Photography as a Bridge to a Vanishing Time
Photo Collection Opens a Window on the Past
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Seventy-Year-Old Photos Return Home
In 1955–57, the folklore photographer Haga Hideo (1921–2022) spent a total of 182 days on the Amami islands, keeping a photographic record of surveys conducted by the Federation of Nine Learned Societies, a cross-disciplinary body of scholars. Over the study’s three years, he shot over 500 rolls of film, producing nearly 20,000 photos of the islands’ folklore, religion, language, traditional entertainment and other themes, soon after the islands’ reversion to Japanese rule in 1953.
Fast-forward to the present day. Haga’s film had begun to deteriorate with age, and his son Hinata, who heads the Haga Library, a collection of over 300,000 photos taken by his father, began converting them into digital format in collaboration with Nippon.com. The digitalization project was completed in July 2025 and the collection was donated to the Amami Museum. Beginning in October that year, the Nankai Nichinichi Shimbun, a local newspaper, ran a series of articles featuring the photos, introducing scenes from long ago to its readers.
Yomigaeru shima no fūkei (Island Scenes Brought Back to Life), the series of articles presenting postwar life through Haga Hideo’s photos. (© Nankai Nichinichi Shimbun)
At top, Haga Hinata (at right) presents the digital photo data to an Amami municipal representative; below, Okinoerabujima residents welcome the photo collection back home. (© Nippon.com)
The Haga Library also donated a local collection featuring numerous photos taken in the towns of Uken on the island of Amami Ōshima and Wadomari and China on nearby Okinoerabujima. Town authorities in Yoron, which had learned of the collection in the meantime, later received photos as well.
In fact, beginning in 2020, the Yoron Board of Education had initiated a drive to collect photographic materials on Yoronjima’s history and culture. This was the Yunnu Photo Archive depicting nature and the local way of life, led by Okinawa’s University of the Ryūkyūs, the National Museum of Japanese History in Chiba Prefecture, and a local nonprofit organization.
The photo exhibition on Yoronjima. (Courtesy Yoron Board of Education)
Photos taken by Haga Hideo, including some of the former Yoron Castle, were featured in the Yunnu Photo Archive in February 2026. Board of Education curator Minami Yūsuke was excited about Haga’s photos, which clearly showed how a cliffside had been worked into the castle’s ramparts. The photos, which were also included in a pamphlet about the castle, are a valuable resource for studying the remnants of the structure, which was designated a national historic site in 2025.
Yoron Castle, the largest such structure after those on the main island of Okinawa, was erected in the early fifteenth century. It was only in existence for a decade or so; little is known about its appearance at the time, and research on the castle continues.
Remnants of Yoron Castle photographed 70 years ago. As part of the Federation of Nine Learned Societies’ studies, Haga also photographed archaeological sites. (© Haga Hideo)
Looking west from the heights above the former castle. (© Haga Hideo)
Peace Is Precious
On Okinoerabujima, the photo exhibit traveled to seven locales featured in the photos. In Wadomari, the black-and-white photos, colorized using generative AI, were shown alongside present-day shots of the same locations, stimulating vivid memories of times past among older residents.
Said one 80-year-old visitor: “The photos took me back to my childhood days as though it was yesterday. It all brought tears to my eyes.” Reminiscing about days long ago, a younger visitor expressed nostalgia, saying “Life was hard in those days, for sure, but the people are all smiles, and their happiness spills over to me. I also enjoyed searching the photos to identify people I know.”
Visitors of all ages perused the photos and materials at the exhibition. (Courtesy Wadomari Board of Education)
At two venues in China, elderly women chatted with children, telling stories about what life was like then, for example, going to underground caves to collect spring water. The 90-year-old storyteller Murata Hiroko said “Nowadays, we have all sorts of modern conveniences, but after the war, there wasn’t enough food, we had nowhere to live, and we could barely clothe ourselves. I hope that telling children what life was like then will make them realize just how grateful we should all be for the peace we have today.”
Left: Women bearing buckets on their heads ascend the stone stairs out of the pitch-dark Sumiyoshi Kuragō limestone cave. Right: Wanjo, one of the island’s spring-fed ponds. In the days before piped-in water, springs like these were the islanders’ source of water. (© Haga Hideo)
Middle-schooler Ichiki Yūha said that Murata-san’s mention of food shortages had made a strong impression on her. “In the past, there were no school lunches. I heard from her that some children had just a few bites of sweet potato to eat for lunch, while others, with nothing to eat, played in the schoolyard at lunchtime to distract themselves from hunger. I’m really grateful for the plenty that we have today.”
An elderly woman describes the photos to children in the Sumiyoshi district of China. (© Sakae Makiko)
Students closely examine the photos at China Junior High School. (© Sakae Makiko)
Photos Bring Back the Past
On Okinoerabujima, rice cultivation has practically disappeared, and folk customs such as ceremonies led by yuta priestesses, prevalent when the photos were taken 70 years ago, have mostly died out. Local historian Sakida Mitsunobu, now 83 years of age, wrote most of the captions to the photos. Providing details that only the oldest residents would know, he strove to create captions that would stimulate viewers’ imaginations. “You can almost hear people’s conversations and laughter. I tried hard to bring that to life, so that exhibition visitors would be aware of the value of this record.”
Sakida Mitsunobu, who was acquainted with the late Haga Hideo. (© Sakae Makiko)
Left: Stick-on labels identify some of the people in this photo (courtesy Wadomari Board of Education). Right: Visitors were also a good source of information (© Sakae Makiko).
To supplement exhibition guides’ explanations, visitors were invited to try to identify the individuals in the photos with stick-on labels. Ijichi Hirohito, a staff member at the Wadomari Folk History Museum, said: “Seeing names helps stimulate visitors’ memories. Some will recall the name of shops or certain locations in the photos. There was even one woman who came forward to say that she was the bride in a wedding ceremony photo.”
Morita Taiki, an editing staff member of China’s community newspaper, had this to say about Haga’s work: “His photos clearly convey scenes and ceremonies that are difficult to describe in words. We intend to use those in our publication.”
Clockwise from upper left: a yāmin betrothal ceremony, newlyweds, and a crowd attending the celebratory occasion. (© Haga Hideo)
Photos Help Preserve a Dying Language
Wadomari Board of Education staffer Futori Takeshi says that the exhibition’s captions facilitate the photos’ utility for educational purposes. Many visitors expressed interest in having a personally accessible collection, so plans are in the works to compile a photo album. The collection will also be shown in other parts of Japan so that former islanders can view them, and Futori hopes that this will be an opportunity for them to dig out old photos of island life that may be in their possession.
Furthermore, the collection may contribute to activities for preserving the local Okinoerabujima tongue. During Japan’s rapid economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s, use of the language, called shimamuni, was discouraged, and it fell into disuse. Shimamuni is one of the Kunigami languages, which today are listed in UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. Tanaka Mihoko, who heads the Society for the Preservation of Shimamuni, devoted to keeping the language alive, believes that seeing the photos helps people recall the tongue and the stories they heard in it decades ago. “I hope that seniors will talk among themselves as they view the photos, and recollect this lost language.”
Tanaka Mihoko hopes to help pass on shimamuni, an endangered local language. (© Sakae Makiko)
A storyteller shares mungatai folk tales on Okinoerabujima. The tales have been recorded in writing, but successors to the oral tradition rely on memory to reproduce the storyteller’s intonation and accent. (© Haga Hideo)
In 2017, the national government designated Amami Ōshima an ”environment- and culture-focused” national park, in recognition of both the islands’ biodiversity, which ranges from subtropical evergreen broadleaf forests to coral reefs, and the daily life and traditional culture coexisting with that environment. Amami Ōshima and Tokunoshima were inscribed on the UNESCO Natural World Heritage list in July 2021, bringing renewed attention to the islands. The Amami Museum is planning to exhibit Haga’s photo collection in 2026, a welcome opportunity to introduce the islands’ culture to visitors from other parts of the country. Across the passage of time and distance, photos of life on the Amami islands 70 years ago depict the nature and culture that the islanders have long prized and protected.
Islanders examine photos from the Nine Learned Societies’ study in 1957. Cameras were rare at the time, and the photographs were an event in themselves. (© Haga Hideo)
(Originally published in Japanese. Reporting and text by Sakae Makiko of Nankai Nichinichi Shimbun. Banner photo: A senior citizen explains what life was like in the 1950s, during the photo exhibition at China Junior High School. © Sakae Makiko.)