MIKI FUKUMOTO / Wadatsumi - God of the Sea

Miki Fukumoto
Wadatsumi: God of the Sea, 2025
Softcover, 96 pages
24.8 x 17.2 cm
Zen Foto Gallery, Tokyo

“I like Miki Fukumoto's photographs. She has such a delicate way of depicting light and shadow, you can almost smell the sea in her pictures.”
― Daido Moriyama

The remarkable colors and scenes in Miki Fukumoto’s photobook “Wadatsumi - God of the Sea” were captured over more than ten years along fishing towns across Japan. Fukumoto searched for a new way to capture Japan – or maybe an essence of it – and arrived at the country’s fishermen and - women and the long history behind their trade. As a map in the back of the book illustrates, she has traveled around the entire country for the series, mostly to locations she found through research but also some that presented themselves by sheer chance. With “Wadatsumi - God of the Sea,” she achieved an astonishing and unique portrait of Japan’s relationship to its seas, whose otherworldly use of color and light blends the boundaries between the realms of myth and humankind.

“In the fishing ports of Aomori and Iwate, I encountered the courage of fishermen who had recovered from the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami. I also felt a ray of hope in the fishing ports at dawn in Fukushima, which was also recovering from the damage of 2011. I admired the work of a few fisherwomen, who are quite rare, and a fishing couple in their 80s. In Hiwasa, I photographed all three generations of a very brave and cheerful fishing family. Since time immemorial, they have prayed to the god of the sea for good catches and safety as they lived vigorously with the sea, which can be very rough at times.”
― from Miki Fukumoto’s afterword