Shadai Gallery

The Island Where People Live Ahagon Shōkō Photography Exhibition

Tuesday, November 5, 2024 – Friday, January 31, 2025

Ahagon Shōkō (1901–2002) is well-known as the leader of the nonviolent land struggle against the US military on the island of Iejima in Okinawa. In 1955, ten years after the Battle of Okinawa, the US military seized land to expand its base on the island. Ahagon and others were forced from their homes and farms in the village of Maja; some died of starvation as a result. As a means of confronting the forced confiscation of land by “bayonet and bulldozer” and the oppressive treatment that followed, Ahagon began to document the days’ events with a twin-lens reflex camera. The photographic record became a means of resistance. Ahagon and others shared the camera—the only one on the island—to document damage caused by military drills and the violent crimes of the American GIs, as well as the “Beggars’ March,” a months-long tour of the main island of Okinawa to appeal for support. The photographs made visible events on the remote island that had been relegated to invisibility by the American occupation. Before long, the circle of support spread not only within Okinawa, but to the main islands of Japan.

Through his books, including GIs and Farmers (1973) and Life is Precious: The Antiwar Spirit of Okinawa (1992), and his only photobook, The Island Where People Live (1983), Ahagon left a detailed account, in word and image, of the struggle. Continuing his appeal for the importance of peace until his death in 2002, Ahagon became known as the “Gandhi of Okinawa.”

Tokyo Polytechnic University has added to its collection the prints that were kept by Harigaya Kōji, who edited The Island Where People Live. At the same time, we have digitized about 3,200 extant monochrome negatives and made new silver halide prints. The negatives include many snapshots of daily life on Iejima and portraits of the islanders, offering glimpses of the things that Ahagon sought to defend. Please take this opportunity to view this documentary record that stands apart within the history of photography.

Planned and organized by Kohara Masashi

Ahagon Shōkō (1901–2002)

Born in a village on the Motobu Peninsula in Okinawa. He went to Cuba and Peru as a migrant farmworker before returning to Okinawa in 1934, when he settled on Iejima. While operating a general store, he purchased land on which to start a farmers school, but this plan was interrupted by the war and postwar land confiscation. The land struggle led by the residents of Iejima beginning in 1955 later sparked a unified movement on the main island of Okinawa. In 1984, he established Wabiai-no-Sato, comprised of the House of Nuchi du Takara [Life Is Precious] Antiwar Peace Museum and the House of Serenity. He published Beigun to Nōmin (GIs and Farmers; Iwanami Shinsho, 1973); Ningen no Sunde iru Shima (The Island Where People Live; self-published, 1983; English edition, CCA, 1989); and Inochi Koso Takara: Okinawa Hansen no Kokoro (Life Is Precious: The Antiwar Spirit of Okinawa; Iwanami Shinsho, 1992). He was given an award for distinguished service by Okinawa Prefecture in 1994. For the 2024 exhibition Photography, Resistance, and Island People (Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels), he received the Sagamihara Photography Award.