsided after the Chinese Revolution, those buildings eventually became complex residential houses for ordinary citizens. There were more than 80 Hutong areas, but they were torn down by re-development started at the end of the last century. Only about 20 of them are remaining now and they are designated as preserved districts. They are also known as sight seeing spots. Kobayashi has mentioned the name of Ihei Kimura as a Japanese photographer that she knew, but Kobayashi and Ihei Kimura are very similar in style. The two of a kind understand each other, I guess.
Atsushi Fujiwara's "Poet's island" captures the current images of "Aiseien", an isolation facility for leprosy patients in Nagashima, Okayama-Prefecture. You cannot see any images of people, but there are doctors, workers and ex-patients who do not have anywhere to go. Leprosy Law was enforced in Showa 6 (1931) and all leprosy patients were forced to live in isolation. This disease was referred to as "punishment from heaven" and it was treated with much fear. In reality, the disease is weakly transmissible and it is not inherited. However, there was no cure for this disease back thenand segregation policy was strictly enforced in Europe since the Middle Ages, Japan followed the same manner. Sterilization was also common, which was entirely based on mythical speculation. After the War, treatment with promine and sulfone based medications became possible and leprosy is now considered as a curable disease. Forced segregation system was abolished in Europe backin 1950s, however, Japan continued its segregation policy until 1996. Ex-patients had filed a lawsuit, claiming "forcedsegregation is illegal" back in 1998 and district court had ruled in favor ofex-patients. However, since the government officials do not spend their own money for this kind of lawsuit, they tend to postpone the final ruling as much as possible by appealing the case; they generally try to take the case all the way up tothe Supreme Court. In the meantime, the ex-patients grow older and some pass away without seeing the final ruling. Junichiro Koizumi, who was the Prime Minister at the time, had stopped them from appealing the case. This is one of the few accomplishments by him. You can see big speakers in one of the Fujiwara's photo. Those speakers were placed everywhere on the island to provide audio guidance since leprosy patients often lost their eyesight as their symptoms worsened. A lot of patients wrote haiku or tanka-poem. Kaijin Akashi, quoated by Fujiwara, was also one oft he patients. Akashi's published works were praised by Shaku Choukuu and that's how his name became widely known. Here, I would like to quote a tanka-poem by Hailu Kim,who was a leprosy patient from Korea.
- I, in Leprosy Garden, also give a small amount of donation, for refugees in my homeland in whirlwind. -
This was created when the Korean War had erupted. He was in Tama Zenshoen in Tokyo at the time.
Shin-ichiro Tojimbara's photos for this issue were shot in "Atami". Atami was a popular honeymoon destination for my parents' generation, as it is a sight seeing spot located very close from Tokyo, however, as the bullet trains and airplanes became common, Atami grew less and less popular because of proximity. It still is, however, a warm resort area, so they arere-gaining their popularity with their revised image. I have not been there for a long time myself, so Tojimbara's photos looked fresh to my eyes.
Takehiko Nakafuji was born in 1970 in Tokyo. He studied at Waseda Univeristy, then he continued hisstudies at Tokyo Photography College. He visited Sakhalin in November 2008. The photos in this issue have never been published,but there was a photo exhibition and other works have been published in magazines under the title of "Sakhalin", so some of you may already be familiar with his works. The man in the photo is a Nivkh. I heard there is a village made up solely byNivkh people in outskirt of Nogliki. Nivkh and Aynu never established their own countries, so they were discriminated in the modern era as dissidents within the nation. Nivkh and Aynu people also lived in Southern Sakhalin. Those who had Japanese citizenship had been forced tomigrate to Hokkaido by Stalin after the War, and whatever their story is after that remains unknown. Since Sakhalin is not an easy place to getto, photos by Nakafuji are quite important. I hope his works will be published as a photo book in the future.
Akira Hasegawa