The Sea Roads

Iwayaji, Ehime

The Seto Inland Sea

Nakajima, Ehime

Nakajima, Ehime

On my photographic journey last month, I based myself in Matsuyama and traveled to such places as Iwayaji, a sacred site deep in the mountains, and Nakajima, one of the Kutsuna Islands. Since turning my travels toward Shikoku, I have focused primarily on the “henro-michi,” the pilgrimage routes linking the eighty-eight temples of the Shikoku Pilgrimage. This time, however, my journey took a new turn as I began to follow the “sea roads” once traversed and controlled by armed maritime groups known as “suigun.” The suigun were multivalent communities: warriors and pirates, but also traders, pilots, and escorts who provided protection at sea. Even these tranquil waters of the Seto Inland Sea once formed part of a vast East Asian network of trade extending far beyond Japan to the Asian continent.

The high-speed ferry that left Matsuyama early in the morning soon entered Kōnoura Port on Nakajima. Shrouded in dense morning fog, the fishing harbor seemed, through the very act of withholding itself from sight, to speak all the more eloquently of the depths of nature and the beauty of this planet. Photography undoubtedly exists by the grace of the sun. Yet the darkness of night and the curtain of fog also sustain photography—as, in a sense, complex variations of sunlight itself.

As things now stand, “People Pass, the Path Remains” will come to an end with my final photographic journey at the end of this month. But that will mean only that the destinations of my own travels are changing. For as long as my feet can carry me, the path will always continue to stretch out before me.

On and on, as far as it goes.

You can view my ongoing project, “People Pass, the Path Remains,” here.