shashasha

“Shima – Sore jishin no owarinaki toki he,” the first entry in Noboru Hama’s “Okinawa” trilogy, features pictures taken on Okinawa’s main island and surrounding islands in the 1970s and 1980s.

In these black-and-white photographs, Hama concentrates on recording the islands as-they-are, capturing natural landscapes as well as various town scenes from the position of an unobtrusive third-party, with the addition of posed portraits. However, Hama makes sure not to lose track of Okinawa’s history: several photographs of a mass grave—hundreds upon hundreds of human skulls hidden away in a natural cave—puncture the otherwise airy flow of the book.