Announcement: A screening of a documentary film "Kitaushima" (North Cormorant Island)

Produced, Directed and Written by John Williams
Co-Producer and Co-Director: Yu Iwasaki
2024/86 min./Japan/Bilingual version (Japanese with English subtitles, English with Japanese subtitles)

November 12, 2025
18:30 to 20:30 (Doors Open at 18:00，Screening from 18:30）
Room L-821, 8F, Library building, Sophia University
No registration necessary / Free of charge

North Cormorant Island was filmed over ten years (between 2014 and 2024) in the remote fishing village of Kitaushima (which means North Cormorant Island), on Sado Island, Japan. Until the 1960’s the village was only accessible by boat, but a couple of hundred people lived there, rice-farming, fishing and raising cattle. After a road was built, young people began to drift to the cities and now there are less than thirty residents, most of them over seventy years old. The film blends observational documentary, following the everyday life of the village, the rituals, customs and work of the people who live there with a personal, poetic reflection on the director’s childhood in his father’s village in Wales. It is a film about time, place, mortality and human relationships with the land and the sea.

The film was awarded the Audience Award at Tokyo Documentary Film Festival, 2024.

Trailer： https://youtu.be/vm7UQ7CNgo8

This event is part one of the Sophia Symposium 2025 “Exploring a Japanese Fishing Village through Art” organized by John Williams and the ICC Collaborative Research Unit with the JSPS Scientific Research (C) 24K03565 Art, Environment and Sustainable Futures.

Symposium Part two: November 15th / 18:30 to 19:30 (Doors Open at 18:00) Performance of a Play “The Blue Tanuki Dreams of a Two-Moon Night.” (In Japanese with English text explanation.)

Symposium Part three: November 16th / 10:00 to 18:40 Symposium with guest speakers reflecting on similar projects in villages in Brazil, Norway and the UK.

***

北鵜島

監督：ジョン・ウィリアムズ、岩崎裕
2024年／86分／日本／バイリンガル版（日本語に英語字幕、英語に日本語字幕が付きます）

11月12日
18：30－20：30（開場18：00、上映開始18：30）
上智大学図書館 8階 L-821会議室
事前登録不要／入場無料

佐渡島にある海辺の小さな集落、北鵜島。その素朴さと美しさに魅了された、英国ウェールズ出身の監督が10年にわたり東京からかの地へ通い、人々と風土を記録する。中世から続く神事「車田植」などの風習や、山海の恵みと厳しさと共に生きる人々の知恵や精神に触れるなかで、監督は故郷ウェールズでの思い出や、海洋学者だった父の最期に思いを馳せる。さまざまな歴史や記憶が重なり、やがて鮮やかな人間賛歌へと結実していく。（2024年東京ドキュメンタリー映画祭観客賞受賞作品）

Source: https://www.icc-sophia.com/post/a-screening-of-a-documentary-film-kitaushima-north-cormorant-island/

Going to the Japan Series...

Hanshin beat the Yokohama Baystars three games in a row in the Central League Final Climax Series. The Japan Series starts on October 25. Still waiting to see who they will face from the Pacific League (Nippon Ham Fighters or Softbank Hawks).

"The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force's newly built submarine Sogei is launched at the Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd shipyard in Kobe on Tuesday"

The photo and caption say it all...

Source: https://japantoday.com/category/picture-of-the-day/msdf-new-sub-launched

2025 Fall Festival / 秋祭り Danjiri shot serves as data only...

Last year we had to cancel the danjiri festrival because our neighborhood leader was in poor health. No one knew if we would be able to do it this year. I received this flyer on Thursday. It announced that thr danjiri would leave the shrine around 11:00 AM on Saturday. Unfortunaley my whole family was sick and I couldn't participate. I hoped I could join in on Sunday. However, as it turned out, it was decided to parade the danjiri for only one day rather than the normal two. So I missed the opportunity to photograph it as I have been doing every year for almost 20 years. Very disappointing.

I did attempt to photograpah the danjiri from the balcony of my house as it went by. Actually, the group usual takes a break at this spot. But this time they didn't. And it seems that many more wires had been put up in front of my house, getting in the way of any decent shot. This is the best I could salvage. The rest of the shots I hastily took are blurry and will only serve as data for this year's autumn festival.

See this post for more background about the autumn danjiri festival: https://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2020/05/special-multimodal-bonus-resources-and.html

Master of the 水路/Canal Continues With His Long Pole And Blue Net...

The Master has been continuously busy, going after all the garbage thrown into the canal. With his pole and blue net, he hoisted up an old TV set (that has been there for many years), bike tire, bottles and other misc. stuff. I have talked with him a few times when he was working outside of my window. He is a friendly guy. And I have been able to thank him for his efforts.

Meanwhile, Kadoma-shi workers finally came to clean and weed-whack "our side" of the canal. They missed a few small weeds and the dirt (that accumulates when the canal floods) where certainly new weeds will spring up.

See 「Volunteer Community Service: Master of the 水路/Canal, With His Long Pole, Battles the Weeds and Trash Heaps」https://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-master-of-canal-with-his-long-pole.html

「阪神タイガース セ・リーグ優勝」Hanshin Tigers: 2025 Central League Champions!

Image: https://hanshintigers.jp/

Deconstruction: Demolishing a Showa Era House in the Neighborhood (this post is still under construction...)

I moved into my neighborhood in 2003. Most of the houses were new and very ordinary. From the outside, there was really no architectural evidence of any particular Japanese design. But there was one large, older "traditional" Japanese house with three kura (storehouses) on a large plot of land where an elderly couple lived. I only had contact with the couple once, when I was the local han-cho (block leader) out collecting the annual neighborhood association dues. The dues were 200 yen per month, 2,400 yen for the year. But this older couple always gave 10,000 yen. As the years went on the house and property became more and more unkept. Eventually the couple passed away and the house was empty.

This summer in July, the house started to be demolished. VAoJ has documented and lamented recent older house demolitions in the neighborhood. You can see previous posts on this subject here, here and here.

In place of the old homes are empty lots, new apartment complexes and new osharei (stylish, and presumably expensive) houses, all adding to the "bed-town" atmosphere of the neighborhood (where people live and sleep but work elsewhere and do not interact with neighbors).

I talked with our shi-cho (neighborhood chief), a life-long resident who happens to be a retired architect and he told me the demolished house was built in the Showa Era (1926 - 1989), post-war around 1950. At that time the rural land was mostly rice fields. The house and much of the surroundings was owned by a family by the name of Akai. There are still a few descendent Akai families living in similar large Showa Era houses in the area.

VAoJ has recenlty become interested in the history of this neighborhood, and so a future project might ensue (stay tuned).

April, 2019

I happened to take this photo in 2019, so you can get an idea of what the house was like. (I wish I had taken more photos of the house.)

September, 2024 (image taken from Google Street View)

I was able to find this photo on Google Street View from last year. Here you can see that the front kura had been demolished and replaced with a metal fence.

July 15, 2025

The demolition started in mid-July. It was a long and slow process as there were only three construction workers and two large heavy equipment earthmovers. The days were extremely hot and humid which also had to add to the slower undertaking. The demolition process was very close to my house. There were times when the ground and my house shook violently, like an earthquake or a bombing (living through this everyday from 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM for over a month was psychologically distressing; I cannot imagine how people in natural disasters and wars deal with such situations). What follows is a series of 49 photos (out of 200 of so total shots) organized by dates. I usually took the shots in the early evening after the construction workers left. Most shots were from the outside, but once I was able to go inside the house before it was totally leveled.

July 18, 2025

July 19, 2025

July 24, 2025

July 25, 2025

I found this artifact in the rubble. The name "Akai" in kanji is carved in the handle. There are some worn markings on the ax head which I have not been able to decipher yet. Anaylysis continues...

July 28, 2025

July 29, 2025

August 1, 2025

August 2, 2025

August 19, 2025

August 25, 2025

And this is what is left...

...the razed ground and a tree branch and stump stuck in the fence.

At this time, it is unknown what will happen to the empty lot.

Plot map image modified from https://www.city.kadoma.osaka.jp/material/files/group/10/R7_06-03.pdf.