The towns of Hokkaido - Biratori 
In Hokkaido, there are many place names originating from the Ainu languages.
The sounds of place names are passed on from ear to ear by the Ainu.
The latter 19th century explorer Takeshiro Matsuura recorded their sounds using the Japanese katakana alphabet, but there was quite a gap between what he wrote down and the sounds of the place names in the Ainu languages.
That made me imagine that the Ainu languages must have a much richer descriptive power than the sounds written down, and that was the basis for me photographing place names along the Saru River.
Matsuura, who traveled on foot around Hokkaido and Sakhalin and as far as Iturup from 1846 to 1858, recorded the names of places there in "Geographical Map of East and West Ezo Mountains and Rivers" and published it. The photographs displayed here are ones I took of rivers and swamps along the Saru River. I chose my subjects based on the place names recorded in that book.
