Kamigami no shima

Yasuo Higa
Kamigami no shima

Photographs: Yasuo Higa

Text: Kenichi Tanigawa

Publisher: Heibon sha

163 pages

Year: 1979

Comments: Hardcover under dust jacket with a slipcase and obi (one part is missing) as issued, 330 x 225 mm. Black and white photographs reproduced in gravure. Slipcase fading due to time and soiling otherwise binding is fine, inside in very good condition.

Yasuo Higa (1938-2000) was a former police photographer in postwar Okinawa while the islands were still under U.S. occupation (they did not revert to Japanese rule until 1972). A visit to the island of Miyako, where he saw shamanesses going into trances to conduct religious ceremonies, changed his life. From then on he devoted himself to recording the traditional rituals and routines of these island communities -- already threatened in his day with extinction by the encroachment of modern ways