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Life Onboard |
LAST UPDATE
October 13, 2007
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| site design imagesparkle.com |
| October 3, 2007 |
A Conduit for Truth and Justice – Hirokawa Ryuichi and DAYS JAPAN |
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| Hirokawa Ryuichi explains the context of his poignant photographs of Israel, Palestine and Lebanon to Peace Boat participants |
Hirokawa Ryuichi is a photojournalist who has spent forty years tirelessly covering Israel and Palestine and keeping the world abreast of events in that region. He is currently the editor-in-chief of Japan’s only photo documentary magazine, DAYS JAPAN, which unflinchingly reports on issues the mainstream media regales to the margins or ignores. As a firm believer in the notion that the media play an important role in saving lives, he works passionately to expose peopleto the truth about the state of the world, in all its harsh reality. He joined Peace Boat from Yokohama, Japan, to Da Nang, Viet Nam to share his photos and give a compelling behind-the-scenes perspective on contemporary media. |
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| Participants pick up DAYS JAPAN, Japan’s only photo documentary magazine |
Emblazoned across the cover of DAYS JAPAN is the magazine’s founding philosophy: “A single photograph has the power to change the course of a nation.” As editor-in-chief, Mr Hirokawa bears a heavy responsibility in a nation saturated by conservative, “dumbed-down” media. In a lecture, he discussed the current trend in news programming whereby advertisers have a monopoly over the content and reject coverage of tragic events because it negatively affects purchase demand. ‘The media turn their eyes from the real situation – the abandoned bodies. Ignorance has been accelerated,’ he asserted. He used the analogy of the frog in boiling water to describe how he feels about the state of the media in contemporary industrialized nations. ‘We [the public] are like that frog. The boiling is gradual, so we never feel that that situation is fatal. There are many photojournalists who are philosophical and critical, but these days, most media people have become non-critical “Yes Men,”’ he opined. |
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| A sign made by Mr Hirokawa’s onboard helpers which asks “Can Media Save Lives?” |
Mr. Hirokawa was just 23 when he first went to Israel in 1967. As a young idealist, he was attracted to the utopian idea of the kibbutz, a Jewish communal farm where people live in harmony. However, instead of becoming a farmer, he became a photojournalist after slowly realizing the Palestinian problem. This issue would dictate the direction of his life over the next 40 years, and despite having nightmares, being haunted by the smell of dead bodies and turning to heavy drinking to ease his nerves, he continues to shine a light on the destruction ignored by other media. He firmly believes that the media does have the potential to positively influence the direction of conflict and recalls an anecdote about a man he met in Palestine whose son had been killed by Israeli militants. The man told him, ‘If there had been some foreign journalists, then these things wouldn’t have happened. My son wouldn’t have been killed.’ This led Mr Hirokawa to the realization that ‘photojournalists had a role in preventing the things that happened here.’ He also brought back to Japan footage from Palestine of children orphaned in the ongoing conflict. Through his moving photographs he was able to rally financial support from the participantsfor the orphans, thereby making a small difference.
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| Mr Hirokawa shows a series of his photographs from Palestine and Chernobyl, exposing stories forgotten by the world |
Photojournalism has traditionally been a controversial occupation, with some arguing that the role of the journalist is solely to act as a conduit for information, while others assert that journalists have a social responsibility to assist in times of crisis. Mr Hirokawa is of the latter school, believing that ‘The role of the photographer is to bring a message to the wider world which people like doctors, for example, cannot do. To report those issues, I myself need to go into dangerous areas. [But] when somebody is nearly dying in front of you, you’d probably help them. The priority is to save lives, not capture images.’
To discuss the complexities surrounding this issue, Mr Hirokawa used the example of the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph taken in 1993 by Kevin Carter of the famine in southern Sudan. It portrays an emaciated infant being sized up by a vulture who is about to prey on it, and caused a huge uproar as many argued that instead of taking the picture, the photographer should have helped the child. Mr Hirokawa gave a nuanced perspective and stated that Carter was using a lens that made the vulture appear closer than it actually was, so there was no real danger of the vulture preying on the infant and he did in fact chase the vulture away, but only after taking the picture. However, the following year, Carter committed suicide leaving a note saying that he was depressed and haunted by starving and wounded children, among other things highlighting the struggle photojournalists face in bringing back images of events and situations many of us could not even imagine.
To see some of Mr Hirokawa’s work, visit www.daysjapan.net
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