departmental bulletin paper

Departmental Bulletin Paper

Text

大阪大学大学院人間科学研究科紀要. 2025, 51, p. 45-73

Japanese

Text

2025-03-18

Today, about 80 years after the end of the Asia-Pacific War, we are entering the “post-experiential era,” which means people who experienced the War will no longer be around to give us direct testimonies; therefore, there is an urgent need to preserve wartime and postwar experiences for the future generations. In the context of these social circumstances, the authors retraced the footsteps of Shōmei Tōmatsuʼs photography to depict how people lived through the postwar period, based on “photography in practice (shashin-jissen),” which is an original methodology for systematically redefining the expression of photographersʼ intentions. This was achieved by reconstructing various photographic media such as photo collections, magazines, and newspaper articles, while considering the social conditions of the time. Notably, by placing themselves in the paths walked by Tōmatsu and continuing to take photographs there, in places such as Nagasaki and Okinawa, the authors learned to link the overlooked reality of the postwar era that he captured with a re-examination of how history continues to the present day. On the other hand, recent studies in the field of sociology, history, and anthropology, have pointed out that empathizing with the anguish and trauma of survivors through interviews enables us to communicate their experiences to future generations. In addition, filmic sociology and visual ethnography are characterized by interpreting video footage from the present perspective, which involves recording interactions with people recalling memories of World War II. However, “photography in practice” confirms the difference in research stance from these research trends; that is, it focuses on each moment of the photographersʼ experiences, paying close attention to the social conditions in their time and place, along with the authorsʼ reflective descriptions of the actual locations visited by the photographers in their analysis. Therefore, this study aimed to clarify the meaning of the experiences and thoughts of common people in the “Postwar” period that photographers sought to express, for the passing-on of memories. Especially, in this study, the authors reinterpreted Tōmatsuʼs deepening understanding in Nagasaki, retracing the footsteps of his photography since 2020. In the previous study, the authors showed that Tōmatsu came to perceive individuals in their everyday lives while he also primarily focused on the lives of the survivors of the atomic bomb, living in the misery that it caused. Based on the above findings, the authors, in the course of their return visits, became aware of the layered history after the atomic bombing in Nagasaki, where survivors and their supporters mutually strived to pass on the unforgettable memories to the next generation in everyday life. Furthermore, it is clarified that each photograph recording their suffering, ambivalence, or expectations at the very moment encourages us to re-accept the history that continues to the present day and further convey it to the future.

10.18910/100817

100817

再帰的な撮影行為を介して拓かれていく「記憶の継承」の可能性 : 写真家たちが表現し続けた「戦後」を「写真実践」より問い直していく意味

大阪大学大学院人間科学研究科

Japanese

2025-03-18

大阪大学大学院人間科学研究科紀要

51

45

73

https://hdl.handle.net/11094/100817

10.18910/100817

https://doi.org/10.18910/100817