Being Connected with HOKARI MINORU

Dear Everyone -

I am pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition. (Note: There is already one local newspaper article on May 1st and a visitor wrote a blog about it on April 30.)

Title: "The Call of the Living Earth: Photographs of Australian Aborigines by Minoru Hokari"

Place: Hokkaido Museum of Northern Peoples

*** It is in Hokkaido, a northern island in Japan, but it is just 2 hours flight from Tokyo and there is famous "Abashiri Prison Museum" (a Japanse version of "Alcatraz") nearby.

I have received a following mail from my friend, Irumi Sasakura, who works at the museum.

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I am happy to report that preparations for the exhibition have been completed.

Yuki-san, this exhibition would never have been possible without you. It is thanks to your efforts that we were able to bring it about. Having finished curating and preparing the exhibits, my impression is that it is a very tasteful and dignified, if small and intimate, exhibition. My colleagues, who occasionally dropped in to see how the preparations were coming along, would watch the looping video (”The Story of Hokari Minoru”) and ask, “Isn’t his sister in it?” I wonder what is going to happen with the full documentary film?

It is also gratifying to hear the clerks, who otherwise might never have encountered Hokari-san’s book or considered the issues he raises, talking about him and his work.

Although we had not intentionally planned for it, the exhibition opened on a full moon. Of the 33 photographs exhibited, one is of the book cover of Radical Oral History, taken by Mr.Tsuyuguchi, so strictly speaking, Hokari-san’s works number 32 – the same as the number of years he lived. Perhaps I am reading too much into such connections, but after all that has occurred in the process of putting together this exhibition, I cannot help but feel that everything has a deeper meaning.

In that sense, while this project may at first appear to have been my idea, I believe that, just as Hokari-san had been “called by the Country,” I, too, was “called” by some place to put on this exhibition.

I can assure you that this exhibition will prove to be an extraordinary occasion in many ways.

Irumi Sasakura

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If you visit there, there is an area that you can write the message to the Museum, Mino and his family. If you address to "Mino's family" with your name, Irumi will send them to me. I look forward to hearing from you.

Yuki