序文 Plorogue 
*English follows Japanese
今号のゲストの木格（ムゲ）氏は中国の四川省成都在住の写真家である。1979年重慶に生まれた。近年、長江に三峡ダムが建設され、人々の暮らしも大きく変わったため、それを記録するため重慶に戻った（GO HOME）ときの一連の写真である。このことは映画「長江哀歌」（?樟柯監督）でも扱われている中国人にとっては大きな出来事であった。しかし、木格氏の場合問題はそれだけにとどまらない。この名前は実はチベット名を漢字にしたものなのである。本名は黄？である。現在の中国で有利なるとは思えないチベット名をなぜ名乗ったのか。氏の来日期間が短かったため、それを問う機会がなかったので、以下のことは私の推測だが、チベットというのは本来もっと大きな独立国家だった。現在の青海省、四川省、雲南省の一部も含まれていた。そのため四川省にはチベット人が多い。木里もそのひとつである。チベットは1949年からの中華人民共和国軍の侵攻によって中国への併合の道をたどった。1959年には大きな武力衝突が発生したが、中国はそれを徹底的に弾圧し、ダライ・ラマがインドに逃れたことは良く知られている。チベットの不運はそれだけではなく、文化大革命のときには伝統文化と信仰を大規模に破壊された。さらに一昨年の「暴動」は世界中で報道されている。こういうことは若い木各氏とは何の関係もないのかもしれない。だが、強権支配化の国での発言は屈折した映像の形で出てくることが多い。かつてのアンジェイ・ワイダがそうであり、現在の中国の映画・写真がそうである。見るものを考えさせる写真の好例として掲載してみた。なお、これは昨年「禪フォトギャラリー」で開かれた写真展をアレンジしたものである。
藤原敦氏の「鹿児島」は氏の個人的な思いと関係が深い。氏の祖父藤原藤門氏は鹿児島で長く教職を務めた。歌人でもあり、昭和11年に北原白秋の短歌結社「多磨」に入会している。現在歌集「南国頌」が残されているので一首引用してみよう。
隼人塚五輪の卒塔婆傾きて煙草の花の盛り過ぎたる
次号も同じテーマで掲載する予定である。
唐仁原信一郎氏の「ＳＨＩＢＵＹＡ」は、今号は暗くなりそうなので、なるべく人がワサワサいる写真を撮ってくれという私の注文に応えてくれた作品群である。若者の多い渋谷は好適と言えよう。今の写真界の傾向として人を入れたスナップが減っている。肖像権が主張されるため、撮りにくく発表しにくくなっているのは事実だが、それだけでなく若い写真家に人嫌いが増えているような気がする。ギャラリーを回っても風景写真が多い。それが悪いとは言わないが、面白くないとは言える。唐仁原氏の素直なスナップが逆に新鮮に見えるのはそのためである。
最後になったが、徳本義明氏は1942年生まれ。写真家として長いキャリアを持つ。ここに掲載されている写真は、氏の解説にあるように「ぽたらか」という仏教系の福祉集団による葬儀の様子である。主催者の平尾弘衆氏は尼僧の出身。徳本氏もその活動に協力している。身寄りを失った生活困窮者などの葬礼もしてくれる。仏教は脱俗を旨としたため、社会との関係が浅く、キリスト教に比べ福祉活動の事歴に乏しい。彼らの活動は希少なものと言えよう。一言付け加えると、普通死者の素顔の写真などは雑誌の類には載らないものなのだが、そのことにも多少の疑念があるので、徳本氏と相談のうえあえて掲載した。ポタラカとは漢字では補陀洛と音写され、観音菩薩の浄土のことである。
長谷川明
Introduction
木格 (Muge), our guest for this issue, is a photographer living in Chengdu, Sichuan Province in China. He was born in 1979 in Chungking. He went back to Chungking to record the history because the way people live has been changed dramatically in recent years after the construction of Three Gorges Dam was completed. (This project is also known as "GO HOME.") The series of photos on this issue were captured during his stay in his hometown. This was a big incident for Chinese people and there is also a documentary film, "Still Life" (長江哀歌), directed by Jia Zhang Ke. For Mr. Muge, however, this is not the only issue. The name Muge is a Tibet origin name and the Chinese characters for his name are phonetically applied. His real name is 黄?. Why would he use his Tibetan name, knowing that this is not to his advantage? His visit to Japan was quite brief and I did not have a chance to ask him personally, so the following is only my assumption. Tibet was originally a big independent country. The current locations of Qinghai Province, Sichuan Province and Yunnan Province were a part of Tibet. So there are a lot of Tibetans in Sichuan Province. Muli is one of the many places with a lot of Tibetans. Invasion of Tibet by Chinese army started in 1949 and people of Tibet eventually lost their independence.
There was a huge military conflict in 1959, which was forcefully dismissed by Chinese. This is well known as the incident that led Dalai Lama to flee the country. Misfortunate of Tibet does not end there, a large scale destruction of their traditional culture and their religions occurred during the time of Cultural Revolution (文化大革命). Also, the imageries of "riot" that took place 2 years ago were broadcast all over the world. Perhaps,these incidents do not have much relations to young Muge himself. However, the spoken words in a country suppressed by stronger force are often presented in refracted ways. Andrzej Wajda in the past and movies and pictures of current China fit under this classification. I decided to feature them as a good example of photographs that lead people to think. These photographs were from an exhibition at Zen Photo Gallery that took place last year and they have been re-arranged to fit this issue.
"Kagoshima" by Atsushi Fujiwara has deep ties with his personal emotions. Tohmon Fujiwara, his grandfather, has been a teacher in Kagoshima for a long time. He was also a tanka poet and he joined tanka group called "Tama" led byHakushu Kitahara in Showa 11 (1936). A copy of contemporary tanka book "Southern territory" still remains and here is an excerpt of a tanka from the book.
"Hayatozuka, a stupa of five ringsis leaning, the prime time of tobacco flowers is already a deed of the past."
We are planning to work around the same theme for the next issue as well.
"SHIBUYA" by Shinichiro Tojimbara is a group of photographs shot upon my request. I had requested him to shoot photographs in areas with a lot of people since I knew that the impression of this issue was going to be somewhat dark. Shibuya, young people's fashion capital, was perfectly appropriate. As a trend in photography, we are seeing less and less snaps of people. In today's world where even ordinary people demand their portrait rights, it is true that it is harder to shoot people and even harder to use people's image as one's work. I do not believe, however, this is the only reason. I feel as though young photographers are not particularly fond of people. I find scenery photos in most of galleries I visit these days. I am not saying this is entirely bad, however, this is not so interesting, to say the least. Straight forward snaps by Mr. Tojimbara seem rather fresh to our eyes for this reason.
Last but not least, Mr. Yoshiaki Tokumoto was born in 1942. He has a long career as a photographer. As he explains in his note, these photos were taken at a funeral by Buddhism-oriented volunteer group called "Potalaka". Ms. Kohshu Hirao was originally a nun. Mr.Tokumoto is participating in this volunteer activity as well. They also offer funeral services to poor elderly people with no relatives. The principle of Buddhism is to rise above the current waves of the world, so they do not usually have strong ties with the current society and they rarely engage themselves in volunteer activities compared to Christians. Their activity is of a rare kind. If I was to add a few words on those photos, faces of dead people are usually not printed on magazines, etc., but since I have some doubts for this kind of evasion, Mr. Tokumoto and I had discussed around the matter and decided to send the photo for print. Potalaka is phonetically written as 補陀洛 and it means heaven of Kannon bodhisattva.
Akira Hasegawa