ABOUT

Welcome to “Yakushima Kuroshio Saijiki – The four seasons of Yakushima Island”!

I observe and photograph the sea creatures of Yakushima Island (in Kagoshima-ken, southern Japan) while working as diving guide. I am dedicated to Yakushima Island and its surrounding waters, and my time is spent observing its sea life. All photos on this page were taken by me at Yakushima.

I think that the act of “taking a photo” is neither more nor less than “understanding the subject”. Wildlife or nature photography requires that the photographer patiently observe the animal to capture the best photos. My motto is, “If I don’t observe them carefully, I can’t photograph them.”

I am focusing on the sea around Yakushima Island, so you might think that I have a narrow view of things.
But I believe that I can truly understand a global ecosystem, diversity of life on the globe, mechanism of evolution, and the connections between organisms and their environment through observation of only my field across all four seasons.In fact, it means not “widely and shallowly” but “narrowly and deep”.
Yakushima Island is my setting for learning about the nature of the universe.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that something exciting happens every day I dive. Divers at Yakushima are unlikely to see large marine mammals, or rare species, or the kind of spectacle that National Geographic manages to film. But that doesn’t matter for me, because It’s not as if I want great new excitement in water.
what is fascinating about undersea life is the marvel of the ordinary: little fish and marine mammals going about their lives. I dive every day because there is a mystery and a joy in observing nature which I will not ever be tired of.

Children are excited to see any kind of animal, but as we grow into adults we stop being able to excite the “ordinary” things before our eyes. I think that We increasingly tend to be moved only by large animal behavior, or exciting spectacle of nature, or the kind of extraordinary experiences. We lose our sense of wonder, and the immediate natural environment becomes a mundane thing. I think that “sense of wonder” by Rachel CARSON means “senace” to excite the ordinary things before our eyes. I want to value this “sence”, and I have a stronger desire not to lose my sense of wonder for all time.

I built this Facebook page to introduce my beloved Yakushima Island, its seas, and the amazing creatures who live there. I hope you too can experience the fun, the riches, and the uniqueness of the Yakushima sea through these photographs.