シベリアへの旅路―我が父への想い

Memories of My Father : A Journey to Siberia

Kazuo Sumida

Kazuo Sumida

角田和夫

Kazuo Sumida was born in Kochi Prefecture, Japan in 1952.
Although photography was not his formal career, Kazuo pursued the art throughout
his life. He graduated from Osaka Photography Graduate school in 1983. He alsostudied at the International Center of Photography (NYC) through the Japanese
Agency for Cultural Aﬀairs Fellowship program.
Kazuo's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Black+White Photography Magazine
and blog.PhotoWhoa.com. His photos have been displayed around the globe: SonyImaging Gallery Ginza (Japan), Tokyo Ginza Kodak Photo Salon (Japan), Tokuyama City
Museum of Art (Japan), Paris Photo (France), Laurence Miller Gallery (USA), AIPAD
Photography Show (USA), EXPO Chicago (USA) and ARKA gallery (Russia), and photos
from "Tosa Late Night Diary: Memories of My Uncle" are in the permanent
photography collection at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Smithsonian’ s National
Museum of Asian Art.
Kazuo was the winner of IPA international photography award (2004) and a ﬁnalist ofthe UJADE Art Award (2010). He has published ﬁve photo books featuring his work.
In 2014, he was a visiting lecturer at Vladivostok State University of Economics andService in Russia. From 2014 to 2016, he taught photography as a full-time faculty at
De La Salle University in the Philippines.
Kazuo lives in Japan and frequently visits NYC.

AWARDS and PUBLICATIONS
2020 Yonden Arts Cultural Award
2016 Black+White Photography - April 20162013 PhotoWhoa Blog
2013 New Yorker Magazine - February 11 & 18, 20132013 Kochi Shinbun Arts Section: From Arles to New York20122010 Finalist of the UJADE Art Award 20102009 Photography Series Shinbun Newspaper: "Tosa Photo Gallery"
2007
2004 Winner of IPA International Photography Award - book category: "Journey to Siberia"
2003 Kochi Shinbun Newspaper Arts Section 39th series: "A Journey of Recollection to Russia"
2002 11th Tadahiko Hayashi Photography Award: "A Story of the New York Subway"
1989 Kochi Shinbun Newspaper Arts Section 33rd series: “Manchuria”

1984 年、父は 67 歳の生涯を閉じた。死後、几帳面だった父らしく、自宅のタンスの中に、折り目正しくたたまれた衣類と、丁寧なペン書きの長文の手記、それに自ら朗読して吹き込んだテープが見つかった。その手記の内容は、20 歳での徴兵検査の後、近衛歩兵第四連隊に入隊、そして志願兵として満州に渡り、ソ満国境の虎頭で順調に昇進していったことが書かれていた。
そして、1945 年、日本国敗戦後は、シベリアへ抑留され、帰国するまでの 10 年間の体験が、丁寧な言葉でつづられていた。父はこの手記を通して、何を語りかけようとしたのか、時が流れるにつれ、その疑問が膨らんでいった。
当時、ソ満国境虎頭に居た母親からも、敗戦間もない頃のソ連軍の横暴などの話を、子供の頃から聞かされていたためか、ロシア人に対しての偏見、嫌悪感などの固定観念（ステレオタイプ）が知らない間に心にうえ付けられていた。それにも関わらず、父親が艱難辛苦を味わったシベリア抑留への足跡を追う旅へとつながっていった。
1996 年からシベリア取材が始まった。モスクワ、タンボフ州、ウドムルト共和国、タタールスタン共和国、ダリネリェチェンスク（イマン）、ウラジオストック、ナホトカと旅した。
父親が行軍させられた、モスクワ東 800 キロに位置する、ウドムルト共和国キズネールからタタールスタン共和国エラブカ収容所までの 80 キロの道程にある村も訪問した。その地域は、畑でとれた野菜やジャガイモなどで、自給自足のような生活をしていた。どの村の人も（遠く日の出る国から、ようこそ来てくれた。）と温かく迎えてくれた。涙してくれたロシア人も居た。
日本人捕虜が行軍させられた、途中の村、ベムィージィ村では、村長さんのはからいで、宿泊訓練中の生徒達と一緒に食事をすることもできた。
学校の食堂で頂いたボルシチは、雨に濡れた体に染み渡った。食後、生徒達に、旅の理由や目的などを通訳を通して話すことができた。若い生徒達の澄みきった、まっすぐな眼差しが心に残った。
このような旅を通して人間の持つ思い込みや偏見の愚かさを、広い広いロシアの大地の神様が、私にそっと教えてくれた旅となった。

My Journey to Siberia
My father passed away in 1984, at the age of sixty-seven. In his room there was a chest of drawers, with clothes neatly folded in his punctilious
fashion. Among them was a lengthly manuscript, neatly handwritten in ballpoint, and a tape recording of the contents in his own voice.
The story he told was his own, starting with his conscription at the age of twenty. He was assigned to the 4th Regiment of the Imperial Guard
Infantry , and volunteered for service in Manchuria. Joining the border defenses in Hutou, across from the Soviet Union, he rose step by step
through the ranks. The steady voice on the tape goes on to recount Japan's defeat and the end of the war in 1945. In the same tone, we hear
about the ten years he spent in Siberia before coming home. And as the years went by, listening to the tape I wondered more and more what it
was my father actually wanted to say.
At that time, I loathed Russia, and the Russians – or at least the stereotyped version of these people I was carrying around inside me. This had a lot
to do with my mother, who'd lived with my father in Manchuria. She ﬂed as a refugee when the war ended, and from when I was a child she told
me horriﬁc eyewitness accounts of the violence and cruelty of the Russian troops. By the time I'd reached the age of reason, this fear and loathingof Russia was rooted deep in me. Even so, years later I made up my mind to visit Russia as a photographer, and follow my father's journey as aprisoner of war.
I set out in 1996, and traveled through Moscow, Tambov Province, the Udmurt Republic, the Republic of Tatarstan, Dalnerechensk (Iman),Vladivistok and Nakhodka. On the way, I retraced the eighty-kilometer forced march my father had endured between Kizner (in the Udmurt
Republic, eight hundred kilometers east of Moscow) and the prison camp of Yelabuga, in Tatarstan.
I dropped into a village along the route, where the people lived simple, self-suﬃcient lives on the vegetables and potatoes they grew in their ﬁelds.
They gave a tremendous welcome to this rare visitor “from the faraway land of the rising sun” . Some of them even shed tears. And in the villageof Bemyzh, along the same forced-march route, the headman invited me to spend an evening with the students of the local school, who weredoing some kind of overnight event. I sat down in a sodden lump in their canteen, and felt the warmth from the borscht they gave me coursing
right through me.
After the meal, I talked with the kids through an interpreter. I told them what I was doing there and what I wanted my journey to mean. I'll always
remember how these young kids gave my story their pure, undivided attention, as clear as their gazing eyes. And so my journey to Siberia took ona meaning of its own. Somehow, the spirit of the vast Russian motherland got into me, exposing the true tininess and futility of the prejudices wecan all carry around. I crossed the great plain of Siberia, and as I did so it was gradually neutering and dissolving the fear and prejudice in me.
The photographs tell the story.