Shisei Kuwabara

Shisei Kuwabara is recorded as having received Photographic Society of Japan awards and Ina Nobuo Award.

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. Kuwabara's photographs of Minamata were shown in his first solo exhibition, Minamata-byō (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.

• Shashin-shū Minamata-byō / Minamata Desease [sic]. Tokyo: San'ichi Shobō, 1965. • Shashin-kiroku Minamata-byō 1960–1970 (1960–1970, "Documentary: Minamata disease"). Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun, 1970. • Seikatsusha gunzō ("Collage of living people"). Tokyo: San'ichi Shobō, 1980. • Minamata Kankoku Betonamu. Tokyo: Banseisha, 1982. • Tōji no sato Kōrai, Richō. Tokyo: Iwanami, 1984. • Kōrai, Richō gendai tōjisen. Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbun, 1985. • Kankoku genkei ("Korea's original scenes"). Tokyo: San'ichi Shobō, 1986. • Minamata ("Minamata"). Komichi Shobō, 1986. • Hōdōshashinka ("Documentary photographer"). Tokyo: Iwanami, 1989. • Kankoku shinjō toro ("Expressing genuine sentiments about Korea"). Tokyo: Ōtsuki, 1990. • Yameru taikoku Roshia ("Russia, a sick great nation"). Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1995. • Kuwabara Shisei / Minamata. Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Sentā, 1996. Black and white photographs, in one volume (sold separately) of a multivolume set about pollution in Japan. In Japanese only. • Kuwabara Shisei shashin zenshū (The Complete Works of Kuwabara, Shinsei.) Tokyo: Kusa-no-Ne. Each of these four volumes contains explanatory text in English as well as Japanese. • 1. Minamata (Minamata). 2004. • 2. Kankoku (South Korea). 1998. • 3. Chikuhō/Okinawa (Chikuho/Okinawa). 2004. The first half is about the declining coalmines of Chikuho. • 4. Betonamu (Vietnam). 1999. • Imujin-gan: Kaima-mita Kita Chōsen ("Imjin-gang: Glimpses of North Korea"). Tokyo: Kusa-no-Ne, 2003. Black and white photographs of North Korea. In Japanese only.

• Nihon shashin no tenkan: 1960 nendai no hyōgen / Innovation in Japanese Photography in the 1960s. Tokyo: Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 1991. Exhibition catalogue, text in Japanese and English. Pp. 104–113 are devoted to Kuwabara's photographs of Minamata.