Shisei Kuwabara, Date of Birth, Place of Birth

Shisei Kuwabara

Japanese photojournalist

Date of Birth: 07-Oct-1936

Place of Birth: Shimane Prefecture, Japan

Profession: photographer, photojournalist, journalist

Nationality: Japan

Zodiac Sign: Libra

Shisei Kuwabara (?? ??, Kuwabara Shisei, born 7 October 1936) is a photojournalist best known for his depiction of the effects of mercury poisoning on people in and near Minamata over a period of some forty years. Kuwabara was born — as Fumiaki Kuwabara (????, Kuwabara Fumiaki) — in the village of Kibe (now part of Tsuwano), Shimane Prefecture, Japan.
In 1960 he graduated from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Tokyo Photo School (later Tokyo College of Photography). In the same year Kuwabara started work as a freelance photographer.
With a letter of introduction from a journalist with Shukan Asahi magazine, he visited the director of Minamata Municipal Hospital, Dr Noboru Ohashi, in July, to ask for permission to photograph.
Ohashi gave him permission for long-term coverage.Kuwabara's photographs of Minamata were shown in his first solo exhibition, Minamata-byo (Minamata disease), at the Fuji Photo Salon in Tokyo in September 1962.
This won the newcomers' award of the Japan Photo Critics Association.Kuwabara's works have also won an award from Kodansha in 1965, the Photographic Society of Japan's Annual Award in 1971, and the Ina Nobuo Award in 1982.Since 1997, Tsuwano has had a gallery largely devoted to Kuwabara's work.
Until March 2004, this was called the Tsuwano Documentary Photograph Gallery; it was then renamed the Shisei Kuwabara Photographics Museum.