On omnipresent photography：Kanade Hamamoto, Winner of This Year’s Kimura Ihei Award, Navigates the Crossroads of History and Imagination

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“The fascination with film cameras is that you never truly know what’s been captured,” says Kanade Hamamoto. The young photographer, born in 2000 and recently named the winner of the 50th (2025) Kimura Ihei Award, reflects on her first encounter with film just eight years ago. Her award-winning project, “— · · (Cho Tan Tan)”, which took the form of a 2025 exhibition at the Yokohama Civic Art Gallery and an accompanying photobook, is a multifaceted work that resists the simple labels of "exhibition" or "book." Having received one of the industry's most prestigious honors only a few years after she began showing her work, Hamamoto speaks to us about her hopes for the medium of photography.

Born in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Hamamoto moved frequently as a child due to her parents' work transfers. In high school, longing to live near the ocean, she moved to her grandmother’s house in Kamakura. It was during this period that she began taking photography seriously.

“I was helping with a move when I found an old Kodak FunSaver, one of those disposable cameras, like the Fuji Film’s Utsurundesu. I think my parents had used it long ago, but it was the first time I’d ever seen one. I remember thinking, ‘What is this? Does it actually take pictures?’ The camera was used but had never been developed. When I took it to a local camera shop, these images of my mother and father on a date from about thirty years ago emerged. Because the film had sat for three decades, it had degraded and faded; everything was printed with this purple haze. I found that incredibly interesting – the idea that film held that kind of potential.

I hadn't been interested in cameras at all until then, but I went straight from the lab to a second-hand shop and bought a used Canon SLR. That was the first camera I ever bought for myself. Since it was manual, there were too many buttons, and it was a struggle to understand functions like shutter speed and aperture. I think I only finally grasped it about a year ago (laughs). But even when I didn't understand how the camera worked, it was fun. I fell in love with the playfulness of film, the ‘what will come out?’ of it all. That’s why I don’t find digital cameras particularly appealing.”

Hamamoto held her first solo exhibition while still in high school, followed by a rapid succession of shows.

“In my third year of high school, I decided I wanted to try exhibiting. I rented a gallery space in Kamakura for three days, and a lot of people showed up. Ever since then, I’ve found the act of exhibiting joyful. In 2019, I organized an independent show in Shibuya, and then in 2020, I did exhibition “midday ghost”. That came about because a gallery approached me, and at the same time, someone asked if I wanted to publish a photobook. Everything just fell into place.”

While her exhibitions and books were well-received, they didn't bring immediate financial stability. “You can’t make a living on print sales alone. While I was striving to be a photographic artist, I was juggling various part-time jobs. I did high-altitude window replacement because the hourly pay was great. But balancing that with the time needed for production was difficult. I do take shooting commissions from fashion brands or musician friends. I’d like to keep both going in parallel, but it’s hard. Work allows me to see sights I never would have seen on my own, which is why I want to stay involved, but in the end, it’s not my work. I want to blur that boundary as much as possible and continue doing both side-by-side.”

Her award-winning work, “— · · (Cho Tan Tan)”, captures the light and shadow of the history of the place where she spent her late teens.

“In the fall of 2024, there was an arts festival called SENSE ISLAND/LAND 2024 set in Yokosuka. TOKYO PHOTOGRAPHIC RESEARCH (an artist collective based in Yurakucho, founded by photographer Taisuke Koyama) was involved in the curation of the photography section. When they called to ask me to participate and mentioned Yokosuka, I suddenly remembered the existence of the ‘Fukuryu’ Special Attack Corps.

The Fukuryu were suicide squads who trained near the end of WWII at Nobi Beach in Yokosuka. They wore special diving suits and were meant to stay underwater with bombs attached to long bamboo spears. When an enemy ship passed overhead, they would strike it, blowing themselves up in the process. The war ended during their training, so they were never deployed in actual combat, but many members died during the training itself.

I first learned about them around 2020. I was driving along Route 134, and a friend in the passenger seat mentioned that Inamuragasaki was a site of military ruins. I looked it up as soon as I got home. I searched ‘Inamuragasaki military ruins’ and the word ‘Fukuryu’ popped up.

I had always known there were square-shaped holes in the cliffs at Inamuragasaki, but that was the first time I realized they were military structures. Those holes were embrasures (gun ports) connected to hand-dug bunkers. They were bases meant for the Fukuryu to wait in before heading into the sea if they were ever deployed.

I found a website with an illustration showing the soldiers in their diving suits, holding their explosive poles, lined up at regular intervals on the seabed. The way the plan treated humans as non-human shocked me. Then I learned how many died during training or went missing at sea. Some drowned, but the most terrifying part was the breathing apparatus. It was a closed-circuit system using oxygen tanks and caustic soda canisters. You had to inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. If you messed up the rhythm even a few times, the caustic soda—a caustic chemical—would backflow, leading to immediate death. They were sent to the bottom of the sea with such crude equipment, and so many died.

Those soldiers were almost the same age as I was when I used to hang out at the beaches in Inamuragasaki and Yokosuka. To think that the bodies of soldiers who were never recovered might still be at the bottom of the sea where I go every day… it made me realize this wasn’t just a past event; it’s a story of the present. I felt a sense of mission, like I had to create something.

When I began production, I researched books and testimonies left by former members. Reading them, many said they could never forget the sound of the screws being tightened as their faceplates were closed. They described it as being ‘put into a coffin while still alive.’ Reading that, an auditory image formed before a visual one. I recorded the sound of waves coming and going, and the bubbling sounds a diver would hear underwater. I used those for the soundscape in the exhibition and included them on an analog record that came with the book.

From the start, I felt photography alone couldn't convey this subject. The project developed with a balance between images and text. The title, “— · · (Cho Tan Tan)” , represents the Morse code for 'long, short, short.' The divers and the ships on the surface communicated by pulling on a cord; 'Cho Tan Tan' meant 'Reached the seafloor.' I learned they signaled the surface by pulling a waist cord attached to a buoy, so I installed buoys in the exhibition space as well.”

The project expanded beyond Hamamoto’s expectations.

“I really wanted people of my generation, my close friends, to see it. My friends who I usually hang out with at the beach came and said they had no idea about this history. They bought the book and sent me their thoughts; that was the most rewarding part for me. An unexpected outcome was that after a newspaper covered the work, the grandson of a former member came to the exhibition. I later got to hear his story in detail. His grandfather had written a will in preparation for deployment to Yokosuka, though he ultimately survived because the war ended. He had entrusted his will to another young soldier who wasn't in the Fukuryu. Because they were deployed to different locations, the friend didn't know if the grandfather had lived or died. For 30 years after the war, that friend posted in the ‘missing persons’ section of the newspaper because he desperately wanted to return the will to the family. Eventually, a neighbor told the grandfather, ‘I think this is about you,’ and the two were reunited. The ‘will that never became a will’ was returned. I was allowed to see it. The age he was when he wrote it was 24, the same age I was when I read it. It was written in beautiful calligraphy. As someone born in 2000, I never had such thoughts at 24. I was left speechless.”

Editor Eisuke Sakai, who has followed Hamamoto’s work since her early days, describes his first impression of her:

“I first heard her name through Takayuki Kobayashi, the owner of flotsam books. That led to an interview, and we’ve since spoken many times; I’ve even helped with her book production. When she first started talking about photography, she spoke with a sort of post-apocalyptic sensibility that I immediately understood. Her perception of the classic dogmas of photography, memory and record, seemed to have come full circle; it felt different from what came before. The way she reflects that sensibility honestly in her work, deviating from existing systems, reminds me of the improvisation, speed, and sense of time that Takuma Nakahira captured in Circulation. She is incredibly fast.”

Hamamoto’s methodology, such as using various media like text and sound alongside photography, stems from her encounter with a specific art book.

“The first art book I ever bought was Sophie Calle’s Parce que (Because). It’s a book that makes you imagine by reading the text first, then pulling the photo out of a sealed pouch. It requires the viewer to be active. That act makes a flat page feel three-dimensional, both physically and in your mind. I love the power of words; I actually read more books than I look at photo collections, so I felt a sense of kinship and admiration for her. What I learned most from Sophie Calle was to keep photography as my pivot point while expressing myself through various media. That cross-disciplinary approach feels very light and agile.”

At just 25, Hamamoto became one of the youngest recipients of the Kimura Ihei Award, second only to Hiromix, who won at 24 in 2000. However, she admits to initial hesitation.

“I’m happy, of course, and very grateful, but I felt conflicted. It’s not that I’m particularly skilled at photography, and I don’t have a long career. There are so many people with incredible technique. I was momentarily bewildered that someone like me, without that technical mastery, won a photography award. But since I created this based on the testimonies of former Fukuryu members, I don’t feel like it’s my work alone. I hope the award helps the project reach more people.”

Mitsugu Ohnishi, a photographer and judge for the Kimura Ihei Award, offered this praise: “Hamamoto ‘receives’ the ‘signals’ from the past, of young soldiers waiting in the sea for an American landing, and translates that into a pseudo-experience for the viewer through the synergistic expression of photography and video. She faces the ‘reality’ of war with sincerity. Her work reaffirms that the camera is a tool that honestly pursues the memory of people and their eras. Given her familiarity with the local sea, some might find her shooting style a bit sentimental, but her ‘wrestling’ with the material, as seen in the installation and self-published book, marks her as a true artist.”

Editor Eisaku Sakai adds: “The award might be seen as a result of how her treatment of war memory resonates with current global affairs. However, people seem to be reacting to something beyond the War. In this project, she shows that there are voids in history that can only be connected to because she is shooting in a place where she simply hangs out and plays. Her practice suggests there are ‘others’ who don’t appear in history books, and she is betting on an encounter with those others. This isn't something that can be measured by the ‘lightness’ of the expression or the artist's youth, nor can it be pigeonholed as ‘war photography.’ She is performing a delicate, sophisticated operation of connecting the ‘somewhere’ of the voiceless other with the ‘here’ of the self.”

Hamamoto continues to find hope in the precarious state of photography while using the "vintage" tool of a film camera.

“While making “— · · (Cho Tan Tan)”, a friend I was consulting said, ‘There’s a possibility that sounds from 80 years ago are still echoing and can still be heard, and light particles from 80 years ago are still reaching us now. And vice versa: it’s possible that sounds and light from the present could reach back 80 years.’ That felt like such a hopeful thought. It’s a saving grace to hear that, and I was happy they understood that my actions were driven by a desire to catch that.

The act of making photography is lonely. Photographers don’t often have horizontal connections or help each other out. We respect each other as friends and exchange info, but as prestigious awards decrease, the era of competing or striving for a prize is ending. If that continues, I worry that people aiming for photography, or trying to publish their own work, will disappear. The decline of the industry as people stop taking photos is a crisis, though I intend to keep going regardless. If you think about it, it’s an industry that feels like it’s full of nothing but despair, but I don’t want to despair.

I’m not obsessed with gear, but since I started with photography as a physical object, I want to keep shooting on film. I just can't bring myself to go out with only a digital camera. Film is full of the unexpected; there are many accidents. I’ve always liked accidents.

I can take pride in the fact that I was there, in a place of light or shadow, when I pressed the shutter. I just have to keep going like that. My first experience with photography was finding it interesting that things that should be there looked like they weren't. Yet something was captured, and it was certainly there. I’m drawn to how photography encapsulates two contradictory things: its fragility and its permanence.

Film grain reacts to light. This chemical reaction inside the camera is invisible, but it leaves room for the imagination. In reality, a photograph is incredibly thin. It can lie easily; it's like a ‘weak liar.’ But it leaves room to imagine the particles of light and the atmosphere of the scene.”

As for the future, Hamamoto, who released the award-winning book under her own label, Shinju Publishing, wants to help others publish their work too.

“Paper books remain even after my physical body is gone, so I definitely want to keep putting books into the world. If I’m going to spend the money and effort to put them out, I have to work to make sure they stay in the world. By leaving them behind, I hope for unexpected encounters. I want to keep leaving traces. The same goes for the vinyl record I included; it could be heard 80 years ago, and it can be heard 80 years from now. By leaving things behind, I think the number of people I can meet increases, and I can create points of contact with society. If I leave a book or an exhibition here, I can talk to people far into the future. I want to keep taking and preserving photos in order to meet people and to talk with them.”