Confessions Of Masks, 1997

Behind the economic success of Japan, there are forgotten people who have been left in mental hospitals. In Japan, more than 200,000 mentally handy capped are still hospitalized even today, some of them lives there for more than forty years. Their parents cannot support them because they are too old or they are dead. Developments of psychopharmacology can reduce their symptoms but they can hardly help them to leave hospital. The pictures shown here were taken in 1997 in a mental hospital in Japan. Their daily lives were going on quietly in the hospital. I took their photographs in many aspects for years and they were pleased to have their photographs taken. I hear that most of them are still in the same hospital even today, more than ten years after I took these photographs. Here I cannot show you their faces to protect their rights. Their existences are hidden from surfaces of our societies and their masks reveal you their difficulties. Please listen to the voices under their masks.