Statement

As the rice fields are harvested, the wetlands echo with the voices of migrating birds.On a morning visit about ten years ago, I was enveloped by the piercing cries of geese and the thunderous sound of more than a hundred thousand wings taking flight.Within that trembling air, I felt the density and vitality of life itself.
 
If one listens carefully, the murmurs of water, wind, and the living creatures still resonate through this place.It is a landscape—once familiar across Japan—that still breathes here.I sometimes wonder if the painters of the Edo period, gazing at the families of geese flying across the moonlit sky, felt something akin to what I feel now.
 
The wetlands of northern Miyagi Prefecture—Izunuma, Kabukurinuma, and others—are registered under the Ramsar Convention as sanctuaries for migratory birds.Yet over the past century, Japan has lost nearly sixty percent of its wetlands, once dismissed as useless land.
Ironically, the growing number of geese that visit this area is both a sign of its richness and a shadow of its fragility—their very presence may one day cause the wetlands to fill and vanish.
 
Still, these birds cross borders freely, unbound by nations.
Though living with many constraints, they move in harmony with the natural rhythm of the earth.
The biodiversity nurtured by wetlands sustains the balance of our planet.
Within that eternal cycle of life, I always sense a quiet, enduring hope for the future.
 
 
In returning, life begins anew.
The story continues — gently, toward the next series, To Return to the Earth, ten years ahead.
 
 
Part of the photographic quartet “The Cycle of Being”.
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