The Shibaymas

The Shibaymas
When the first migrants arrived in Peru, many of the first names of the first Japanese were poorly written by the authorities. Over time it became a problem for legal matters.This book compiles a group of official documents (Peruvian) in which my last name appears with spelling errors, some were corrected, others were not.

A specially made carton box contains “He traveled on an island“, “He never talked” and “The Shibaymas”

The Shibayamas
This Photobook is about the clash of cultures and how new identities are constructed and generate learning patterns. I am aware of the fragile nature of memory and of how it is always in transformation, this is why I am keen on materializing this process in visual projects. Fiction allows me to fill in certain gaps in my memory, and I use photography to visualize these events that have faded away in time. In this way I am beginning to tell my personal history in the light of my family´s history.

He never talked
This photobook is my grandfather’s personal diary, I mix the historical files of the Japanese migration to Peru with the photos of my family album, I show the relationship of my grandfather (Sakae Shibayama) and my grandmother (Hatsume Nagaki) next to the historical facts that marked the Japanese migration to Peru.

Book: 204 pages
Languages: Spanish / English / Japanese
Size: 250 mm x 210 mm x 20 mm

He traveled on an island
The relocation of a part of my family from Japan to Peru (1918) involved a process of transculturation and a reorganization of their identity parameters. The day my paternal grandfather died in 1997, I saw some members of my family tear off from their photo albums, the images in which they appeared, to take them away. The partially empty albums led me to inquire about my origins, Japanese Amazonians (my mother is a Chinese descendant settled in Pucallpa, on the banks of the Huallaga river in the Peruvian Amazon).

This photobook is a travel book, I scan the backs of the photos of my family album with the idea of building my own maps, making a reference to islands or archipelagos. The relocation is an important moment in the life of Sakae Shibayama and his family because he is going to a place he did not know.
Book: 152 pages
Size: 180 mm x 125 mm x 15 mm