Kitakami River

Kitakamigawa, a photobook by Shoko Hashimoto, one of Japan's leading photographers.

Known for his work Goze, Hashimoto's magnum opus compiles his photographs of the Kitakami River basin in his hometown of Miyagi, taken over half a century. It includes early works shot with a Ricohflex, his first camera in high school, up to pieces from the 2000s.

What is captured in this book is not merely local scenery. Fishermen, horse markets, festivals, boats at the river mouth, salmon, a grandfather smoking, a barber dancing the loach scooping dance, an old woman drying nori seaweed, peddlers coming and going along the river—. Centered around the great Kitakami River, people's lives, scents, humidity, and memories themselves flow together in an inseparable whole.

When Ihei Kimura saw Hashimoto's photographs in Goze, he described them as "photographs that reek." This sensation is strongly present in this work as well—sweat, salt, smoke, fish, earth, fertilizer, wind—. The sense of "smell" rising from the images is the greatest characteristic of Hashimoto's photography.

From the 1990s to the 2000s, Hashimoto would travel upstream along the Kitakami River, pulling a cart loaded with photo panels, and hold outdoor photo exhibitions called "Medaka-ten" (Killifish Exhibitions) in various locations. As if tracing the primal landscape he saw from the cart pulled by his father and aunt in his childhood, Hashimoto continued to photograph his hometown.

Although documentary, a strange sense of time flows through it, where reality and fantasy, memory and land, the dead and the living intertwine. It occupies a truly unique position within the lineage of "I-photography" and autochthonous documentary in Japanese photography.

[Title] Kitakamigawa
[Publisher] Shunputei
[Publication Date] November 9, 2005 (First Edition)
[Page Count] 208 pages
[Size] Approximately 182 x 244mm
[Format] Softcover
[Language] Japanese
[Title Reading] KITAKAMIGAWA
[Author/Editor, etc.] Shoko Hashimoto / Author
[Printing] Shinano / Printing & Binding
[ISBN] 4861100550
[Condition] Used [6] Good to Very Good (Slight stains/scratches on top edge)
[Accessories] None (No obi)
[Featured in] -
[Related Exhibition] Shoko Hashimoto Photo Exhibition "Kitakamigawa" (Zen Foto Gallery, March 27 – May 30, 2026)

Shoko HASHIMOTO (橋本照嵩) 1939-

Born in Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture in 1939. Photographer.

Graduated from Nihon University College of Art, Department of Photography in 1963. In 1974, he received the Photographic Society of Japan Newcomer's Award for his photobook Goze. In the same year, he participated in the "Exhibition of 15 Photographers" (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) alongside Nobuyoshi Araki, Kazuo Kitai, Takuma Nakahira, Masahisa Fukase, Daido Moriyama, and others, exhibiting Goze. The work was acquired by The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

He photographs various parts of Japan with his unique perspective, focusing on autochthonous landscapes, people's lives, traveling entertainers, hot spring towns, and river basins. He is highly acclaimed for his photographic expressions that evoke humidity and scent, emerging from deep relationships with his subjects.

His major works include Goze, Kitakamigawa, Nishiyama Onsen, Ishinomaki, and San'ya. Since 2011, he has continuously photographed Ishinomaki after the Great East Japan Earthquake. In recent years, his work has been re-evaluated both domestically and internationally, primarily through Zen Foto Gallery.

< Related Figures >
Ihei Kimura, Kazuo Kitai, Masahisa Fukase, Issei Suda