Kiichi Kawamura
Photographer, hunter, and artist born in Tokyo Metropolis in 1990. He completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at Tokyo University of the Arts. In 2017, he and his wife moved to the Shiretoko Peninsula in Hokkaido, where they now live with their Ainu dog, Upas. His collections of work include UPASKUMA – Life in Shiretoko with the Ainu dog Upas – (Genkosha).

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“I felt that by just going on a trip and taking photos and then coming back, I was only seeing this place on a superficial level,” says Kawamura.

“I wanted to create works by spending time, experiencing the changing seasons and the presence of animals firsthand, and understanding the mentality of the people who live here.”

For several years after his move, Kawamura experienced the real conditions of the World Heritage area as a staff member of the Shiretoko Nature Foundation. In doing so, he witnessed surprising relationships between humans and wild animals.

“Close proximity to wild animals is a major draw of Shiretoko, but it sometimes leads to problems like friction with brown bears. At the same time, the animals also study humans by observing us and even shrewdly take advantage of us. Only by living here did I learn about these equal but complex mutual relationships.”

In the forest behind his house, animal trails stretch out endlessly.

“In the city, there are only asphalt streets, but here, animals make their own paths. If you follow those paths, you’ll find rivers and realize, ‘Oh, this is where they drink water.’ Gradually, you learn to detect the presence of animals through various traces and sounds. My senses have quickly become honed.”

The changes in the seasons are striking, with plants budding in unison as the snow melts and then growing in an explosion of life during the brief summer. Kawamura says that the quiet period of transition from autumn to winter has also left a deep impression on him.

“Tourists disappear, the trees shed their leaves, and the world gradually loses its colors. Amid this stillness, animals, plants, and humans all simultaneously begin their preparations for surviving the harsh winter.”

There is a feeling of tension among living things, as if all of nature is putting on its winter clothes. Then, the sea is sealed away under drift ice, and on days of heavy snowfall, Kawamura sometimes can’t even set foot outside his house. However, he says that “these harsh conditions make the bonds between people closer.”

If his car gets stuck on a snowy road, someone spontaneously reaches out to help. He says that living in a harsh natural environment has given him a strong sense of human warmth.

“It’s because the power of nature is so totally uncontrollable that people lean on and support each other. Here, humans are just part of nature. I always hear an owl hooting outside my house at night. Moments like these feel rich because they remind me that the world doesn’t revolve around humans alone.”

Unlike “nature photography,” which depicts an ideal wilderness without the presence of humans, many of Kawamura’s works show animals directly regarding his lens with a clear gaze.

“I feel like the animal world is seamlessly connected to our daily lives, so I try to take photos in which we’re aware of each other. That’s why I release my shutter at moments when there’s a sense of confronting the subject.”

For Kawamura, it is his Ainu dog, Upas, who shows him firsthand that the animal and human worlds are contiguous.

“By living with me, Upas has taken on some human-like qualities, but when he runs through the forest chasing after scents that I can’t detect, he’s all animal. He’s like a mediator between nature and humans.”

At times with Upas and at other times alone, Kawamura tracks unseen animals and listens carefully to the sounds of the forest. His desire to “learn more about living things” has also drawn him to the world of hunting.

“I feel like animals mirror us. If we act wary, so will they, and if we keep our minds calm, they’ll strangely be calm as well. When I slaughter an animal I’ve caught and consume its meat, it feels perfectly natural to me that my life is connected to others as part of the circle of life. I want to capture this feeling in my photography as well.”

Just like nature and human lives are contiguous, Kawamura says that “there’s no boundary between art and everyday life.”

“The intuition and walk of a seasoned hunter are very beautiful to me, and the way a sailor looks at the sea or the work of a farmer in growing crops by interacting with the soil is also a product of rugged creation. I believe that creating something by making the most of what is available in a place as a kind of ‘local production for local consumption’ is the ultimate in creativity.”

During the history of Shiretoko’s development, people invented tools themselves amid the harsh natural environment and continually improved them for greater ease of use. Kawamura says that this vitality and closeness with nature is in and of itself a kind of rich creativity.

Because he finds creativity in everyday life, his installations are always unique. He continues to create diverse forms of expression beyond the boundaries of paper media, such as printing photographs on swaying, translucent fabric or utilizing objects he gathered in the forest, out of a desire to “create works that breathe in the same space.”

Kawamura is currently in the process of building his own studio in Shari Town. He says he hopes it will serve as an interactive hub for his daily life and creative work where various encounters take place.

Finally, we asked Kawamura if there’s anything he’d like to photograph someday. He replied as follows.

“I’m interested in the origins of things, where the things around me come from and where they go. For example, I’d like to take photos by going up a river to its headwaters. I’d follow it myself and see how a small flow of water eventually runs into the sea and becomes part of the circulation of the atmosphere, creating a great cycle.”

Seen through Kawamura’s eyes, Shiretoko is a world of beautiful multilayered gradations formed by the workings of the harsh natural environment and humans, the circle of life, and the ability to imagine the unseen. New stories yet unknown to us live and breathe on the other side of his lens.

Oral Histories Passed Down by Women (compiled by the Shari Women’s History Association)
Six volumes recording the narratives of 152 women who lived in Shari Town during the development of Hokkaido in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “Town histories tend to be told from male perspectives, but this one gives a detailed account from female perspectives. It’s a wonderful compilation that vividly demonstrates how people actually lived.”

Photobook: The Pioneering Spirit of Shiretoko (by Rei Tsugamine)
This photobook recounts the history and tenacious lifestyles of the people who developed the frontier of Shiretoko with 170 color photographs as well as 46 original black-and-white photographs from the pioneer era. “I’m impressed by Tsugamine’s approach, which involved carefully sifting through ‘daily life’ in this region back in the day by interviewing pioneers and photographing former development sites in the forest.”

Endless Winter (by Airda)
Album by Airda, a musician who moved from Tokyo to Shiretoko, expressing his daily life during his first winter through five ambient tracks. The album also comes with a twelve-page photo booklet. “It’s a work that conveys the quiet and loneliness of winter, as well as the warmth and light scattered amid those long hours.”

*This article was written in September 2025.