Japan Society members are invited to this private view and talk with photographer Sam Seager who has just returned from a three-month, 6500km journey through rural Japan on a search exposing both the beauty and devastation in the lives of the people in those communities on the brink of extinction.
During his journey Sam set out to capture what is best summed up by the ancient Japanese aesthetic of Sabi; a celebration of that which is old and faded with at heart a very Buddhist sense of life’s transitory nature. It was a search for communities on the brink of extinction, a step back in time and an adventure fuelled by rice and the kindness of strangers and blessed with a magical touch by the occasional appearance of geriatric heroes. People like Yamamoto-San, a coal making, nature loving 75 year old living in the mountains of Niigata prefecture and still lifting logs on a daily diet of 2litres of green tea, naps and wild vegetables.
From the mottled corrugated iron and tilting roofs to the overgrown fields and collapsing bus shelters of the countryside (Inaka), he found it (sabi) everywhere and the result of his hard work are presented in this moving photographic exhibition.