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The Story of Wakasa

When I was a small child, my grandmother Hatsuko used to tell me many old folk tales. Especially, I liked the story “Foxed by the Fox” and so it goes: one early evening, a girl was sent on an errand. Somehow, her bundles of Japanese tabi socks become unfastened, and while she tried to re-fasten the bundles, all of her shopping was stolen.

I tried to express the story through these photos.

The places I heard about in my grandmother’s story were still the same as they were in my childhood, and I took photos of the places the main character visited when she went upon her errand. As the sun went down, I felt indescribable uneasiness and an uncanny feeling.

I hope you, too, are able to sense the feeling of weirdness and dislocation, in these places where the lost world of old folk stories presses close upon the living world, as if separated by a fine membrane.

Photographed in Fukui, Japan