Remembering Lives Lived Wholeheartedly, Okinawa Airakuen 1975 | Mikio Suzuki | Aka Aka 2025

"You know, there's a leprosy colony in Okinawa called Airakuen.
People there suffer greatly from discrimination and prejudice. 
Go and take photographs that will rectify that. 
The director is a friend of mine, so I'll write a letter of introduction for you."

Suzuki was invited to photograph the loprosy colony in Okinawa. He made several visits in Airakuen from 1974 and 1976. 

"The photographs taken at Airakuen amounted to approximately 2,300 individual photographs on 72 rolls of negative film. Some of the photographs were exhibited at Passman Hall within the colony from April 20th to 22nd, 1975, and they were also sent as mementos to many of the residents who were the subjects of the photographs. Suzuki was aware that the photographs he had taken for the purpose of documentation would be difficult to disclose to the public, but he took the precaution of confirming the possibility of releasing them to the public in the future. He mentions toward the end of his diary that although he had obtained the consent of many of the residents for the photographs to be made public, there were a number of factors that did not allow for public release.

Suzuki's photographs left behind at the colony were discovered in the process of conducting the Okinawa Airakuen fact-finding investigation and subsequent compilation of the collected testimonies obtained, which began in 2002, the year following the victory in the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Leprosy Prevention Law. With Suzuki's permission, thirteen of his photographs were published in Okinawa Prefecture Hansen's Disease Collected Testimonies: Okinawa Airakuen Edition (Okinawa Airakuen Residents' Association, 2007). In June 2015, seven of the photographs were displayed as a permanent exhibition at the Okinawa Airakuen History Museum, which was opened as a resource center. Additionally, 64 photographs were displayed mounted on panels in the 2018 special exhibition "Okinawa's Scars" (held from April 1 to August 31). This marked the first time the photographs were presented to the public in an organized form." - from the text "The Road to Photographing Airakuen" by Akira Tsuji (Curator, Okinawa Airakuen History Museum)