Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film is pleased to present “Kamaitachi,” a solo exhibition of works by Eikoh Hosoe. The exhibition includes 28 images from Hosoe’s highly acclaimed “Kamaitachi” series, some of which are previously unseen.

“Kamaitachi” has traditionally been depicted as a weasel specter with sharp kama (sickle) in place of each arm. It also refers to the phenomenon of skin being cut, touched by the vortex-carring small whirlwind, as if struck by the sickle blade of the specter. Hosoe began shooting his “Kamaitachi” series in 1965, which takes the Butoh dancer Tatsumi Hijikata as its subject. Hosoe shot the series initially in Hijikata’s hometown Akita, then later in Shibamata and Sugamo in Tokyo, as if to trace the photographer’s own postwar trajectory. The series was published as a book in 1969. It overlaid the image of the Kamaitachi on Hijikata, who was searching for his origins within his hometown. It was also a way for Hosoe to come to terms with his own experiences of wartime evacuation in Yamagata, which he had nearly forgotten at the time. In an interview, he commented, “Where will the wartime experience of evacuation, postwar ruins and experience of living in Tokyo, and the current economic prosperity and peace all go?” 1 Hosoe explained that through the medium of Hijikata’s body, who shares the blood and culture in the Northeast, “I ‘documented’ my ‘memories’.”2 The resulting works, spun out of the relation between photographer and subject, have a highly narrative quality.

In the village, he played with children, was laughed at by farmers along the roadside, shat in the middle of a field, attacked a bride, kidnapped a baby, and ran through the rural landscape. Almost all the shooting was done guerrilla style in a flash. This was something that could only be achieved through photography. No other medium — film, television, painting, or novel — could have been used in its place. At that moment, I was certain of the superiority of photography.
- Eikoh Hosoe, “Foreword” in Kamaitachi 2

Notes
1 “Hosoe Eikoh ni kiku” (interview to Eikoh Hosoe), The Photo Image, vol.1, 1969
2 Eikoh Hosoe, “Kamaitachi,” Shashin Hosoe Eikoh no sekai (Eikoh Hosoe Photographs   1951 – 1988), Shashin Hosoe Eikoh no sekaiten jikko iinkai, 1988

*image (left)
© Eikoh Hosoe