Okinawa 001

For his series Banta, which includes this work, Osamu James Nakagawa photographed in Okinawa, the largest of the islands that form the Ryukyu chain off the Japanese mainland. Nakagawa was drawn to this location for both its natural beauty and its bloody history: during World War II, American and Japanese forces engaged in an intense battle for control of the island in which approximately one quarter of the civilian population died. Fearing capture, many Okinawans took their own lives by jumping off the craggy, volcanic cliffs into the turgid sea below.

To create this image, Nakagawa took a number of individual photographs and stitched them together in a vertical cropping, referencing the visual tradition of Japanese scroll paintings as well as the unique geological beauty of the land itself.