Kitai Kazuo

Kazuo Kitai (b. 1944) is one of Japan's most important documentary photographers. Born in Anshan, China (then part of the puppet state of Manchukuo), he returned to mainland Japan during his childhood. Kitai began taking photographs during the student protests of the 1960s. Early in his career, he received critical acclaim for such masterpieces as Teiko / Resistance (1965), which documents the protests against a nuclear submarine port in Yokosuka, and Sanrizuka (1969), for which Kitai captured the daily lives and struggles of farmers protesting the construction of Narita Airport. In 1974, Kitai began To The Village, a long-term project about life in rural Japan. In the 1980s, he documented life in urban centers and newly built residential areas in places like Osaka and Funabashi, and in the 1990s he expanded the scope of this project to include Beijing. Kitai's intention to record and portray people's lived experiences is reflected in the unique and delicate distance he maintains from his subjects.

*This text was contributed by Mitsuhiro Wakayama.
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