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Michael Yamashita
Michael Yamashita was born in San Francisco in 1949 and is a third-generation Japanese American. He has contributed to NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC as a contracted photographer. For over 20 years, he has displayed his ability on a global scale, particularly in the field of photo travelogues. His latest work is Marco Polo (2001), which is a collection of photos he took while spending several years traveling the Silk Road.
The Tohoku and Niigata areas are blessed with beautiful natural surroundings. This cover story introduces you to these lush areas from the perspective of foreign photographers.
Approximately 320 years ago, Matsuo Basho, a haiku poet, yearned for and traveled to these areas. He composed many haiku (a very short Japanese poem composed of 17 syllables and includes a special word called kigo, which indicates the season in which the haiku was set) during his journey, and these works were later collected as The Narrow Road to the Deep North . On the side of some of the photographs, we will show in calligraphic form the haiku that Basho composed during his journey. Please enjoy these works together with the photos. Now, let's begin our tour of Tohoku!
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
