青幻舎 SEIGENSHA Art Publishing

Hokkaido’s Nemuro Peninsula is the easternmost tip of Japan’s four main islands. Off the coast is Yururi, an island with a circumference of eight kilometers that is home to horses and mostly off-limits to humans. Yururi’s history is deeply connected to that of Hokkaido, from its early development, through wartime, and up to the present day.

——from the book

Yururi Island was first settled in 1950 by kombu fishers who arrived with their horses in search of a place to dry their harvests of kelp. Due to changes in the fishing industry, the last of the residents left some two decades later in 1971, and Yururi became uninhabited once more save for the horses, which were released into the wild. The former islanders continued to visit from time to time to manage the animals, but as these people aged the task grew to be a challenge, and in 2006 the stallions were relocated so as to halt new births and let the herd naturally die out. In the summer of 2011, when photographer Okada Atsushi first visited Yururi, the horses still there numbered twelve; by 2024, they had dwindled to two.

Over the intervening decade and few years, Okada documented this hidden haven relinquished by humans and roamed only by horses for some half a century. This book is his record of animals and landscapes that will soon be no more.

Photographer Okada Atsushi, born in 1979 in Hokkaido, earned a bachelor’s degree in photography from Osaka University of Arts and a doctorate in arts from Tokyo Polytechnic University. He is the recipient of the Fuji Photo Salon New Face Prize (2002), Kimura Ihei Award (2008), Hokkaido Cultural Development Incentive Award (2014), Higashikawa Awards Special Photographer Award (2017), and Japan Racing Association (JRA) Equine Culture Award (2024). Chief publications include I Am (Akaaka, 2007), ataraxia (Seigensha, 2010), The World (Akaaka, 2012), Mother (Hakurosha, 2014), Yasuda Shota Photo Collection: Life Is (Magazine House, 2020), and Epitaph (Impress, 2023). His works are in the collections of the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Kawasaki City Museum, Higashikawa Bunka Gallery, and Tokyo Polytechnic University Shadai Gallery.
http://okadaatsushi.com