This haunting portrait reveals the suppressed history of marriages long considered taboo
(CNN) — Beneath a diaphanous white veil, four family members sit together on tan leather chairs, the woman in the center holding a baby in her arms. They gaze pointedly at the viewer, their concealed-yet-visible state a potent metaphor. Now in their 60s, they are the children born from a Japanese soldier and Vietnamese wife in the years that Japan occupied Vietnam during World War II. Like others born from these taboo unions, they have dealt with social hardships and the lifelong absence of their father. Though some troops stayed after the war, many families faced forced separation by the mid-1950s, when soldiers were required to return.
That was the case for the family of Lê Thị Xuân and Yoshiharu Shimizu (whose Vietnamese name is Nguyễn Văn Đức), who had two sons and one daughter, pictured above. When photographer Phan Quang took this portrait of the siblings in 2014, the family spanned four generations – including a great-grandchild seated on the woman’s lap. The image belongs to a larger multiyear series, “Re/cover,” which Phan embarked on to tell these families’ stories and completed a decade ago. In each of the portraits, his subjects are draped by the white veil, both a symbol of matrimony and silence. Part of the work is exhibiting at the Rencontres d’Arles photo festival in France this summer and fall.
Because of Japan’s occupation, including its military’s harrowing history of sexual slavery through “comfort women,” any union between Japanese soldiers and Vietnamese women endured extreme prejudice. In “Re/cover” Phan sought out the families born from mutual consent and love, whose stories were untold.
“Japanese soldiers who married local women were often looked down upon by their peers, as these women came from what was then seen as a ‘lesser’ country,” Phan said. “On the other hand, their Vietnamese wives and children were stigmatized for carrying the bloodline of a former occupying force.” Their children’s dual identity resulted in legal and social hardships, a kind of in-between state where they could not integrate fully into Vietnamese society nor visit their father’s homeland.
“Their lives seemed entirely erased by history, and they themselves appeared trapped in a melancholic loop of the past, with no way out,” Phan added.
Xuân, one of the few Vietnamese wives who was still alive as Phan made the work, “spoke about her love with a surprising warmth and devotion,” he recalled. Shimizu voluntarily stayed in Vietnam after World War II to join the Việt Minh resistance, opposing French colonial reoccupation, the photographer explained. The couple married in Hanoi and lived together for nine years before she and Shimizu were separated. “Their love was genuine, and she remained deeply proud of her husband, carefully preserving his belongings for decades.”
Without recognition from the Japanese government, or a way for Shimizu’s family in Vietnam to immigrate, they never reunited as a family. Shimizu faced hardship upon his return to Japan in 1955 and was unable to support them financially, Phan explained. In 1986, when Vietnam underwent historic reforms and began to open the country to travel, he returned with his new Japanese wife to see his adult children. Xuân “welcomed them both with extraordinary generosity,” he added.
Locating the families of “Re/cover” presented challenges to Phan, who, with his news reporting experience, spent years tracking them down and earning their trust. Despite writing more than 200 letters to Japanese consulates, historical institutions and other organizations, he received scant replies, which he attributed to the sensitive nature of the topic.
While developing the series, the veil as a visual device came to him after he visited a traditional Japanese kimono workshop in 2013. Phan saw connections between Japan and Vietnam in its use — a factory in Kyoto began making the voile fabric for kimonos in 1955; the same fabric is commonly used for bridal veils in Vietnam, he explained. 1955 was also a symbolic year, as it was the year Japanese soldiers left Vietnam. Bringing the fabric from Japan to Vietnam “created an invisible connection” between the two countries, he said.
“Re/cover” blends both staged photography and documentary. Curator Nadine Hounkpatin, who organized the wider exhibition at Arles in which Phan’s images appear, has said that the body of work illustrates the kind of deeper truth-telling photography can do.
“Re/cover remains, a decade after its creation, a compelling reflection on photography’s ability to organize the meaning of the world, far beyond its mere claim to record it,” she wrote in the press materials for the exhibition.
In the time that Phan made the series, Japan has taken some steps to recognize and mend the fractured history, with the former Emperor Akihito meeting 16 descendants of these Vietnamese and Japanese marriages in 2017. Phan said it his “deepest wish” for the families he photographed to be recognized as citizens.
The-CNN-Wire
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